She towererd over me with an earnest look in her eyes, as I sat in the crowded 380 single-decker bus from Thamesmead. From time to time, she hurled a quick glance my way, held it for a few seconds, and then retreated. Sometimes she even shifted her weight from one leg to the other and, pushing back the golden strands of hair that clustered around her delicate face, once again gave me another fleeting look. She looked out of place – as if she did not belong to that part of the society where commuting on crowded, steamed and stench-ridden buses was a daily ritual.
She was very elegant too – a willowy woman of the refined class she seemed and acted as if it was her first time on a crowded bus. A long, black, three-quarter-length-jacket wrapped around her sinuous body, falling short of her smooth calves. She had a rosy face flushing that glistened like early morning dew and a delicate yet a wonderfully pungent fragrance that wafted through the bus, easing the mists of suffocation with its sweet scent. Squashed between two huge men, she held on tightly to the yellow bars grimacing with revulsion.
I interpreted her quick glances and restlessness as an attempt to persuade me to vacate my seat for her, but I did not. Several times I decided that I should get up and make way for her to sit down, but something persistently denied me the force to do so. She pleaded with me, though not a word was exchanged, through he eyes and manifested discomfort. I would have at once emptied my seat though, had she been fragile and old but she was only in her late 30s or early 40s, as it appeared.
More school children and parents mounted the bus and even personal space became very limited.
“Can you all move to the back please,” the bus driver shouted after failing to close the doors.
Now the woman’s fleeting looks became even more intense and long lasting. It was more of a piercing gaze now rather than a pleading one. Her disgust in her journey at once made her furrow her brow and there I sat exceptionally indifferent, on the exterior, to the happenings around me. Internally a debate was in effect, as to whether I should or should not vacate my seat to the troubled soul that like a beautiful rose growing in bogs, fens or damp grassy places, seemed entirely out of place.
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