The Stranger...

By: Kalpana Dimri Sharma

Even today, the rain drops on the glass remind me of that journey, of that brief meeting, of that unsaid conversation…

As soon as Avantika boarded the bus, the passengers started staring at her. She started looking for a place to sit in the already packed bus. Seeing her a bit unsettled, the conductor asked her to sit wherever she could find a spot. She replied to him, “Bhaiya, I have already missed my first bus, which has my luggage. I need to catch a bus from Dehradun, and all my friends have already reached there”. She had come for a college trip to Mussoorie-Dhanaulti.

Avantika turned around to scan the bus for an empty seat and found 3 people seated in twin seats and four people occupying 3-seater seats. She then found a man occupying a window seat who was busy playing with the water droplets that had fallen on the bus window. On a twin seat, he was by himself and had placed his bag in the adjacent space. Seeing this, she asked the conductor, “that spot is empty,” to which the conductor retorted, “Madam, that man has purchased two tickets; I cannot say anything to him.”

She looked at her fellow passengers on the bus, who were still staring at her. Some were looking at her torn denims, others at her tattoo, others at her untidy curly hair and others at her stylish headphones. The cold weather had caused her face to turn red, and her blonde hair made her look like a European. She did not have any expectations from the passengers or the conductor.Avantika was unable to see that lone man’s whole face because he had covered a portion of it with a scarf. But because of his cap and jacket, he looked different from the rest of the passengers. She figured that he would be helpful.

As she moved her way to the back of the bus and made it to the prized seat, she mustered an innocent voice and asked him to move his bag so she could sit. But the man in question was wearing his headphones and likely did not hear her request. She grabbed his bag, and seeing her lift it, he gripped the luggage back and angrily said, “what is this misbehaviour? How dare you pick my bag!”.

“I am sorry…actually, you did not hear my request, so I decided to move your bag. I missed my earlier bus and am now on my way to Dehradun to reunite with my college friends. We came on a college trip and are now headed back.” In a single breath, she explained her entire situation.

Hearing this, the man stood up and gave her his window seat. It was now Avantika and his bag that occupied the two-seater. As the bus moved, he kept standing. Looking at this, she felt like asking him to sit next to her and place the bag below the seat. However, having been scolded for touching his bag earlier, she could not muster the courage to make this request. She started wondering what the valuable contents in that bag could be that he preferred to stand and let that bag sit.

Avantika started taking photos of the passing mountains and the valleys and, in the middle of taking pictures, would reply to her friends' text messages, the same friends who were waiting for her in Dehradun. She again felt like asking him to sit but quickly figured that he was uninterested in talking with her or having company. He was immersed in a song he was listening to and faintly humming the tune. She thought she heard the tune of ‘Ek Ajnabee Haseena Se.’ It did sound like that. His eyes were closed, and he was holding onto a pole and she decided it was better not to disturb him. She started looking out the window again.

The bus came to a sudden halt as the road had gotten damaged because of the rain. The passengers started getting irritable as the bus did not move. Her phone rang, this time with her friend asking about her location. Avantika replied, explaining that the road had gotten damaged and that it would take some time for the bus to move again. She expressed how she was feeling cold and felt like getting off the bus to grab a cup of tea…the person on the other end of the phone shot down her plan immediately and forcefully said, “you are not getting off the vehicle; you missed the last bus when traffic came to a halt, and you stepped out to take a photo, you remember right! As the traffic cleared, the driver had to move to avoid a jam. You cannot afford to make another mistake; stay seated!!”

As she remembered how she missed her last bus, she saw half the passengers deboard, which tempted her again to get off. Contemplating whether to stay or not, out of nowhere, a cup of tea in a Kulhad was offered to her, and it was by the same person whose seat she occupied. She replied with a big thank you and proceeded to start a conversation, only for him to plug his headphones back in and shut his eyes to the world.

The bus was empty, so he sat in the seat diagonally in front of her. She tried to see his face, clothes, shoes, and bags again and felt he was not a local. Perhaps he, too, had gone trekking. But by himself?

She was busy in her own thoughts when the bus started moving again. This time she gathered some courage and asked him if he would like to sit and place the bag below. Their eyes met for a moment, triggering a swarm of emotions in her. Her face went cold again, her cheeks turned red, and she felt the heat radiating from the cup of tea more than she had before. He smiled at her and started looking in the other direction. She could still not see his full face, but his intense eyes were drawing her towards him.

