Cross-legged beside the highway

I could taste blood in my mouth. My knees were severely bruised. My shirt sleeve was torn off. The heat of the slap on my face could still be felt. I was sitting cross legged just next to National Highway 1. I had been travelling on Haryana Roadways bus on my way to Delhi from Chandigarh. The bus had been stopped somewhere before Panipat to let the ticket checkers in. I had been casually standing at the back of the bus alley listening to music on my earphones when a bald foul looking man poked me from the back. He asked me to show him my ticket. Very indifferently I took out my bus pass and handed it over to him. He looked at it for a second and then suddenly grabbed my earphones and threw it somewhere towards the front. I was aghast. I was about to grab his collar when he screamed at his loudest voice with his heavy Haryanvi accent,”Do you think we are fools!!” And then as if announcing to everybody he yelled again, “This gentleman thought he could fool Roadways by carrying an expired Bus pass all the way to Delhi!!” And then he thrust my pass much too close to my face. I hadn’t realized that my Bus pass had expired 15 days back.

I said, ‘I didn’t know that my bus pass had expired.’

“Now you know. Take out 1000 Rupee fine”

“I don’t have 1000 rupees right now, but I....”

That had been just the response he needed. And I felt a heavy slap on my face. I felt my face numb with the impact of the slap. But I had lost my temper myself. I raised my hand and punched his nose. But suddenly somebody hit me from the back and grabbed my hair from behind and made me lie on the narrow alley of the bus. And the bald guy then kicked me on my crotch. And somebody else stomped me on my face. I was almost unconscious. The bald guy and the guy who hit me from my back picked me up and threw me out of the bus. I was lying in pain when I heard the bus go away. It had taken me 10 minutes to regain myself fully.

Now I was sitting beside the road watching vehicles go past. I felt like crying but I did not. I knew I should have taken care if the bus pass was valid. But what they did was completely unreasonable. They didn’t give me any chance to explain and resorted to violence without even the slightest provocation. I was brimming with anger. I wanted to teach them a lesson. I took out my phone and dialled Tauji’s number. Tauji was a senior officer at the Haryana roadways. I told him everything that happened to me. I came to know he was at Panipat. He consoled me and said that he will immediately go with his boys to Panipat Bus Stand and wait for the bus. He asked where I was. I lied to him that I was at a dhabha sipping chai. I hung up the phone. But I didn’t move from that place. I was feeling a strange comfort sitting there in that obscure place somewhere in Haryana between some sugarcane fields and a highway. Half an hour later I got a call from Tauji, ”There is a problem. I will get back to you.” and he hung up the phone immediately. I was concerned what had happened. But I didn’t call back. Nervously I was rotating my phone in my hands. After 20 minutes I got a call again, this time from an unknown phone number. Somebody from Tauji’s office had called me. Tauji and two others had been arrested. They had badly beaten up the bald man with the foul face. The man was dead. I had held it back, but now I couldn’t stop crying.