The Lone Diary Entry......... !!

Dear Mayank,

When I came to know that I am the sole writer in your diary I felt it’s a kind of big responsibility and it’s my moral obligation to be as much honest and transparent as I could be. Both of us have filled lots of diaries in past few days, diaries of people we know very well, diaries of people we are familiar with and diaries of people who we haven’t noticed in past 4 years. We tend to be very sweet when we fill a diary; we write only the good stuff in fact we exaggerate the good stuff. We write all the sweet memories and all the stuff that would make the diary owner feel very good when he will read it later. Even if we want to be completely honest and say bad things, we won’t. Obviously, it’s the end; we don’t want to create any controversy in the end or to make someone unhappy. So, at times, it’s more like faking stuff.

Obviously, both you and me, we are not against this whole diary writing stuff. It’s a very good thing; in fact it’s something that will make anyone feel very nice about himself and capturing some of the best moments and feedback together. So initially I know you were quite tempted about this diary making stuff and later you realized that though it will give you temporary happiness it is not something that you want right now. In fact lots of people asked you to them your diary so that they can fill it up. You can easily guess all the good and nice things people would write in your diary, which, as a matter of fact, you are getting a lot these days.

 All those people who have judged you behind your back, have thought only ill about you in past 4 years and even propagated it almost everywhere, people who hated you for no reason and people who intensely disliked you for some reasons whether valid or invalid, everyone will write only good stuff about you. No one will dare to say even a single bad thing and obviously it’s not plausible or reasonable to write something bad in someone’s diary so all in all you won’t have the honest feedback you require and it will create an illusion that everybody loved you throughout the college life and you were a nice guy.

Enough context making now, I would begin my feedback and I hope you won’t mind if I am harsh or rude because it’s the need of the hour. First, I would like you to retrospect where you wanted to be at the end of your college life and are you standing there right now? Is it the life you dreamt of? Have you achieved all you wanted to achieve in college life? I would like you to retrospect and introspect how much you have changed and whether all the changes are good? See, when the college started you were this guy who thought of adding values into your life instead of running behind grades, jobs and secure future. Have you added all those values into your life and if not then why? You were the guy who was always anti system and believed in the absolute definition of excellence and potential and always thought that no system can truly judge an individual’s potential. Only we can determine our own potential, our worth and what we can accomplish in this life. Then I wonder why in the latter half of your college life you were running behind certificates of approval from the system.

You wasted lots of time in chasing hallucinations and then further wasted lots of time in regret that you had wasted lots of time. You were dormant most of the time and keep on escaping by saying let it past and I will start afresh next time. You started defining yourself by people’s definition and in process you lost the single most crucial entity which used to define you, your faith in yourself. Never ever in your life you have gone through successive phases where you doubted yourself again and again and keep on looking towards people and the system to approve of you instead of regenerating the confidence by yourself. You started believing in bad luck, you left yourself on the mercy of destiny and you forgot the concept of “bigger success after smaller failure”. For a while, you labeled yourself as a loser who would never rise again and fight back for his pride and honor. You surrendered to fate, deeply wounded by the cruel claws of destiny, looking for sympathy and support from people for temporary relief and self satisfaction. You enjoyed being weak for a while, which I would say was necessary for that time, but still you should have been mentally prepared for almost everything that would come into your way but you weren’t.

Looking for a safe, secure, risk free, world approved future was not something you had in your mind when you started college but as it happens, you panicked, you were smothered and finally you quit. The ‘being different’ philosophy was slowly taken over by ‘being better’ philosophy and hence all the insecurities, worries, tension and eventually degradation of a beautiful mind. As one of your friend has aptly quoted “ Earlier you reflected intelligence but now it looks like you are putting effort to appear intelligent, you have lost that sheen in yourself”. How true are these words, when you didn’t care, you appear intelligent but for most of the time in college you were so concerned about appearing intelligent, you were making futile and worthless efforts to be in the league of intelligent which is more or less a false security.

