Sitting on the third seat behind the driver, a woman sat beside me and requested for the window seat. She was struggling with shopping bags, two large polythene bags, one on her left side and another on her lap. She was drenched in sweat. I offered her the window seat without caring about my own comfort. I shifted to her seat. I noticed the standing passengers, men and women pressed against one another as the bus picked up speed. She complained loudly about men that they no longer bothered to offer seats to women. ‘Today’s youth are spoiled. They have mothers and sisters but no humanity, she said.

Soon, she adjusted herself to the mirror side, half-standing and half-sitting, pushed me toward the edge. She occupied part of my seat as well. She opened the window frame on her side and then took out newly bought earbuds from one of her bags. After unboxing them, she tried them on, increasing the volume so high that other passengers started checking their own ears, unsure whether they themselves were wearing earbuds.
She pulled out items one by one from her bags—clothes, mostly frocks and shalwar. She checked their softness and put them back, as if she might change right there if the bus had a mirror and a private space.
From her velvet black handbag, she took out two large phones. After keeping one back, she dialled a number and began talking, leaning more into my space. She handed me her shopping bags to hold but kept her purse in her lap, perhaps because it contained gold bangles. I caught a glimpse of them once when she was adjusting her bag. As our eyes met, she quickly hid them under her elbow. She kept checking them, her eyes moving restlessly between the passengers and her belongings.
Meanwhile, the conductor called out, “Move forward, make space!” it was difficult to move, the passengers were tightly packed. He struggled to collect fares, passing from one person to another only when the driver applied brakes, which pushed them forward, only then the conductor managed to move forward.
His checks were hollow on both sides, as if he hadn’t eaten for days. He wore a torn shirt and dusty jeans, carrying crumpled ten-rupee notes in one hand and coins in the other.
The woman asked me the fare to Lal Chowk. “Twelve rupees,” I replied. When the conductor reached us, I gave him a twenty-rupee note, and he returned eight rupees. Around me, others did the same and many handed twenty-rupee notes and received eight in return.
Then he asked the woman for her fare. She began searching her bag, pulling out coins after much effort. She counted them repeatedly and asked again, “What is the fare?”
“Twelve rupees, madam,” I said.
‘She then took out large, fresh notes, five hundreds, a hundred, and some fifties but said she had no change. The conductor, slightly irritated, said, “You should keep change. We are daily wage workers how can we manage big notes, especially in the morning? Okay, don’t you have a hundred rupee note?’
The woman slipped her hand into her pocket and touched the crisp notes she had just withdrawn from the ATM, their fresh scent still lingering. The temptation held her back. ‘No, otherwise I would have given you.’ She again offered only seven coins. The conductor refused, she quietly put them back in her pocket and got down at her stop without paying.

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