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Chitra Gopalakrishnan
A writer based in New Delhi, uses her writing to break firewalls between nonfiction and fiction, narratology and psychoanalysis, marginalia and manuscript, and tree-ism and capitalism.
Author website: www.chitragopalakrishnan.com
The bubbling calls of the female cuckoo, who hides somewhere in the vast outdoors, are maddening. It is as though she, through her disruptive clamour and its repetitiveness, is unburdening her entire life’s secrets, its deceits, and her survival in precarious situations. Her shrilling is louder than the female singer’s voice, whose song from the seventies is being played inside the private bus from Dera Mandi in south-west New Delhi to Inhauna in Rai Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. A song with its own angst. “Bechara dil kya karein, saawan jale, baadon jale, do paal key yeh raah nahin, ek pal ruke, ek pal chale,” trills the woman whose voice is a captivating mix of vim and dulcet. “What should a poor heart do when it is aflame even in the moist monsoon months of July and August and blazes even in the cooler months of August and September? As life is fleeting and its paths transitory, it flails and slows down by turn,” she bemoans. As the bus gathers speed and judders over rough roads, her song shatters into pieces as if to mirror her torment of unrequited desires and life’s misfortunes. Its choppy notes then merge with the dissonance of the bus, the cacophony of its engine, radiator and its metal parts, to sounds akin to iron chafing against iron.
The bus with forty-eight seats is in poor condition. It has a dented body, peeling gaudy yellow paint, grimy seat covers, groaning metal floors and many missing window panes. The ones that remain have ribbons of dried vomit. Ram Kumar, a tall, thin, and dark man, in his thirties, with gangly limbs and gentle, almond-shaped eyes, lies motionless on the floor of the bus, at its furthest end, sick to his core, alone, and unnoticed. He has boarded the bus at its starting point, already quarter-filled. It is four p.m. on May 12, 2025, and the heat is unforgiving. It is 44 degrees centigrade, but feels like fifty degrees. As the hot sun is framed within the bus windows, its panels of metal and glass are on fire. Ram sweats and moans through his worn-out polyester shirt, threadbare trousers and the gamcha he has wrapped around his head. They may once have had colours but are now of indeterminate shades.
He curls up in a foetal position and then straightens, again and again, resting his head on the bulging, frayed, black plastic knapsack that holds his clothes, water bottle, and into which he has stuffed his red plastic slippers for safety. He feels he is living a nightmare. There are so many people around him, yet not a single one to catch sight of him, let alone help him. “Why aren’t the people around curious as to why I am on the floor?” he agitates, unable to bring himself to speak. As he teeters on the brink of extinction, everything known and familiar dissolves, and he feels a persistent sense of swaying like being adrift in the sea. But he is desperate to get home, aware that something is not right with him. He has felt unwell for a while. In his state of disorientation, the arc of his life plays out like a silent film. He watches it with stupefied eyes, from start to end. Yet even through this visual tableau and his state of extreme debility, Ram is alive to the floundering refrains in the background, their tones and timbres, and can distinguish their discrete sounds. He knows of the many strains that come together to create a more complex pattern, a new resonance, even though it is raucous and unmelodious.
Ram is equally aware that this incessant racket will soon escape him as he has to make another necessary travel to a place far away, one where there will be no bus involved. This journey is a twelve-hour one, and his stop at Chandapur will take eleven hours, but his future journey will be a much longer one. He will have to go from noise to silence, from messy existence to stillness, and from an earthly life to an afterlife. His eyes search and find the dashboard of the bus at the other end, and despite the distance, his vision narrows to the figurines of gods sitting in line, in harmony with one another; their presence is meant to prevent mishaps and accidents. Before them are sticks of incense toppling ash. He is relieved that no passenger is standing, for this would disrupt his view. But dismay sets in soon. In his last moments, his gods seem to gaze down on him with cold brilliance, their eyes alligator-like, wide-angled and unblinking. It is as if they hold inscrutable truths within their impassive eyes, authenticities that are frightening in their intensity for humankind.