Anyway, enough criticism, though you indeed lost your care free attitude, you started thinking about what people will think which earlier you never gave a damn about, still, as a person you have done remarkable progress. You don’t harm people now as you used to do earlier, you can understand and relate with everyone’s struggle, and you now know what to say and when to say and where to draw a boundary. You started respecting people’s individuality, limitations and perspectives which earlier you used to discard very brutally. In short, you stopped being a jerk which earlier you were so proud of being one.

You started forgiving people which you never did. You started listening to and understanding and then giving context wise suggestion instead of imposing your perspective. You started respecting the differences and accepting the flaws and you also learned about your own flaws. But I think, the most important lesson was that, wherever you go, there would be some people who will always hate you. You can’t be loved or accepted by all. People will hate for multiple reasons or at times solely because other people hate you and they just want to follow the trend. There is no such thing as universal acceptance, even if you don’t care about anyone and has zilch interest in someone’s life then also people would like to interfere and gossip about your life. To go unnoticed, you have to be harmless and by being harmless means you have to stop excelling and act like a dump average person who is no threat to anyone’s ambitions. If you can accept and adapt such life then you won’t be hated else prepare yourself for newer challenges, intense dislike and stark criticism by almost every irrelevant person.

There are no plausible reasons to hate. Hatred is something that doesn’t require any logic. People can even hate you if you are not hated. They will hate you for your facebook statuses. They will hate you for your leg pulling. They will hate you for talking to other people. They will hate you if some people love you. They will hate you if you try to appear different, confident and carefree. They will even hate you for posting this post as to them instead of a philosophical introspect it’s an act of flamboyancy. It’s an act to impress other and it’s an act to show your superiority even if your sole intention to write such a post is to write something for yourself. So, in short, accept being hated because that is something you can’t stop. As Pheobe convinces Chandler in 1^st season that since he is the boss now he can’t be friends with other people and he should accept this. In the same way, accept being disliked, hated and boycotted and I think you have got yourself a nice exposure of all this in college life.On the other side, you got immense appreciation, acknowledgement and respect from many people. There were people who stood for you in every situation and keep on reminding you about yourself. You should be grateful to all those people who have given you a special place in their heart.

Though, you could have cleared the fog by communicating and making your stand known. It’s good to put your ego aside at times and bow down if it’s for greater good. Any misunderstanding can be cleared by proper and polite communication and that is something you should have done quite often instead of being stubborn about your silence. Anyway, doesn’t matter, what has happened has happened. No one can change it and in fact it was a nice thing going through all kind of experience. Being loved and being hated, being respected and being insulted, being recognized and being ignored, getting success and getting failed, falling and rising, helping and being helped, it was a wonderful journey filled with almost all kind of experience, something that was needed to transform you into the kind of person you are.

From an arrogant, egoist, over optimistic, over enthusiastic, carefree child you have been transformed into a practical, realistic, balanced, hopeful youth and I hope you will continue on the right track. I don’t have any wishes but only advises for your future. The most crucial phase of your life is going to begin, do not and under any circumstances bow down and surrender to situations. Buckle up, brace yourself and set your mind to defend your identity because the world you are entering is well known to either make you so much comfortable or so much uncomfortable that you lose yourself. You become a representative of the physical world and you led a life which everyone is living. A mirage of security, trapped into a cage of crystal which is as beautiful as it is fragile. Don’t settle for temporary relief, keep up the inner fire burning and chose the path that is not only different but hard, harsh, rough, painful because it’s not just a philosophy, when you choose the road less travelled by, you can hear yourself much better instead of the commotion created by the crown on the road more travelled by. I hope " acche din aane wale hai " !!

Regards,

Mayank Sharma

EVERY STUDENT DESERVES STUDENT RIGHTS..... !!!!!!!!

