The Vacant Seat

It was a burning harsh summer afternoon outside the Secunderabad Railway Station. I boarded a public transport bus to Punjagutta to catchup with some friends at GVK One for a movie. In A.P.S.R.T.C. buses, there is a division at the center of the bus which separates women seats from general seats. I got a seat right behind the division. The bus was overflowing in the general area and had some seats left in the women's section. I could see a vacant seat in between two ladies. The lady on the right was in a saree with a big round bindi on her forehead and a long managalsutra around her neck. The lady on the left was wearing a burqa which covered her face. She also had an infant in her lap. I was thinking about the vacant seat which was exactly between the two ladies, may be it was a symbolic representation of the rift created by religion in our country.

The bus was about to start when an old lady, around 65, wearing a grey gown and a cross around her neck entered the bus. I could gauge that she was a nun from a nearby church. She immediately spotted the vacant seat as that was the only seat left by the time she entered. When she was just about to reach the seat, the bus took a huge jerk, probably because the driver started the bus while in gear. A lot of people in the bus felt the impact. My head banged into the caged division. Since I was observing the old lady just before the impact, I suddenly thought that she must be badly hurt. I immediately looked towards that vacant seat. The old lady was safe, being held by two hands on two sides. The bindi clad woman and the burqa clad woman held her from two sides during the impact. She thanked both of them with a nod and sat in between them with a smile. The scene was picturesque, a lady in colorful saree with bindi and mangalsutra, another one in a burqa with a kid in hand and the old lady in the center wearing a grey gown and a grey scarf with a cross around her neck. The rift suddenly disappeared as the vacant seat was filled.

The event had a deep impact on my thinking, I forgot the pain caused having hit my head to the metal division. A very peculiar characteristic of human race was vivid to me - individually we are more tolerant, more caring and more unbiased. The intolerance, the bias comes from the society or unions. While humans are social animals and being social and united has helped humans in developing in more ways than not, this bias or preconception is the flip side of the social traits of humans. I would prefer the humans to behave like other animals on the planet at least in this aspect.  The unions or societies, may they be religious or regional or of any form, give humans a sense of power to survive. But the ill side of power is that it corrupts. The unrest, the riots, the opposition to inter-caste or inter-religion marriages, all of this can be attributed to the non-congruence of these societies or unions. The divide due to these multiple societies called regions, religions, castes, etc. have created silos which are adverse to the very concept of 'vasudhaiva kutumbakam'. So let's bridge the gaps, let's fill in the vacant seats.