A heart-to-heart chat with a stranger (or, is there a way you can ease someone’s suffering?)

Delhi is relentless. It always has been. Back in the day though, when I was a student, it was slightly less so. I was a student at JNU, the modern and progressive institution of left-leaning intellectuals in a world that felt like things had to get better, that we were working to make things better, create a better life, have more rights and freedoms and world peace.

Those days, I would often travel to my grandmother’s house in Faridabad, one of Delhi’s chaotic satellite cities in the neighboring state of Haryana.

Going to Faridabad was always a big project. I would take a bus to the All India Medical Institute and get a connecting bus to Haryana from there. At the border, I would hitch a ride on one of the auto rickshaws that would drop me off at my grandma’s house. It was an ordeal, not just because of the enormous logistics but also because as a woman, male co-passengers were rude at best or staring unashamedly and even sexually harassing at worst.

On this one trip, I made it safely to my grandmother’s place without much drama. It was my trip back to Delhi that left a lasting impression on me and for reasons different from what I have written above.

I had reached the border- a place called Badarpur that was a point of where several roads converged. There were many bus stations announcing buses to different parts in Delhi and Haryana. I found a bus that would take me back to the medical institute where I could get a connecting bus back to my university.

I had managed to get a seat by a window and was waiting for the bus to move, when a few more passengers clambered into the vehicle. One of them was a young woman, who sat next to me.

We started to talk. She was very interested in how I looked and that I was reading a book- not a very common sight in those parts. Then, without warning, she began talking about how her father was taking her to a lawyer in Delhi, about her marriage and her husband who was abusive, about how she wasn’t sure she could get out of the marriage at all, about how fascinating it was to see a woman who could read and write and travel freely, and how she was scared about what would happen to her and whether she would get her chance at a better life.

The bus had been moving all along and came to a stop. She said goodbye, then got off the bus and came around to stand by my window. “Wish you all the best for everything. And get home safely, “ she said.

I had no words, only an overwhelming feeling that I did not know the right thing to say. I pulled out half-a-bar of chocolate from inside my bag and passed it to her through the window. “Look after yourself,” I said, but she was already walking away.