‘Student Rights’, now this term may appear a bit vague or awkward at first but the term makes sense, doesn’t it? In fact, there is a Wikipedia page also on it and I did not know about it when this term suddenly popped up in my head. Anyway, I didn’t bother to read the whole Wikipedia page and what this term actually means because by then I had already painted quite a picture about it in my mind and apparently there is no such well defined student rights structure in India so I thought why not to build one right here on my blog post.

Firstly, why student rights? We have human rights, women rights, children rights, animal rights, gay rights, all kinds of rights but I personally feel that student is the community whose rights are most violated. We are not at all considered as human, treated like animals yet we have no animal rights. Even when we are children, we have no rights. Being student is like a punishment you willingly take hoping something good will come out of it, which, in most of the cases doesn’t happen. Students are regularly insulted and disrespected by almost everyone. Teachers, parents, college and school staff, drivers, shop keepers, other students. Every other category of humans in modern world considers their fundamental right to dominate and insult the students.

The torture of students starts from the first day itself i.e. when a child becomes a student for the first time, the first day of the school. Most of the children do not wish to go to school yet they are forcefully sent and what follows is 14 years of frustration, torture, mental pressure, agony, name any negative feeling and you will have that in student life. But we are hopeful, because of one lie. One lie, which always helps us to keep ourselves together, and continue the struggle. One lie, which is more of an assurance, that once you reach college life, everything would be fun. There won’t be any competition in college. There is no study, no pressure to top, and no pressure to excel. You don’t need to attend any classes. You can bunk them and roam around wildly without anything on your head. So study hard as much as you can in schools, make it to a very good college and enjoy your life as you always wanted to enjoy.

Once you reach college, you realize how your teachers and parents always lied to you because college life is no different from school apart from the fact that now you don’t care anymore. Those who care live the same life as they have lived in school. Those who don’t, roam around, bunk classes do not study a bit yet it’s not the same as they were promised. There is always a pressure of performing. You can’t live in the present as you always have to worry about securing a good job or a good PG college. It’s like same rat race again but now you know that there is no escape from the rat race.

Do we have any freedom? NO. Can we live a stressful life? NO. Do we have any rights? NO, NOT AT ALL!!

For parents, we are always careless hopeless creatures who don’t care about their future, who are wasting their time in useless endeavours that are worthless. You would always be taunted and reminded that you failed to make it into a good college (most of the cases unless you got an IIT, NIT or something.. ). You would be compared with other students who are getting good grades and an explanation would be asked that why are you jeopardizing your future. You would be nothing more than your grades and consequently you would be nothing. No matter how much you excel in other areas, you would never be able to satisfy them and to make things worse we always have some dementors hovering around our head to make things more ugly and annoying. Our relatives, who would always be counting several names in front of us and our parents. That boy got that much package in a company, that boy won competition in some institute, Gupta Ji’s daughter secured a seat in that prestigious MBA institute. So, in short, torture doesn’t stop; it exponentially increases as time goes on and so do the power of the torturers.

If that wasn’t enough, teachers would make sure we suffer enough to curse our life. I would never understand that whether it’s a coincidence or what but I am always the part of the worst batch the teacher has ever seen so far in his/her life. If I am in ‘A’ section then ‘B’ section is great and ‘A’ is worst and vice versa or I wonder it happens with most of us.  There is no good batch, it’s like relativity theorem, in all frames of reference, in whatever batch a student is in, that batch is the worst batch for the teacher. You would have to make countless futile assignments that would never get checked. You have to sit in bizarre vivas where on god knows what basis they give marks and ask all sort of random questions. You would have to run behind professors to get signs on your files and beg again and again to show some mercy on you. You would be insulted again and again and depending on the teachers mood your work won’t get done. You would have to wait for long long times and you would be asked to come again later and the circle goes on. We have no option other than to suffer all these hoping one day it would end, no rights, no voice, no platform to complain.

