Culture Box
I take the bus to work, so I try to avoid being late or, if my morning cup of coffee was half full, being not early. Late, not early, it’s all a question of outlook.
Like when the bus breaks down. Having transported me the grand distance of two whole corners, the conductor still insists on a full fare. I walk off, paying no heed to whatever it is he is calling me behind my back.
Be cool.
Be cooler than cool.
Be ice cold.
Think positive.
Or magical.
Again, it all comes back to outlook.
And soon enough another bus stops; scooping up us stranded passengers. The conductor, a woman, rushes us in, explaining that the police are on the road today. Lucky me, I get to sit at the back, where there is a woman crouched next to the window who absolutely refuses to move any further down. It wouldn’t be so bad but for the fact that she weighs a few hundred pounds and it is no easy task getting past her. But I don’t complain for the fact that she weighs a few hundred pounds and could easily crush me with her pinkie. I decide to leave the situation alone, though she is none too happy (and lets me know it) when I squeeze my way past her (which is understandable, since I am not paper thin either). As I sit and silently curse the fact that there is no window at my end, an elderly man, who looks to be in his 60s or 70s, follows after me with considerably less trouble (being nothing more than a collection of skin and bones). He sits between us, clutching a briefcase close to his chest. He smells like pee.
This too will pass. Eventually. Any question of out outlook is made moot by the smell and the growing heat, which are both just bearable until the man next to me begins to cough up something nasty. I suspect they are the remains of a lung but there is no being sure. Suddenly, for no clear reason, the woman at the other end of the seat unintentionally flings her arm over his shoulder, much to his consternation. Noticing his reaction, she quickly removes it. Oh joy.
The bus might as well be moving at walking speed, a phenomenon I find you only ever notice until after you make the mistake of getting in. Oddly enough, in such cases conductors (people who seem to know how to make the best of very little) often display a steely obliviousness (or should that be diffidence?) to the situation: there is one man who works on the slowest ‘cork-ball’ on the road but continues to tell his driver to “fly” to get him to pull off or “bun it down” to stop). We weren’t flying; we were doing plenty of ‘bunning down’ as the conductor tried to solicit passengers from every nook and cranny we were passing. I don’t know if the police were still on the road but she seemed to have forgotten as she managed to shuffle three more people into the bus where there was only room for one.
And so it goes, the eager conductor with dollar signs in her eyes, the cranky woman (how could she wear that dress?) with her powerful forearms, the old man in the urine-soaked clothes, and me, dreading the next bus stop.
“Ya goin’ down?” the woman yells from the packed bus to a man who looks doubtful.
I don’t know about him but I certainly was, and I was late or not early. (stabroeksun@yahoo.co.uk)