As their celestial ceramic bodies bob and quiver with every movement of the bus, and the vibrant colours painted on them oscillate with their frequencies, Ram is forced to soul-search, to look inwards. To him, this is his only anchor for clarity, or at least some degree of lucidity for the countless injustices in his life, its senselessness. A million unanswered questions arise in rapid succession, although not in any chronological order. “Is this all my life adds up to? Is my life going to end in this way, in the most demeaning manner? Are my bowels going to empty without my volition? Am I going to die without fulfilling my duties as a father and husband? Am I to be the unlucky person who leaves behind a widow, and an orphaned child, both of whom will be defenceless and penniless in a vicious, lustful world? Why am I being taken so young when my parents lived to dotage and saw their grandchild? Did the gods intend the stillbirths of two of my earlier children to be punishments for my misdeeds? Am I going to be one among millions of mazdoors to die in isolation, unattended, nameless, on the dirty, molten, metal floor of a roadway bus, ignored by co-travellers and abandoned by my gods whom I have worshipped earnestly through my life and fasted for? Will my gods say their indifference to me is the result of my karma, the accumulation of my wrongdoings from other lifetimes?” Ram hears himself mutter these thoughts, though he is aware his lips are not moving. Confused, he senses fright, an increasingly acute one, building up inside of him. “Maybe my words are stuck in my windpipe or perhaps they have not left my brain,” he reasons. A squeeze of alarm runs ball-like from his throat and settles in his stomach.
In his comatose state, another voice buzzes in his ears, that of his friend Sohan Yadav. This time around, it spreads in outward spirals, with the menace of bee stings. “Never forget, Ram, our lives as labourers are subhuman, worse than beasts. We are destined to chase hard work, exploitation, disappointment, loneliness and hunger and die like crushed ants in a sludge of substances. What I say is not specific to you or me but to thousands like us who have come unaccompanied to Delhi to seek better lives for their families. We will, forever, be looked down upon by the residents of the capital as temporary people, as dirty migrants, and, ironically, labelled pardesis by our people as we have left our homes. The people and the village that made us, shaped us into who we are, will always look upon us differently, strangely, as if we are an unknown set of foreigners, as if we have sullied their land.”
“Is this the deepest and the only truth of life, of our lives and my life?” Ram broods as he lies gasping, dying in degrees, as he struggles with his last moments on earth. This is not how death should come to anyone, he thinks, yet again. It should arrive when a person has achieved fulfilment in life, a sense of completion with it. He had assumed this to be a universal truth, while Sohan had given him a dark view of endings. “Maybe, Sohan’s phalsafa is right after all and his philosophy holds merit,” he tells himself. Then he despairs silently within. “I know I came to the city, full of hope, when I was fifteen. Tall, lithe and eager for employment, I was instantly absorbed into its mainstream as a construction worker, and I felt noticed, needed. But when I looked for hope, all I could manage was a compromise with life, a samjhuata, constantly thwarted as I was by circumstances,” he had confessed to his twenty-year-old wife Leela just six months ago. Now he knows for certain he belongs to a class that lacks the power to ask ‘why’ of their employers, their governments, and their gods. This is a small sin, he thinks, when compared to the theft of their basic rights. His emotional turmoil is brutal; savage lucidity of this kind at the end of life is soul-destroying.