Luckily there are some teachers who understands students, who are actually student friendly. Some teachers indeed helps student a lot and thus restore the lost faith. Thus a few teachers get genuine respect from students. But you might not be so lucky in the case of administrative and clerical staff. Lower the position of the worker is ruder he would be to you. They won’t sign your documents, won’t give you your mark sheets, and delay your work as much as they can. These sadists enjoy torturing the students as much as they can as apparently they don’t have any power over any other person. Students are their punching bags where they can emit all their frustration. I wonder whether they ever consider that in place of us some day there would be their own children, but guess they don’t. As a mere student, we have no rights, hence we have no voice, we can complain nowhere about all these injustice as apparently no one is interested in listening to us.

If somehow you complete your college life without any right, there would come a time where you would realize that you are nothing and that is the time when you sit for campus recruitment. One feels the most insecure, helpless, and vulnerable at that time. There is no fair treatment there but you can’t do anything about it. No one is interested to pick the best chunk or to judge everyone fairly and assess on the basis of talent. There are no guidelines or system. You can be selected or rejected mostly on the basis of luck and you have to wait for long long long time again for your time to come to go for interview. You have to sit alone, hungry, tired, frustrated but apparently you have no right. No one would again listen to you that you deserve some humanly treatment. You have to answer all sorts of irrelevant and random question and on the basis of interviewer’s personal biases, prejudices and mood you may or may not get select.

The list never stops. Shop keepers won’t let you stay for long and sit and talk as you are occupying places and not paying enough. Everywhere you go in a group, people gives you look like you are smoking marijuana or taking cocaine in public, thinking students only waste time in having fun and stuff. Conductors and drivers misbehave with you as you are just student, what power you have on them. Your landlords treat you like they have rented their room for free. Seniors bully juniors, juniors disrespect seniors, classmates have group politics, mind games, back biting and stuff. So long the list of injustices and the sole reason is you being just a student who has no right and no privilege to complain anywhere.

Some self proclaimed boastful cool guys may find this post long, prolix and full of frustration. Indeed, it is, I accept I am frustrated because of  lots of things. But what frustrates me most is our own inner fear. We fear to complain because we think it would bring harm to us. We choose to remain silent and diplomatic because we don’t want to get into any mess. We voluntarily subject ourselves to injustice because we feel helpless inside and do not dare to do anything.  I have raised my voice many times, I have been in lots of troubles, I have got lesser grades, been threatened to fail, have disputes with many, got my work delay for long long time. Many a times people have told me to remain silent and let it go but there is no fun in letting things go. I have pulled myself at times when it was necessary but not always. There is a subtle satisfaction in being a rebel. It’s like implicitly fighting for the rights not provided to us so far. It’s like demanding what we deserve.

So next time when you feel being mistreated or insulted, raise your voice, complain, fight, argue, make a mess, make a big deal out of it because we deserve to be treated well. We deserve our student rights.

PS: No disrespect or offence meant to any person and my apologies if you feel hurt or disrespected by any part of the post. It's just an attempt to draw a more general picture of the things that are usually wrong and need to be corrected. It's not intended for any specific person as no person is ever good or bad in itself, it's just the system which is wrong most of the time !!

IT'S JUST FINAL YEAR; IT'S NOT THE END !!!

FINAL YEAR, the word fascinates all of us. In the beginning of college, you see the people of final year and think that these guys are really mature. They are having jobs, experience of surviving the entire college; some of these are going to better colleges for PG while some are having some other better plans. The seniors look far more mature and talking to them is a pleasure as you think that you are gaining something from them. In the 3^rd year, the final year fantasies revolve pretty much around 2 things. The first is to get a nice job or to secure admission into a nice PG college and second is the fun afterwards. Plans to travel across the country; visiting Goa, Mumbai or any other place with your gang and capturing all the moments to ensure that you have best memories that will be cherished for the rest of your life.

