Remembering the past...

I parked my bike in front of my favorite juice shop in Chennai. It has an attached chat outlet which is pretty decent too. I was extremely hungry, so i ordered for a samosa chat. Its basically a road-side-shop types. So you can just turn around and keep watching the road, the busy life, the people who rush to wherever they are heading to. As i kept gazing at the mad rush, i turned left to find a bus approaching me from a distance. I recognized it instantly. Not something that can slip out of my mind. It was yellow then. It still is. The same blue color board with white colored text in front. Something that was such an important part of my life before came and stood in the signal in front of me. Nothing had changed after seven long years. The same driver - Benjamin uncle we used to call him. The same scary mustache, the same huge man, definitely not the kind of person with whom you would want to land up alone in an elevator. He was the same scary self. The same conductor - Albert Uncle. Its always one of those great moments to stare at your school bus from a distance.
There was a signal in front of me, so the bus had to wait for sometime. As the bus waited in front of me, I searched through to find my favorite place in the bus. There it was, one row behind the last row. The place for which i used to fight like crazy if someone else was seated; something that i considered to be my possession when i was in school.

I used to take audio cassettes of latest movies to play in the bus. There was a certain set of songs that used to play every time in the bus. By the time, i left school, i knew the order in which the songs would play. I was so used to listening to those songs. My house was just three kms away from the school, still i used to be one of the first to be picked up. We used to tour the city without any need. It was fun at times but tiring when i was bored or depressed. Good or bad, this bus has seen everything about me. Something new used to happen everyday.

I was a slow eater then. I just remembered how i used to sit unable to eat food early morning and how my grandparents used to do everything for me. I was ten years then, taking advantage of every possible situation. My grandfather used to iron my clothes, polish my shoes, fill water for me and prepare my lunch bag while the only thing i did was have bath, wear my uniform, eat and leave. My grandmother used to cook early in the morning. I would not eat early in the morning, so my grandmother used to stuff everything in my mouth. In the meantime the school bus would come to my house and keep buzzing the horn. I used to take my lunch bag and run to catch the bus. Not a single day passed by without the bus going hard on its horns in front of my house. This is how every day would start with the sounds of a horn.

The signals went green. I heard the horn go aloud and the bus was gone...