He feels strong nostalgia for his home, his village, and his childhood memories. His mind brings him images of his village, Chandapur, in Rai Bareilly district, seventy miles ahead of Lucknow, its ancient stones, red brick homes, thatched huts, neem-lined, unpaved roads zigzagging across open gutters, the village square with a gigantic pipal tree, village elders smoking bidis, milkmen trundling with cows with their tinkling bells, and the smoky tang in the air as women pat cow dung on walls, bake rotis, and cook vegetables in the evening on their open stoves. He feels a shock of joy with these recollections. His urge to die in his home, in his village, is strong. He wants to be one with the mud of his village, not the metal floorboard on the bus. “I know one travels not to escape life but for life not to escape us, but I seem to be doing the opposite,” he thinks to himself, sadly, even as his life slides away from him. It is a death most quiet, with no rage or resistance against the injustices inflicted on him, just giddy gulps of relief. It happens in solitude, in powerlessness, and in secret, as no one is witness. His last visions are tricks where one time stream rubs up against another, village life, city life, and the afterlife. They are all real, yet all apparitions. And his last gesture is to feel under his shirt and check if his undershirt, with pockets stitched into it, holds his papers of identity, for death will drag him into anonymity. His Aadhar card, his voter ID, his small booklet of addresses and numbers of his neighbours, village elders and contractors in the city, and even of women of the night are safe. His money, saved for his wife and household expenses, the six thousand rupees, is still there. He is always telling his wife, “paison ki khillat ho gayi hain” (I am short of money), but now he has something to give her.
****
Rajesh Prasad, the bus driver, is not flustered by the death of his passenger, which is discovered after the bus crosses Faridabad. A sparse-haired, moustached, pot-bellied man in his forties, Rajesh sees no reason to stop the bus. On the contrary, his driving turns combative as if a peculiar energy has him under its control. The bus speeds past flat brown lands that blow dust clouds, past cramped living quarters, and past local markets and their mofussil shops that sell vegetables, groceries, betel nut and paan, mobile phones, medicines, undergarments, beauty services, and liquor in unruly gaiety. Rajesh amplifies his music system that belts out a fast-paced, audacious song where the male singer urges his listeners to leave the city of Delhi, break open the night’s mud coffers and steal the good luck it hides. “Aaja, aaja Dilli chode, Raat ki matki thodein, Koyi goodluck nikale, Aaj ghullak ko phodein,” goes the song. He honks every two minutes, vengefully skitters over potholes, swerves wildly to overtake vehicles that cross him, spits vile abuses at their mothers and sisters and is determinedly unmindful of traffic regulations. Passengers in the front seats, especially women, watch with mounting worry. Veiled women are engulfed in a dark cloud of panic and babies drool foaming gobs of saliva, as Rajesh’s fat buttocks shift in elation, as his belly shudders in glee and as his mouth burps in satisfaction every time he manages to quash a vehicle’s progress, especially those larger than his bus. As the wheels rustle up dust and hot air floats in, his corner smells of boiled cabbage, incense, sweat, and farts. If his driving makes the passengers dizzy, his area could trigger a dead faint.
Does he choose to ignore the law that mandates him to drive the vehicle to the nearest police station if anything untoward happens while the bus is in transit? Or is he ignorant of it? Maybe, he thinks he will defraud his company of its rightful fare if he makes a detour and his vehicle is impounded by the police. He has been heard saying that his business runs by accumulating every bit earned. “Mera business kaudi kaudi aur paisa paisa ka khel hain.” When a thin, small, nervous, and bespectacled, nineteen-year-old Raj Kumar, studying for his masters in Delhi, with a slight line for a moustache, suggests the passenger be taken to a hospital, the driver is both belligerent and mocking. “There are no hospitals on the way and I know of no dead man who springs alive.” “Jo jata hain woh jata hain, wo phir se aata nahin,” he declares. Raj Kumar falls silent, and thinks it best to remain so till he reaches his home in Simrauta that lies a little before the dead man’s village. The conductor and the luggage boy, both similar looking and of the same age, probably twins, both pencil-slim, wearing unbuttoned, patterned shirts and super tight black pants, and sporting mushroom haircuts and tweezed eyebrows, display the same insolence and indifference to the dead man. While the conductor Naresh motions the questioners into silence, holding up his index finger as he talks non-stop on his mobile, he also gestures he is attending to something frightfully urgent (more urgent than a dead man?). The luggage boy, Suresh, on the other hand, studies his image earnestly in a hand-held mirror as if his countenance is in danger of changing dramatically every minute. Anyone who says anything to him is greeted by the words “ek kantaap lagenge na!” (I will slap you!)