College life differs a lot from school in a way that group politics plays a huge part here. There are visible boundaries between various groups but final year is the time when the boundaries start fading away. People mix up again as they used to in the earlier days of college. People start talking to one another again and share everything that happened within the college time. Classes are fun again as no one is interested in any sort of study, in fact no one is interested in attending them, people attend them as they have nothing else to do.

Final year is the time when you start forgiving people that so far you have intensely hated and why not as they are no longer going to be a part of your life. You start talking nicely to everyone as nothing matters anymore. It’s like in the end, everything is coming together not because it was suppose to but because nothing matters now so what’s the harm in brining everything together. There is not much of enmity left between anyone. 

Final year is also a healing and redemption phase for many people. Hearts are already broken long ago; Dreams are scattered; Myths are busted and you have hit the rock bottom so many times that you are no longer afraid of falling. Many of you have seen your worst nightmares becoming a reality. You start recollecting pieces of your heart to start a new emotional adventure. The tiny hopes group together to form a cluster of optimism and the future looks bright again. You rediscover yourself and define yourself in a better and more mature manner and you start trying again for new things. The sheer frustration of not meeting your potential or not reaching where you thought you must have reached starts dissolving and fading and you look forward for newer challenges.

I guess the name final year is quite ironic in a way that only a phase is ending but it’s more of a beginning of an entire new era of someone’s life.  An era where you start again from square zero without any prejudice about yourself, an era where not much is left to prove and there is an ample space for growing and learning again. We are transiting to the professional world and the rules of their game are quite tough and cruel than our game. There would be funny incidences but it would lack the genuine careless laugh, there would be money but it would lack the people and the time to spend to, there would be dreams but it would lack the motivation to chase them, there would be recognition but it would lack the respect that should comes with it.

Most of us have lived a conventional life so far in the college. We were scared of chasing what we want to do because it was not what we had to do. We were afraid to learn a new language as we were worried about completing our lab assignment. We were afraid to learn to play the guitar as we were afraid about our scores of mid semester. We wanted a trip to some remote place but our coaching classes won’t allow us to do. We wanted to do some NGO work but we have to prepare for campus. Lastly, there were times we wanted to do nothing, just sit into blank or just sleep the whole day but we were afraid others are working hard so we should do the same.

Most of us spent the whole college life in insecurity, restraining and constraining ourselves as we thought that we must work hard to reach somewhere not to do things that give us pleasure. Of course, we had fun hang outs, we watched sitcoms, we didn’t study much but it was not in the usual careless manner. We had our regrets of not utilizing our time properly. Some of us reproached ourselves when we failed to score well in a mid semester or an end semester. We didn’t enjoy life as it was supposed to be but we enjoyed it for the sake of enjoying. There was a restriction there also; it was more of a conventional enjoyment that others are enjoying so I should also enjoy.

Now in the remaining time, I say lets investment this time in our betterment. Do something that we always wanted to do. Learn to dance, play guitar, some language, some technology and if you don’t want to do anything, then don’t. Don’t force betterment on you for the sake of running in the next round. Sleep without setting the alarm if you don’t want to wake early. There is no harm at times in sitting and watching every other person you know running. Rest is good. It opens our eyes and help us to see what we really want to do in life and how should we do it. Let us sketch our future with all the colors we had and if we are missing something then leave it blank as life would choose the best colors for it by its own will and at the proper time.

There shouldn’t be any regret in the last phase of college. Let us try to make this final year not an end but a beginning of something new, lay the foundation of something strong, and base our entire future on it so that when we would look back we would feel proud of the one decision we had taken in these last moments and make sure the entire direction of our life would change from here. We must remember it’s just final year but it’s not the end.

PLACEMENTS.............

