RIDE TO PERDITION

                                                  
“See it’s really simple. First you’ll see the white cross, then the violet house and..are you even listening?”

“Umm..yeah.”

“..and when you see the river,get up. Go near the door and tell the man this is where you get down.”

“Why can’t I just get up when the bus stops?”

“Because things don’t work like that here. People don’t wait for nobody. Got that?”

“But anyway you’ll be there na?”

“I won’t always be there.”

These were the words of my brother that kept irritatingly echoing in my skull when I made my first bus ride …ALONE!!

The thing about Kerala is that everything is green.So green you can’t tell one green from another. Trees ,trees and more trees. No matter how hard I try to fix a landmark,I get confused.
Which is why that sunny Sunday morning I looked shocked to hear my uncle saying that he couldn’t drop me to church because he had work…hmph .. work on Sunday!
Oookay getting  on the bus was easy. I had always gone to school on a bus. But..but..school buses didn’t have scary conductors. I watched him slide like an expert from one seat to another giving tickets. How simple it was for him. I kept telling myself ‘Relax..all you have to say is one Pallipadi..one Pallippadi..one..”

Click..click..”Where to?”

“One Pllu..”

“What ?”

“One Plla..”

Silence.

“Do you mean Pallipadi sister?”

I nodded.

Dear God,why was I even born?

Ting …ting..

“You can get down here.”

Till death do me apart...I shall never forget PALLIPADI !