I took a bus from Bangalore city to the Ashram, which is like a half an hour ride towards the outskirts. All the seats but one were occupied, the one right next to the driver, there was a man sitting there. I went and sat next to him. The bus started to crawl, and i mean literally, alas! one of the signature bus rides of India, and as a cherry on top, the man sitting next to me reeked of booze, and not the mild smell of vodka, or a deep smell of whisky, but the smell of rotten organs due to heavy intake of pure ‘desi’ all through the day and night and whatever lies between these. He reeked booze through his nostrils, through his ears, through the pores of his skin, even his aura stunk of booze. ‘Oh my God’ I thought, ‘what have I done to go through this nasal, leading to mental trauma?’ I tried to slide the window open, but it wouldn’t, ‘its a conspiracy’ i thought, I put on my earphones and switched on some music on my phone to distract myself, but as the name says ‘earphones’, it just blocked my ears, my nostrils were still exposed to this intense smell of highly infectious local liquid that reeked through this man’s existence. ‘Am I going to die?’ ‘will I lose my consciousness?’ ‘will I go into a limbo?’ these crazy thoughts surrounded my mind and were seeping in and I almost went into a blur.

Ten minutes the bus had covered, it seemed like a lifetime full of broken promises of roses, daffodils and lavender. I wanted to ask him what he had for breakfast, but i thought that wouldn’t change the present that stunk, so, the good cultured me, dug into my bag and took out a pack of Wrigley’s spearmint gum, and offered two sticks to him. He looked at me as if I was offering him poison, i nodded my head like you do when you’re offering something to a small kid. He again gave me that look with his booze drenched eyes, but stretched his hand and took the gum from me, opened it somehow, looked at it and put it in his mouth. I popped two in my mouth too, to give him the notion that it wasn’t poison, and if it was, I would die with him, as if I wasn’t experiencing death anyways. I could see by the way he chewed that he never had chewing gum before in his entire life, I wish they would give chewing gums complimentary with ‘desi daaru’. So after chewing for some thirty seconds, he gave me a smile, his drunken eyes opened a bit more and he nodded his head in acceptance of the fresh flavor he had in his mouth for a change. He kept smiling as he chewed it, he seemed to love the taste and the elasticity of the gum, and he said something in Kannada. I told him i didn’t understand Kannada, so he said ‘bahut tasty’ and giggled again.

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