The Bus Ride

By Roshni Varsha

Charu pressed her side against the pole that stood in the middle of the train, clinging to it in a desperate attempt to stay on her feet and near the door of the over crowded bus. In many more rural areas of her country men and women wouldn’t even touch one another, but here in Bombay things were not quite so strict; especially when it came to riding on the bus.

Once you stepped onto the bus it was like entering another world, one where the usual customs and laws often had to be suspended. Old, rickety and always crowded to far beyond capacity the busses were a menace. Once you got on there was no guarantee that you would actually manage to push your way through the crowd to the door once you reached your stop. In such conditions it was impossible to avoid contacting members of the opposite sex, however, once you stepped foot back on the solid ground outside the bus, all bets were off. Bombay was more progressive then many parts of India, but there were still strict expectations of Indian girls’ behavior.

Charu held tightly to the bar as the bus ground to a halt. A press of bodies slammed into her from behind and she was forced to press back against them in order to avoid being thrown out the doors when they opened. Even as a flood of people pushed past her to get off she held her ground. Her stop wasn’t for quite some time but there was no way she was going to miss it because of being stuck in the throng of people behind her.

As the doors folded shut once more, and the mass of people left on the bus, including the dozen or so that had just boarded at the last stop shifted to try and find a comfortable position, Charu thought she felt something, something unusual. She was still un used to riding the bus and the proximity of all these men with their masculine scent and hard bodies was pretty overwhelming all by itself, but she thought she’d done a pretty good job of blotting all that out, until now.

Keep Reading CONTINUE HERE!!