It dawns on Ram’s co-travellers that they are journeying with a dead body. They realise their bus has turned into a hearse. After the horror of their discovery dies down, after they crowd around him and gawk with curiosity and consternation, and after they search his bag for his identity, they begin to attach reasons for his death. “Is it malnourishment that has claimed his life?” wonders Manmohan Upadhyay of Unnao district. “See, he is reed-thin,” he exclaims, pointing to Ram’s arms and legs. “I think he has not eaten in some days. His stomach is shrunk,” says Kamlesh Gupta of Kaanauj district. He does not buy his friend and neighbour’s Pavan Tripati’s argument that a stomach does not shrink or expand on its own, that its size is constant. “He does not seem to be carrying food in his backpack either,” says Ravi Sharma of Agra, having thoroughly emptied the contents of Ram’s bag.
Sitaram Pandey of Lucknow argues, “He could have died of excessive gas that may have churned his stomach over days. Don’t underestimate the power of gas and gastric issues to kill a person.” Yes, I, too, suffer from the effects of excessive gas, acidity, nausea, headaches, constipation, runny stomach, farts, cramps and infection of the gut,” says Nitin Srivastava of Mathura. Many passengers nod in approval, and in sympathy, for they know the counter-effects of gas as their diet is rich in potatoes, spices, and a variety of deep-fried fritters. “That is why in Uttar Pradesh we make generous use of hing in food to dispel gas,” adds Pankaj Mishra.
“I am sure he has suffered a heat stroke. The blistering heat this May, with so many dangerous hot days, and constant dust storms, could have caused him heat stress. Haan use loo hi lagi hain,” declares Shravan Bhatnagar with certainty. “After all, this is the time when people, cows, dogs, goats, and flies drop dead on the streets just like that. His state would have worsened by the rise in humidity. Heat and humidity, after all, make for a lethal combination.” “It could be the dirty air of Delhi that has killed him,” says Asim Khan from Sarfai. “It is a sure shot way to death more effective than a bullet. The smoke-spewing industries and vehicular traffic, agricultural waste burning, the pollutants from construction, and the use of solid fuels in cooking could have taken his life,” “I smell liquor on his breath. I know the difference between a vile breath and a breath smelling of alcohol. Maybe he had drunk himself into oblivion with illicit liquor that labourers like him are habituated to,” pronounces Vipul Singh from Inhauna.
“As a construction worker, maybe he contracted tuberculosis,” says Adarsh Varma of Bangarmau. “I heard his persistent cough when he alighted the bus at its first stop in Dera Mandi, and he coughed until we reached Faridabad, after which he fell silent at the first toll booth. Maybe, that’s when he died. All workers in this industry contract it at some point, and they broadcast it around as they always work sitting close to each other. None of them have time for prolonged treatments that require hospital visits. The lives of his ilk are tenuous, and they die on the sidewalks of the city or in buses like this.” Some passengers shrink back, fearing that breathing the same air as him could infect them. Others cover their noses and mouths with their gamachas, trained by COVID-19.
As the evening dissolves into twilight, droves of birds fly homeward, and as the bus hurtles towards Mathura at eleven pm, the scenery begins to blur in the dark. Rajesh makes a stop a little before the city, and the hard metal of his bus seems to stretch, like cities in the country, and lose its earlier shape as more people squeeze in with their belongings, utensils, sacks of grains, bundled clothes, earthen ware, and fowls in wicker baskets. These entwined masses of bodies, these people adapt to the dead body as if it were a normal occurrence, an everyday occurrence, used as they are to making adjustments in their lives every day, every hour, every minute. There is a heightened stimulus when the bus stops at the city of Mathura. There are agitated sounds of the final calls by Naresh, the dispensing of indecipherable tickets by him, long, rowdy lines outside public toilets, skirmishes as some passengers come to blows with Suresh as they claim their heavier pieces of luggage stowed in the luggage compartment at the back of the bus are missing. He gets called impolite names and smacked on his mushroom head. Boys selling lemon water in chipped glasses, and tea in cups and saucers so that passengers can slurp it after poring it into their saucers, create a din, as do vendors selling deep-fried, coiled jalebis, kachoris and puris. Travellers don’t think it amiss to satiate their hunger at this hour with oily, indigestible food. Traffic from Mathura on is ever flowing. En route to Sarfai and then to Kannauj, the cars and buses move in every direction, motorcycles zigzag between traffic to escape the gridlock and zoom into the road beyond, causing traffic jams. There is no one to rein in the madness as several pedestrians’ dash across the road on buttermilk-white roads of a full moon night, unafraid of becoming casualties.
