The Boy in Bus No.19: MTC Diaries 1

 If you're travelling in an MTC bus during the 8am to 10am slot, you might as well forget that seats exist in the bus. The newly made buses are in fact designed to provide for more place to stand. It was one such bus I was traveling on that day. I'd been standing for an hour, and finally got a seat: it wasn't exactly a seat, it's the box-like structure under which perhaps there were some mechanical parts, which MTC users started sitting on when the bus got too crowded. Hoping to rest my legs for at least the 10 minutes of the ride left, I sat on it, relieved. As destiny would have it, the relief didn't last long. This anna standing near me said, "He's been standing for very long, let him sit ma". And I looked around, expecting an old, grey haired man. It turned out I had to look down: it was a small boy, who wasn't even as tall as the box he was about to sit on. I let him sit, and was curious because he had no one with him. 

He said he was going to school. I asked him why he'd joined a school this far away from his home. He said, "I used to live in the Housing Board in T. Nagar, and since they demolished it, we moved to Kumaran Nagar now". For a moment, I'd imagined it was one of the bulldozer demolitions. But he clarified that they were going to make a new building in place of his old home, and he would move back once that's done; hence, he didn't change his school. And yet, it surprised me that a tiny 5th std. boy would travel that far in a public bus all alone. 

We soon reached T. Nagar, and he hopped off the box while putting on his bag. His bottle started leaking, while he was blissfully unaware of it. I helped him close it properly. Seeing this, the anna who'd asked me to let him sit asked me if I was with him. I replied in the negative, and we exchanged sympathies over how such a small boy had come all along; it was almost a 20km ride. I turned to see him being told to be careful by another man who was perhaps going for work. Almost as his dad would have advised him back home.

And I thought to myself, that the next time I'd travel alone to a distant place, I'll remember that little boy carrying his school bag, getting off bus no. 19 all alone to go to his school far away from his home.