May, ’98
It’s just another hot afternoon at a lazy bus station.
You are sad because your vacation is ending. A whole month of being loved easily—of being the best granddaughter, the responsible elder sister, the one everyone calls with affection—has come to an end. Now you are on your way back to school. Back to the one place you hate the most.
Back to being the dumb, fat loser everyone makes fun of.
Your mother is dragging you across the uneven ground, your arm caught firmly in her grip, while you quietly hope for a miracle—that the last bus has already left. That you’ll have to stay back one more night. That time will stretch just a little longer.
The station looks empty.
For a moment, hope rises.
There is no bus in sight. Only a shaded waiting area with long, muddy benches. Your mother leads you there. The air smells faintly like the garbage pile outside your city—only milder, more tired, as if even the smell has given up trying.
A few men lie sprawled across the benches—beggars, maybe hippies—sleeping as if nothing in the world demands their attention. The dirt doesn’t bother them. The heat doesn’t wake them.
You wonder what it must feel like, to not have to go anywhere at all.
A man in a white turban sits nearby, lazily blowing smoke rings from a rolled brown leaf. The circles form, float, and disappear into the afternoon. Your mother tells you not to go near him. You nod, but keep watching.
You are thirsty.
A small stall near the shade sells slices of watermelon—bright red against the dull afternoon. Beside it, a boy a little older than you carries a large white tub. From it, he pulls out ice candies, one after another, like a magician. Red, orange, green—cold and dripping.
“Two rupees,” he calls.
You stare at the red one. It looks impossibly fresh.
Your mother hands you a bottle of Bisleri instead and tells you how those candies are made—with dirty water, with hands that never wash, with things you shouldn’t even think about.
You believe her.
The boy does look dirty.
And yet—you envy him.
At least he doesn’t have to go to school.
In your hand is a 5 Star your uncle gave you before you left. You haven’t opened it yet. You were saving it for later, though you’re not sure what “later” meant.
At the far end of the shade, an old woman sits alone.
She looks exactly like your great-grandmother.
The same sunken face, the same loose skin, the same unfocused eyes that never quite meet yours. She wears a torn saree without a blouse, her frail shoulders exposed to the heat. In her hand, she holds a small earthen pot and shakes it gently.
“Hungry… days…” she mutters.
You don’t think. You walk up and place the chocolate inside her pot.
She smiles.
A wide, toothless smile—aimed nowhere, at no one.
Just like your great-grandmother used to.
You stand there for a second, suddenly unsure.
How will she eat it?
But the thought passes as quickly as it comes.
In the distance, you hear it—the sharp screech of tires.
The bus.
The last one.
Your mother grabs your arm again, urgency replacing patience, and pulls you toward it. You slow down instinctively, your feet dragging just enough to feel like resistance, but not enough to matter.
She gets you on anyway.
You take the window seat.
As the bus begins to move, the station starts slipping away—slowly at first, then all at once.
You see the old woman again, still smiling into nothing.
The man in the white turban, lost in his smoke.
The boy with the ice candies, now hopping between bus windows, chasing one more sale.
The station is alive.
Unbothered. Unchanged.
Everyone seems… content.
The bus picks up speed.
You press your forehead against the window and watch it all disappear behind you, your throat tightening around something you don’t yet have words for.
Everyone looks like they belong there.
And you—
you are being taken back.
© Aditee Joshi
May 2026
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