Yesterday Once More

When I was little (disambiguation: refers to my chronological age, and not to size, therefore, no revision of tense is necessary), my aim in life was to be a bus conductor. In my five-year-old eyes, nothing in the world was as beautiful and as fascinating as the dirty worn out leather pouch that jingled with coins whenever the revered Great One passed by. The Great one himself, complete with his ubiquitous khaki shirt in patches of dark and light demarcating the perspiration-prone areas clearly; the dirty khaki trousers or shorts depending on the season; and that world-weary look as he flipped through a bunch of fresh tickets in his hand with his thumb – little did he know with what starry-eyed admiration a little girl was regarding him. Whenever he reached out his bony hand to give us the ticket, I would eagerly grasp it, look at it reverently for a few minutes, and then keep it tightly clasped until we returned home, never mind if it became soggy with sweat and the fascinating numbers became blurred.

At home, my brother and I started a collection of these tickets – every remotely familiar face who dropped in would first be politely ushered into the drawing room by us good kids, and then requested to part with any bus ticket that he might have the good fortune to possess. When we had collected a sizeable number, we tied up the bunch with the typical fluorescent orange rubber bands and then pretended to flip through them with as much expertise as we could muster, all the while demanding “ticket, ticket!” in a flat monotone.

I don’t know how or exactly when he the charm began to fade. Perhaps it was triggered by the fact that the bus conductors invariably found me within the acceptable range of cute and insisted on pulling my cheeks or tugging playfully at my ponytails. The fact that the god would descend to the level of familiarity was compounded by the fact that I hated the feel of grimy, sweaty fingers on my face (in fact, being quite the little miss snob, I used to wipe it off in front of them – the fact that I only evoked an indulgent laugh due to my cuteness only meant a severe admonition at home) – and so the aura of divinity surrounding the Bus Conductor gradually wore off.

Soon more acceptable ambitions replaced the aforementioned crazy one – teacher, computer engineer (at that time all I knew was that it was the in thing and sounded excessively funky), author, veejay, astronaut, explorer, aircraft designer and so on. As I grew older my ambitions kept getting modified, and now that I have embarked upon the path of engineering, I can at least lay claims to some sort of direction to my career. Physicist or computer engineer or investment banker – the delight of the jingling leather bag doesn’t quite figure in the scheme of things. Nevertheless, whenever I see a bus ticket, it never fails to bring a smile to my face.