****
It is the women sitting together in the front of the bus who are noticeably silent. They huddle, some veiled, others not, many with earlobes full of holes and gold earrings, not because they are family or familiar with one another but because it is some kind of norm in these buses where female safety is to be found in numbers. They huddle, eat, and use the toilets in unison. Almost all of them are in fluorescent synthetic saris, a noticeable contrast to the drab clothes of men. They have been silent (at best they murmur to themselves) since the start of the late afternoon journey, staring outside the window at the miles of dusty brown lands, at fields of rice, maize, and mung bean. As nurturers of their families, their eyes have been drawn to plots of bottle gourd, corn, cucumber, okra, sunflower, brinjal, chillies, tomatoes, and peas. They have watched in amusement as cattle cross the lane – cows, buffaloes, goats – that refuse to listen when Rajesh hollers, even as the herdsman pats the behinds of the cattle leisurely. And they look on as men sit, sleep, eat, burp, rub their bellies, display too much togetherness, and lech at them through slanted eyes.
It is when the bus crosses Bangarmau and closes in on Unnao past one am that Kanchan, who identifies herself as the head of an unlicensed bar selling mostly hooch, speaks up. “Yeh mard sare lafantar hain, pajame hain,” she says. (All these men are scoundrels and wimps.) Squat and sturdy in appearance, eyes darkly kohled, with the appearance of having her way in everything, she demands to know why none of the men, except one, has stood up for the dead man. “I am going to make sure the bus takes him to his home, as close to his doorstep as possible. We have his name and address, and we need to get him to his family. As humans, we owe it to him.” She adds, “Humara driver waise hi ghummakad hain” (Our driver is a wanderer anyway.) As the bus heads to Purwa and enters the city of Lucknow, other women, Sharada, Saaeda, Asha, Shilpi, and Nadira join Kanchan and begin to talk, uncaring that their voices are loud, and carrying over. “I feel sad for his wife. She is sure to take the news badly. She will not wish to hear her thoughts from this day on, as she will be made to feel a lesser human. Loneliness will not be an emotion for her but a weight. I wonder if his parents are alive. His children are now orphaned.”
The men, hearing their women talk, thus, are agitated. “In bataon mein na pado. Aurat ho, seema mein raho,” (Don’t meddle in such matters. As women learn to respect your boundaries), one says. “Yeh aurat, batameez hain, iske lapaet mein maat aana,” another cautions, pointing to Kanchan. (This woman is indecent, don’t allow her to entice you) “Baqaiti bandh karo,” one more scolds. (Stop this nonsense.) “Badi chaudhrahat chad gaye hain,” (You are becoming sassy), they threaten together. But Kanchan is indomitable, and the women are defiant. “Aise taetiana baat maat karo humse, hume bhi bawal macha sakte hain,” they retort. (Don’t talk rudely to us, we can display anger as well). “Aur Kanchan ko badtameez na kahiye, tameez sirf usme hain,” (Don’t call Kanchan disrespectful, she is the only one with good manners). There is now a collective of women’s voices as they touch Rae Bareilly and head past the districts of Bachchrawan, Maharajganj to reach Chandapur. Unapologetic and self-assured, the women stride into the driver’s cubicle, and demand that Ram Kumar be taken home. Their men stand nonplussed, not sure what to do. Outnumbered by determined women, with raised chins, Rajesh finds the road that leads to Ram’s house.
