35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

68
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
rack with the contents of a small town tied to it. As my fellow
travellers began to climb uncomplainingly into this ruin, I wanted
to pull them out, read them their rights, Form a resistance front.
Cornering the driver while he slurped tea, I demanded an
explanation.
‘Bus change this place.’
Why were we moved to an ordinary bus when we had luxury
tickets?
‘Luxury bus stop here. No permit going Madras side.’
Dripping with sweat and fury, I plunked down on the hard
wooden seat of the ordinary bus, which was still steadily filling up
with locals. I gazed longingly after the luxury bus and my dreams
of luxury gliding silently away – heading back to Bangalore to
hoodwink more fools, no doubt. There was no point in asking why
the bus had no permit to travel outside Karnataka even though it
claimed to be going far out of that state.
An elderly man with the body of a thin twelve-year-old edged
toward the seat beside me. His testicles dangled a foot down the side
of a threadbare dhoti. So bad were the smallpox scars on his birdlike
face that he might have once survived two barrels of buckshot fired
point-blank. He sat down gingerly on the farthest edge of the vacant
seat, as if I might not notice he was there, gradually sliding across
until I felt the hard, bony knob of his pelvis press against my
cushioned thigh. He wore a turban the size of a laundry bag whose
musty orange cotton tickled my ear when he moved. Plucking a
giant beedie seemingly from his left armpit, he barely had the weedy
cone smouldering before succumbing to a bout of coughing that
doubled him up. Lungs finally subdued, disciplined, he sat erect,
looking satisfied. Then he spat a wobbling golf ball of ochre phlegm
on the floor. I peered down. The bolus quivered barely an inch
from my foot. I looked over at him, expecting remorse. He sucked
beedie smoke contentedly from a clenched fist and seemed not to
notice me at all.
In the aisle, a goat was nonchalantly expelling several gleaming
black pellets from below the raised stump of its tail. Some fell into
the lap of a toothless woman wearing gold earrings as big and heavy
as paperweights. She retrieved one pellet in shaking fingers no thicker