Delhi heat is unbearable, if you do not have any ready change on you. By the time one scrimmages around for the change, the ice cream cone in one’s hand reduces into a gooey mess. Of course, this did not happen to me. I was just standing there at the Maharani Bag bus stop. Waiting.
“Buses today are filled like dogs,” a bystander complained. I couldn’t gather what he meant by this, he too looked puzzled. He was behaving a tad mysteriously and was balding. His toupee had expired, it seemed. He later explained that his wife had offered to redo the wig but she could not get the skin tone right. I ignored him because now the bus was arriving. The heat had gone to my head because when the bus arrived, I tried forming a queue. I found myself heading the one to nowhere. The bus left, leaving a smoky taste in my mouth. I was unperturbed.
I tried my left arm bowling action, one that really swings the ball. I chuck with the right hand. It dates back to my childhood when upon seeing a Gypsy car, I became so excited that I jumped off the roof and dislocated my collarbone. Although Naeem Hakim had quickly fixed my arm using asparagus roots and fresh mud, the arm had shortened by a couple of inches after the incident. Tailors have been known to stitch newborns’ underwear from the leftovers of clothes covering my right arm.
Anyway, I really got the swing going in Delhi. I had almost balled three overs from both ends of the bus stop and was getting a bit tired, so I decided to take a break. I asked for a sip of water from the vendor; he handed me two plastic pouches for the price of one. Now disposing them off was my problem. Plastic was banned. Anyway, I drank the water and pocketed the empty pouches. There was a young couple waiting with their toddler. He (she?) was standing near my knee. It licked my hand, the one where the ice cream had melted. Perhaps the child had a terrific nose, or the heat was really unbearable.
The bus arrived, I started running alongside and jumped in. Once everyone was in, the bus left. The conductor handed me a Rs 10 ticket, I told him I had a pass but he maintained that the deal was non-negotiable, so I paid anyway. It was beginning to rain, now that I was in a bus. The driver promptly switched off the air-conditioning. It felt like betrayal but I was occupied by the sight of the water accumulating on the road.
The enterprising people were already selling umbrellas. I bought one for Rs 100, and fifty complementary articles came with it. A few television journalists were standing right inside the potholes to complain about the road conditions. Our bus had to swerve around them to move ahead.