The word triggers lots of emotions in us specially in the final year crowd. This word looks pretty normal in the first 3 years of engineering; we never give it a serious thought and are very casual about it. We see our seniors going through it and we always relate ourselves to the best ones and hope to repeat their success or even perform better than them. In some way, we are always in a comfort zone that we would excel and would perform exceptionally well. But, if only life goes as we visualize it in our fantasies. When we actually go through the placement procedure what comes out is a very changed form of us. Both, the successful ones and the failures, no one is same afterwards.

Most of us are not mentally prepared for failures and don’t know how to tackle ‘rejection’. The reactions of other peoples and constant nagging from irrelevant relatives and people studying elsewhere make the situation worse. Our faith in our abilities is heavily shaken which unbalances our whole life. We start doubting almost everything; our past achievements, our brilliance, our talent; our capabilities. This also puts a question mark on our future ambitions and we are not sure whether we will be able to achieve them or not or as a matter of fact whether we are eligible enough to even give it a try or not. We all start with the big IIT dream and getting a fat package like 20+ lakh and after our initial dream to reach the best elite institutes of countries is crushed we somehow compromise and start to think about grabbing the best companies of our own college. We see mass recruiters with the same eyes as we used to see local colleges (most of us are studying in these colleges now) that time and never think about getting into those until they are the only hope. Then comes a time where we are so much in doubt that even the 3 lpa package which once we used to think is far below our dignity and standard starts looking unachievable. We doubt that whether we will make it to any company or not.

The origin, reason and main source of all these problems is the highly intellectual suggestions and comments of ‘other people; the pseudo specialists of every problem’. They always have something to say. If you are successful then it was because of your luck and procedures were easy and best suited for you. If you are unsuccessful and sad then you are the typical ‘cry baby’ and ‘Mr. complaining’ who isn’t competent enough to get into the companies and is now crying everywhere. If you are not complaining and happy thinking that luck wasn’t with you then you will meet the ‘angoor khatte hai’ crowd who will smash you everywhere by saying that since you didn’t get into that’s why you find everything unfair. Lastly, if you do not care about your failure at all then you are hiding and pretending but deep down you are extremely hurt and affected. So beware of these experts and try to shield your mental peace from them as much as you can as these people harm our self confidence the most.

Most of the humans are either ‘masochist’ or ‘hypocrite’. Those who should fairly contemplate the situation and give a clean chit to themselves start doubting on their own capabilities and tag themselves as useless and looser while those who really weren’t capable and need significant hard work and improvement start blaming situation and their luck. Such contradictions prevail almost everywhere in our country. Those who must complain start crying and those who must cry start complaining.

If we carefully retrospect all the events with an unbiased mind and in a third person frame of reference we can easily infer that at times all we lack was some amount of luck. May be that day was not yours but some other time, some other day or in fact some other person judging your performance; you could have easily cleared it. Failure never means that we were not capable enough or lacked the desired qualities. One must never doubt oneself on such occasions. Even if there are some shortcomings then those could easily be identified and rectified. There is always a next time and there is always the scope of a bigger success. I don’t want to repeat clichés like how Amitabh Bacchan became a mega star after getting rejected by all India radio initially for improper voice or the life incidents of Michael Jordon or Abraham Lincoln. But success after failure is something we observe in day to day life.

I have seen people losing their entire faith and confidence after one failure. People get intimidated, life appears bleak and daunting to them. Hope became a dangerous thing driving them insane. They started living in a world where they are not only incapable but also unlucky and victim of cruel claws of destiny. I never understand how we can be so stubborn that we allow a single event to judge our entire life. Can certain people or a system or an exam decide whether we are capable enough to be successful or not? Surely the people who got selected were capable, no doubt, they indeed got the required skill sets to get a place in the company but the one who didn’t make it were no lesser capable. Life ditches us when we trust it most but this is one thing that we must accept now that life never go as we plan it else there would be no thrill in living it.

