A Tribute to my Fantasy Friends

Since I've been using the same route and public transport to go to school and back for the last four years at the same timings each morning, it is only natural that I've been seeing some other people who have been doing the same for a few years.

I've always been a hopeless ball of fluff. As I've mentioned somewhere previously, I'm the most pathetically romantic person I know. I guess, it must be something to do with the fact I'm an only child and therefore I'm quite used to retreating into my own world and making up fantasy worlds to live in.

It was my favorite hobby as a child. Both my parents worked, so I was quite used to being on my own for long hours. I don't think it was loneliness that brought out my romantic nature, but just a lot of free time. I didn't have the same problems as most of my other friends with siblings which involved fighting for books, toys, television channels and any other thing that one can imagine. Hence, what I absolutely adored doing was sitting on the window ledge of my house, observing people walking on the street in the evenings and thinking about them and their probable lives to a great extent.

My secret pleasure in this little game was that these people who meant so much to me in my imaginary world didn't have any idea that I existed. Most of them had not even noticed a child sitting on a window ledge looking at them going home after a busy day at work or a trip to the market. It was a source of comfort to love these people who didn't know me at all. It also made me wonder whether there actually were other people in the world whose imaginary worlds revolved around me. I know it sounds far fetched now and rather silly, but at that time it made a lot sense in convoluted mind.

I've gotten into this same bad habit for these last few years. This is because of the fact that I keep seeing the same people each morning in the bus. I happen to be rather fond of them, however much some of them might appeal to me or even repulse me to a certain extent.

One of them is a young man. He is a professional from what I know because he wears a suit and a tie to work every day, but this probably has to be his first job because he is rather young. What I adore about him is his green coat, his meticulously combed hair and the way in which he clutches on to his laptop as if its the only thing that matters in his life and he would probably be willing to give his life up in order to save it. He has not only been taking the bus with me for the last three years, but also the metro in the same direction. He probably does not even know that I exist and even if he did know that I existed, he surely is not aware about the fact that I take such a great interest in his life.

Then there is this woman in her late forties who has two adopted children who I see almost every day. One of the kid is about five and the other one is about eight and she takes them to school each morning. I'm not going to talk about how annoying or spoilt those children are, but about the fact that I've never seen any mother in my entire life who loves her children as much as that woman loves her two boys. She doesn't consciously do anything special to show her love for them, but the way in which she looks at them or holds their hands while helping them climb onto the bus or even the manner in which she speaks to them shows how much they mean to her. It just makes me randomly feel like sniffling every time I see her. Sometimes, their father drops them to school and he's really sweet with them too. Those are my favorite 'bus people' and they always make my day every time I happen to see them in the mornings.

Then there is this old woman who goes somewhere every morning. I can't make out where exactly she goes. She's too old to work and looks like a retired, old grandmother, but she's been taking the same bus each morning for the last four years, which means that she is doing something and I can't understand what. This old woman is also the fastest and the most enthusiastic book reader I've ever seen in my entire life. I read quite fast myself and I've not met too many people who read fast in my life, but this woman has a new book every week or sometimes in even less than a week. There has not been a single day when she hasn't travelled without reading and I must admit, I'm rather jealous about her ardent book reading enthusiasm. (hmph, I don't like her taste in books, which automatically according to my deeply prejudiced nature is supposed to mean that I don't like her. I refuse to respect anyone who has read the book, Deception Point because that probably means that they actually liked The Da Vinci Code and Angles and Demons enough to read other Dan Brown books. He has a three-letter name, you're not supposed to read books written by people whose parents were not imaginative enough to give their children names that consist of more than three alphabets and ...er... no offence to anyone reading this who does have a three-letter real name unless you name is Bob, in that case umm... yeah... you can get offended)

There are so many other people that I see every day; an old couple with a crabby wife who is so authoritative and irritating that I feel rather sorry for her husband who seems like a nice person, an irritatingly, friendly woman who likes making random friends with other bus passengers and does not brush her hair, this other woman this put a cigarette in her mouth a stop before she has to get off the bus and lights it as soon as she steps off, a lady with the thick, fur coat that must have killed polar bear, the boy who is always late to school and goes to school with a motorcycle helmet for some unfathomable reason, the silly girl who goes to school with a different bag each day and not to mention the creepy guy who took pictures of me on his mobile phone last year.

There are so many people who have made an impact to my life by just existing and not doing anything special. Most of them don't even know that I actually exist. For some reason this thought would be rather depressing for most people, but I feel strangely comforted by it because I like being the anonymous observer. I'm not going to be here next year to observe them and I doubt that they will notice my absence but I, on my part am definitely going to miss them.