I will not leave you behind!!

Amit Prakash Gupta
3 min readMar 8, 2021

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I just want to love you.. ..Oh, yeah…..Keeping score - It was my phone. I picked up the call, dharni was on the other side.

dharni: we got delayed to aarav’s school again. I reached the bus stop just in nick of time but the bus captain was the same guy who derives pleasure by leaving passengers at bus stop.
me: ohh man!! Someday you gotta ask him why is he running away from you :D

Nasruddin was a proud captain of 137 and he just finished his morning shift. While waiting for his bus back home - he observed a kid who was smiling from one ear to another..

Nas: Hey man!! How are you doing? Why are you so happy?
Kid: I helped a friend win the race.
Nas: You could have won instead no?
Kid: Whats worth winning — the race or people with your kindness? bye bye..and there he went.

Nas sat in the bus to punggol and went back to his thoughts.
3 year old brown kid in the school, behind in studies, behind in sports, behind in making friends with stuttered speech. Still remembered that incident which isolated him from everyone else - his lunch boxes. It always had nasi briyani or just the lamb soup many times. He passed his secondary exams with difficulty.

He did not know what he wanted to do in life and then he met Jonathan who told him about vacancy for captain. And then he started driving the bus 137.

He looked up his bag and removed a pile of papers — a lot of winnings. Everyday he used to maintain a log how he kept shortening the drives by stealing few seconds between bus stops and many a times leaving people behind unintentionally. When he looked up the mirror it seemed the people were giving him thumbs up and wanted him to press on the peddle harder…They wanted Nas to win…from laggard to someone who comes first all the time. As soon as he was on the driving seat — his race was on —
1] race outside to come first / finish faster and
2] race within his mind vs the body

What was he doing exactly? Maybe he was running from himself — is the unintentional leaving people behind or not able to see make people smile were his winning ways?

Somebody woke him up — the bus has reached punggol and will be taking stop. Was it a dream or did he really went in flashback? Whatever it was, it helped him see the light at the end of the tunnel.

He reached home and there was a smile on his face which said how his tomorrow will be. Wife hugged him tight and whispered in his ears — you are glowing.

Nas saw Dharni and Aarav running for the bus and he stopped looking at the back mirror. He saw nas , the brown kid, was running along and giggling.

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