Late?

The clock strikes 7.30. I am in my room putting random things in my bag. I donot remotely remember if I use them ever in office and neither do I know why I pull them out of my bag each day after I come back home. But all the same, I do this activity as the clock irritatingly ticks into my ears and the tick becomes louder with each passing millisecond.

I am still to have my breakfast . My head is abuzz with the thoughts of the office bus zooming past the stop before I make it there. So, I unhealthily stuff the I-would-have-loved-to-sit-idly-and-gorge-on-it breakfast into my mouth in between sips of boiling hot tea. The tea helps push it down my pharynx as I keep hoping that it gets pushed down the oesophagus and not block my wind pipe and choke me to death. I dump the plate and the cup in the sink with a crash that makes everyone at the breakfast table jump off their chairs. I dash out of the house, pulling my bag up on one shoulder. I run through the lane, with my bag flying behind me. The old couple walking hand in hand, reminiscing their good ole days, can not help giving me cold looks as I run through them throwing them on either sides of the oh-so-narrow lane. They are more soar than Gandhi was at the Indo-Pak partition! And when I reach the stop I see the bus not on the approaching side of the stop , so I impulsively look in the other direction. And there I see it! I cup my hand on my mouth, eyes popping out, one hand pulled out high in the air! The other hand comes off my mouth to let it yelp after the bus and my legs burst into an already lost race to catch the bus. Passers-by on the road give me a dejavu look, as they are tired of getting shocked at a girl crying out after the bus [it has already been two months now to the same old story].

My insides start aching all of a sudden making me realize that there has been far too much activity down the tummy and I could throw up any moment! Panting and puffing but not puking, I reach the local bus stop where I stretch my hand out for a tumtum which stops and stops for long .... to dump in many more I-missed-the-bus-by-a-fraction-of-a-second employees. And in the exodus of people jammed into this small carriage, a collegue spots me screams out my name [otherwise you seriously cannot be heard in that torture chamber] and asks, "LATE ?"