The Insolent Conductor

Here is an excerpt from a story in ‘Snippets of Life Music’. You will certainly find that the book is really a very fine buy or it is what you have been looking for: 

The oppressive afternoon heat was insufferable because the roof of the stopped bus was getting hotter and the wind was gusting in through the door like flames. People sat waiting impatiently for the door to be shut and the bus to start, but the insolent conductor did not budge. He stood, calling passengers and looking around as though he were the very owner of the bus together with its passengers.

When the passengers became deeply irritated by the conductor’s behaviour, they started shouting at him. But he walked to and fro on the pavement, looking for more passengers. Slowly, the clamour rose high. ‘We’ll take another bus.’ ‘Friends, let’s leave this bus if he does not listen to us.’ ‘Leave him crying for passengers until late evening – he deserves it.’ It was only when a few of them came at the door with their luggage that the conductor came back shouting out ‘No passenger travelling to a request stop’. He then sat down on his seat and exhorted passengers to get tickets. A dozen people queued up in the gangway and several others began to pass notes to him.

Another half an hour passed and the bus still stood motionless. The driver, resting his left hand on the gear lever and the right on the steering wheel, looked behind him again and again. Nothing else happened. The emperor of the bus, who seemed to have a mind of his own, sat tearing the tickets, quite unmoved by every hue and cry; and not until he finished his job off did he raise his head to pull the bell. Anyway, the driver finally switched on the ignition and the click of the lever sounded like a divine note.

After a brief silence, a babble of voices rose ................