The bus ride home

 I like watching people. Okay wait that came off wrong. I like watching people when they don't know that I'm watching them. Okay, somehow I made it worse.

There's something about watching and observing social situations that is so much more different than partaking in one. You start noticing not just what people are saying more clearly, but also their body language and their face expressions with the caveat that you aren't involved in the situation, you're just an observer.

I've always not been great at social interaction, be it among peers or those older or younger to me. It isn't something that comes naturally to me, but watching others do their thing and understanding why they do it? There is something so...satisfying about it. Humans are at their rawest most unfiltered selves(for good or bad) when they don't know that there's something or someone judging them on how they perform. This gives you some situations that enlighten you much more than what a hundred of hours talking to them could do.

One in the afternoon. 

School ended early today, and  I for one was happy. Less time at school meant more time at home being unproductive as usual. I walked to my bus to escape the scorching heat that was being particularly relentless today. As I reached it, I was confused at first. No one was around, not even the driver or conductor. I sighed and did the only reasonable thing I could do now, wait.

The heat was starting to become unbearable when suddenly I noticed a girl looming around the same bus as I. She noticed me too and quickly asked me, "Are you also on this bus?". I replied that I was and she asked me if I knew where the driver was and I said that I wasn't quite sure. She too now stood near the bus, waiting. Steadily more people started arriving. In particular those younger than me, 9th graders, 5th and 6th graders and a group of kindergarteners.

Eventually the driver arrived and with him the conductor. I was relieved as I finally got a seat inside the bus and sat there waiting for the bus to start its journey homeward.

A steady buzz of chatter had risen in the hot afternoon sun. The metal bus wasn't much better than standing outside if it was standing still and no breeze was present. To distract themselves the bus goers had decided to strike up conversations. I had taken a single seat, there were seldom few people in my bus from my grade and none from my class, I decided to take solace in reading Reddit posts on my phone that I'd smuggled in.

Eventually the bus shuddered to life and with a hum and a growl, it left the school. The wind was blowing in my face now and gave me some much needed relief from the heat. I'd set my phone aside because I get terribly sick when I read in a moving vehicle. For a while, I gazed outside. It was a far cry from the beautiful sights I had seen on the ride to school in the morning, with birds tweet flying above and people setting out for their work and schools. 

No, now it seemed like everything was covered in a layer of brown, the heat seemed to parch and drive away all the lovely things I'd seen in the morning and all the people usually out and about had also clearly thought that it would be wise to take refuge within their homes.

It seemed like such a stark contrast but it grew weary after a few moments. I was broken out of this reverie when I heard a few high pitched voices positively squeak in enthusiasm about something. I glanced at the three kindergarteners standing at their seats, in loud voices about how one of their classmates was as big as a giant. A girl who was probably just knee high, said with gusto  "We're all the size of his nail! He's so big!". An involuntary smile came upon my face, hidden by the mask.

I remembered when I was their age. Surrounded by a motley group of friends who would find the greatest amazement at the simplest of things, at the simplest of news. Everything we knew close to us, was the greatest. Our fathers, the most powerful and our mothers the most scariest, it all seemed so much more simpler and easier then, to laugh at what was in essence- nothing big. We never tired of talking to each other and we were convinced that it was going to be that way for the rest of our lives.

The kindergarteners' enthusiasm at something so insignificant by normal standards, so mundane to your average person, made my heart at ease somehow, and their gaggle wasn't noticed only by me. 

The conductor chided them for standing up in the moving bus and told them to sit down lest they hurt themselves, his voice was soft however, and his face gentle. The children took their seats but with a defiant sort of cheeriness that only children are capable of.  

Two girls were seated in front of me. I placed them to be in the 6th grade or so. They looked at the kindergarteners every now and then and smiled at each other knowingly, as if they thought they were much more mature and yet they still enjoyed their merriness much like I did. I wondered what they would think of 12th grade when I caught myself doing the same as thing them and I had to silently chuckle to myself.

Then I realised that they were talking about something too. The girl on the right seemed to be the louder, more talkative one, and the one to the left was the one who nodded in assent and responded just as frequently to the other. They were talking about Harry Potter of all things and it was those words that caught my attention. 

The loud girl seemed to derive every bit of the greatest pleasure in informing her cohort what Harry Potter was and how the characters and spells blended together to make a story that would amaze and delight millions. The other girl also seemed to be so enthusiastic and passionate about this thing that was simple by all regards- it was just a book after all. "Surely nothing to be that excited about" any educated adult would attest.

And yet, I understood. I remembered again when I read the Harry Potter books being so invested in them, devouring the books within a matter of hours and then waiting excitedly to go tell my friends about how I'd finished the book and talk with the ones who had already finished. There was something so colourful and vicarious about doing things with your friends then. Even the conversations about the most mundane and small things seemed like the most astounding and unique things.

The bus had reached the town, and the kindergarteners started shuffling up to the door, still talking in their fashion. I looked up ahead and saw two mothers waiting. Each carrying an umbrella and a bag of groceries probably to be cooked that night for dinner. Even as they got off the bus after saying goodbye to the smiling conductor and driver, their excited squeaks of "Amma!"(Mom in Malayalam) could be heard as the girl ran up and tightly hugged her smiling mother and the boy gave his mother his bag and started telling her news of the great deeds that had transpired at class that day. There was something so picturesque and so perfect about the whole scene. Their was joy and zeal in life was infectious.

I smiled the whole way through at these sights but I was also thinking.

I wondered when I had last hugged my mother and father. I thought of the times that I was those children, running into my home like a hurricane, greeted by my mother who sat me down and made sure I told her all that happened in class. I wondered of me and my friends when we'd talk endlessly and play football like our lives depended on it. 

And when my stop arrived and I got off the bus and gazed at it as it trudged to its next destination, I wondered, 

"When did I grow so old?".