As the bus entered the Dehradun bus terminal, people started moving around to pull their luggage out. The commotion woke her up and she saw the conductor next to her. She asked him if they had reached Dehradun, and he replied, “yes madam, now rush so that you do not miss another bus.” As she got up to deboard, she saw that the bag and that stranger were no longer there. When and where did he get down? She got down from the bus and felt upset at falling asleep and not keeping track of his destination.

She felt like asking the conductor about his whereabouts but was interrupted by her friend Shefali, who ran towards her and on meeting her, asked to hurry for their college teacher was quite upset at her absence.

Both started walking briskly towards their college group, but Avantika’s eyes were searching the area for him. Thoughts like who he was, his name, and what was so precious in the bag preoccupied her. She snapped back to reality when her teacher's voice pierced through her ears – “Avantika, your carelessness has caused all of us this discomfort; now let’s go.” All of them boarded the bus, and shortly thereafter, it departed.

Avantika and Shefali sat beside each other, and Avantika started showing the photos she clicked during the bus ride. One photo was shot in a way in which it looked like Avantika was the only passenger on the bus, as the seat next to her looked empty. Seeing the image, Shefali remarked that Avantika was lucky to be able to travel with so much space, to which she replied that her fellow passenger was a bag and ended up narrating the whole journey.

As people settled into the bus ride, they slowly started falling asleep, and eventually, Shefali also dozed off. Avantika could not sleep and started browsing through her recent college trip photos. Deleting photos of the trek she did not like and forwarding others she liked. Finally, the day’s tiredness started catching up, and she started feeling sleepy, but suddenly a photo caught her attention. It was a photo in which she saw a bag that looked exactly like the bag that was beside her on the recent bus journey.

She looked at the photo again, confident it was the same bag. Sleep almost instantly vanished from her eyes. This prompted her to revisit all her photos, and to her surprise, she discovered the stranger’s cap, his jacket and his bag, but to her dismay, his face was not captured. She zoomed in on all group photos to see if any of them had that stranger in them, but she could not find him. It was only in her selfies that she could find a glimpse of his jacket or his cap.

1000 questions ran through her mind. Was it a coincidence or was he following her? She wondered if he was also in the first bus with her and when she missed it and boarded another one, then how was he already seated in it. If he was following her then why did he not engage with her when she tried to strike a conversation. He did not even ask my name, but when he offered her the cup of tea, he said Avantika and handed the cup. Oh shit, shit, shit, who was he, and how did he know my name.

With a spinning head, she woke Shefali up and told her about this new development. However, halfawake, Shefali did not pay attention and disinterestedly responded “let me sleep, no one was following you.”

She tried to wake up Shefali again but was unsuccessful. As the bus reached Delhi, Avantika repeated her findings again:

“He was following me, I cannot forget his eyes.”

“No one was following you. We were together the whole time, I would have surely remembered.”

“But, you saw the photos, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I saw them, but you are seated by yourself in your bus photos.”

“But I told you how the bag was in my adjacent seat, and the angle of the photo did not capture it.”

“Precisely, and that is what I am telling you, no one does this, where they stand and give their seat instead to the luggage. Besides, who gives up on the opportunity to sit next to a girl? Let it go, you have a wild imagination, no one is following you.”

“Then what about the photos from the trek where you can see someone walking behind me.”

“So many people came for that trek; it could be anyone and a total coincidence. During the entire trip, were we not together, how did neither of us spot this stranger? You must have dozed off in the bus and were dreaming this”

However, Avantika was not ready to believe it was all a dream or a concoction of her wild imagination. She suddenly remembered how he called her name when offering her the tea. Avantika had a habit of never littering and started looking for the empty cup in her bag. She then recalled how when she had boarded the bus, she only had her mobile phone and her luggage was in the bus that she missed.

Shefali on the other hand was quite familiar with Avantika’s interest in novels and quipped to say “get your head out of the world of books, there was no one, I have a feeling you have been reading a lot of crime stories and romantic novels.”

Avantika continued to grow uneasy and kept wondering how the stranger could be on the trek and in the bus too. The same bag, cap, jacket and was he singing ‘Ek Ajnabee Haseena Se’ for me?

Upon reaching their room in Delhi, Shefali hit the bed and dozed off, but Avantika’s thoughts were back to the mountains around Mussoorie. She was sure that it was not a product of her imagination. She wished that she had either asked his name or number; at least this way, she could have looked him up online and found him on Facebook.

It has been five years since that meeting, and till today, whenever she sees raindrops on the glass, she is reminded of him and that encounter. The intensity of his eyes, that sweet essence of the meeting, the warm cup of tea, the unfinished meeting, the unsaid conversation and the stranger…