The Stranger

Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

It was a crowded public bus. All of us crammed and sticking to each other. Sweating and breathing down each other’s back. I was standing as usual tightly clutching the hand rails with my huge and heavy college backpack on my back. Exams were around the corner and I tried to catch a shut eye hanging from the bus amidst the crowd.

The third year of medicine was creeping up making us all sleep deprived and weary enough that any place was as good as a bed and I could fall asleep instantly anywhere anytime. As I struggled to keep my eyes open a stranger offered me his seat. He must have noticed my struggle and offered to help. Gratefully I slumped unto the seat and instantly dozed off

The next day it was the same story and I found the same gentleman getting up to offer me his seat. However feeling ashamed and guilty of depriving him of his comfortable seat yet again I refused and settled in my usual standing- snoozing posture little ahead from his seat.

The next time we were travelling in the same bus, he refused to even acknowledge me, but now that I think of it I realise that maybe by refusing his seat I had offended him in some way.

Now, after all these years this incidence has come back to torment me and if given an opportunity I would like to ask for forgiveness and explain the reason for refusal at my end. However the moment is now lost to time never to be re-lived. His face, just a memory in the crowd and the incident etched in my life for eternity, yet leaving behind a valuable lesson on personal acts and misunderstandings.