"What time does the bus comes?", a stranger was asking another when I reached the stop. His salt and pepper hair told me that he must be in his late fortees or early fiftees. He had a peculiar mannerism of cleaning his teeth with his tongue often.
"In about five minutes", came a reply.
"Five minutes?", he repeated with an accent. "We have an accent here buddy. Where are you from?"
"India", he replied nervously. If he was an atheist before, he wasn't one now for he was praying to all Gods for the bus to arrive and save him from this situation.
"India? You people are smart! My math is not as good as yours", he complimented with sarcasm.
I shifted my gaze to a girl who brought a cigarette to her lips slowly, inhaled it deeply and casually blew out the smoke, glancing at them every now and then as if she was not interested in a conversation, but was curious to know what's going on.
"Starbucks on your right at 200 feet, a Mexican restaurant across the road at 150 feet", someone was passing on the instructions to the fifth stranger at the bus stop. He appeared to be in his early twenties and gave me an impression that he was going to a college. He wore fine trousers, cotton shirt and had a cooler on his eyes. His hands were in his pockets and he was talking to someone over wireless. No! He wasn't talking, but only the person at the other end. After a closer observation, I realized he was blind with a talking GPS in his pocket.
"I've grown old now. I can't do any work", the salt and pepper gentleman lamented.
"Where did you work?"
"I was a carpenter. I am not as smart as you guys are to take up a computer job", he replied.
Silence pervaded the entire space for a minute and disappeared as soon as it came with the salt and pepper gentleman yelling "Go back to your country" on top of his voice.
I looked at the Indian guy who smiled and replied: "I sure will".
When I was expecting a confrontation between the two of them, the bus came to a halt and accepted new passengers to board.
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