We have lived our life for 20+ years and only we know what we are capable of doing and what we are not. Whether we have done proper justice with our life or not and no other person can issue a certificate on our abilities and decide our fate. We must put efforts for the sake of improving ourselves and for the sake of adding values into our life not for getting into certain organization and getting a certain package. At the end of the day it’s all about how satisfied you are with the life you have lived and only we can decide that not some other person or organization or society. We must be confident enough to know our potential and then what we need is to be patient. Sooner or later, appreciation and acknowledgement will come indeed. Sooner or later, we will definitely get success and reach where not only we are destined to be but also we deserve to be.

Lastly, we have to give up our urge to prove ourselves better and distinct always. The constant longing of getting success everywhere and standing above everyone. Success provides joy but failure is a complete package. You can introspect, analyse  think about your flaws and weakness, there is an ample scope of improvement. Failure insures that you won’t fail at the next level if only you know how to use failure properly. Don’t think about the society, don’t think about your friends and circles, and don’t think about your own expectations and the standard you set for yourself. Just release yourself from all constraints and carefully assess the situation and think what went wrong, what you must have done and what you mustn’t and what to do to ensure you won’t repeat your previous mistakes. At the end of the day life is too large to declare ourselves as a persistent looser and opportunities come and go if only you have the willpower and urge to keep on fighting and struggling.

ALL THE BEST EVERYONE FOR UPCOMING PLACEMENTS!!

THE LAST BUS RIDE ........ PART III

continued from previous post....

Why the hell haven’t we arrived yet, what’s the cause of this delay, conductor? Conductor?? Driver? I shouted with all my might but I can hear only my own voice and that never ending screaming of the bus. I was afraid to death now and I stood up and tried to look where the driver was and in that moment I realized that even the bus was having no headlights. It was moving in pitch black road with not even a single trace of light. Suddenly the whole bus was filled with a smell.

That awful smell started smothering me and choking me. It was disgusting, pungent and was making me ill. I started getting dizzy and felt like puking. It surrounded me completely and I was dumbstruck and perplexed and couldn’t figure out the source of that smell and why I can’t feel the presence of anyone else in that bus and why both the driver and conductor were not responding and why the bus was moving without any headlights. It was like a nightmare, and I was hoping that I would awake safely on the other station and would leave this bus and would laugh on my random imaginations but somehow I knew that everything was happening in real. It wasn’t a dream and there was no explanation of all the events that were happening around.

I opened the flash light of my phone and suddenly my mind was blown with sensation of such sheer stark horror which I think no one has ever experienced in their life. It was fear, plain crude fear, fear with no other emotions attach with it, no uncertainty, no assurance, no mockery, just fear and the reason of that fear was I was alone in that whole bus. There was no one, no passenger, no conductor and somehow I summoned to peek in the driver’s cabin and the magnitude of my fear increased ten folds when I realized there was no driver. The bus was running on its own on a road I don’t know, going where I have no idea and whether I will come out alive or not.

Suddenly I realized the nature of that smell. It was that of human flesh. Burnt human flash, burnt to a very serious degree and at the very moment I realized it along with the continuous screaming of bus I can clearly distinguish another sound. In fact a mixture of various sounds, and these were the sound of screaming. Scream for help, scream for getting away, scream even for an abrupt death and lastly some screams were plain scream, scream just for the sake of screaming as if you were not able to cry for help or ask for anything but can only summon enough strength to scream.

Don’t know how or because of what, suddenly I came back to my senses, I realized that I have to leave this bus as fast as I can otherwise there is no chance of me getting back alive. I don’t know how I will do that or what I will do after leaving the bus but at that time only one thing was on my mind, abandoning this god forsaken bus. The screams continued, the smell became stronger with every moment and I summoned all my strength and knocked myself out of the window of that moving bus hoping to land alive. Injuries were not in my mind, staying alive was my only aim at that time.

I landed hard and that hurt, but the joy of getting out of that bus compensated all the injuries and pain and luckily I landed on a muddy surface and rolled over to some distance but still I damaged my body badly. I didn’t even bother to look around where I was and I just started running blindly in the opposite direction. I don’t know why I was running, where I was going, from what I was trying to escape but at that time the only thing that was in my mind was to run and to get away from this place as far as I can. At that time I realized that when I jumped the speed of bus was very slow in comparison to its usual speed and when I look ahead in the direction of the bus I saw that the area was illuminated by some strong energy source.

I felt intense light radiations piercing my eyes and hurting them and simultaneously I felt great amount of heat from somewhere. I looked ahead and saw the same bus, burning, fire all around it and slowly moving towards the end of a bridge. I was transfixed, I can neither move nor think nor analyse what was happening and can’t decide what my reaction should be. The bus suddenly accelerated with a great pace, lost its balance, hit the side wall of a bridge, broke it and went down burning. A loud sound like thunderclap came and I was not having the courage to go there and look what happened to the bus.

I started running again. Running with no aim, no plan in mind where to go. I just ran and hoped that I will reach somewhere safe. I ran and ran. I ran without getting tired, didn’t giving any heed to all the pain that my body was going through. I ran for don’t know how long but it was a significant amount of time. After some time my body started giving up, the motivation was gone, everything appeared bleak, I lost all the hope. I didn’t want to sit there as didn’t know somehow I was having this feeling I can survive only by running. My throat was burning; face was red showing lack of oxygen and energy. My eyes were closing, darkness and darkness and I was lost in oblivion.  

I opened my eyes slowly and felt that my whole body was still paining. It took a lot of effort to open both the eyes properly and I felt the warm sunlight on my face now. Everything was bright and shining and alive again. I looked around and found that I was at some small tea stall covered inside a blanked. A man came with a cup of tea in his hands and told me that a truck driver found me unconscious on side of the road near a field and took me here thinking I caught cold and need some warm place. Some few more men gathered around and they asked me what happened last night.

I, at first, hesitated a bit, thinking they will laugh at me and will consider me as a fool but then  I decided to tell them everything whatever happened last night. The strange man, the bus, the conductor, the fellow travellers, how everyone vanished, that awful smell and how the bus burnt and fell over the bridge. They all were listening with pensive faces, listening carefully to every word that I was saying and showing not a single sign of distrust. As if they understood everything but no one interrupted, their eyes were focused on me and I kept on describing everything.

“Consider yourself very lucky sir” One of the man said after I had finished.

“The thing that conductor told you about that bike rider is correct, a man indeed died in a horrible accident, which was, in fact, a murder plot and his ghost indeed roams around the street with the same old bike. Though we don’t know whether he has harmed anyone or not yet but you had so far the closest encounter with him and still you are alive” said another man with a big moustache.

“But, most of all, by god’s grace or by some miracle you survived that haunted bus, few years back there was a fight between drivers and conductors of two buses over passengers and the driver and conductor of the other bus locked the first bus from outside somehow, and set it to fire and made sure that fire will continue burning slowly so that the bus will burn on road, the bus continued burning with all its passengers screaming and crying for help. The driver realizing that the bus is locked from every place and there is no chance of everyone getting out by windows decided to move it fast if in any case this will stop the fire, he collided with the side wall of a bridge and the bus fell. No one was alive. Everyone died the most painful and smothering death. Ever since this, many people have seen that bus on the same road with no drivers and no passengers. It is burning and it fells over that bridge again and again. Various people have seen that but guess you are the first person who has taken a ride in it.” Said the first one.

I was utterly aghast. I wasn't able to say anything now. Tears rolled into my eyes. I thanked god because only he can save someone from such a horrible event. The men around me were trying to make me comfortable by saying positive words and by their body languages but I realized that I would never be the same after this. Life will continue and soon things will be back to normal. I will definitely travel again but I will surely consider hiring a private vehicle or travelling by train. I was done with buses now. That ride was surly my last bus ride and I was lucky that I completed the journey and came back alive.