Chapter 20 - A Mad Man

 

20

 

            The winter bus had become familiar to me now.

 

            Not the bus itself…buses change, drivers change, conductors change, passengers change every few kilometres…but the feeling inside it had become familiar. The fogged-up windows. The smell of woollen shawls carrying traces of old cupboards. The coughing of old men. The silence of tired labourers returning home before darkness completely swallowed the roads. The way people sat closer in winter, not because they loved each other more, but because cold teaches humans what loneliness cannot.

 

            Outside, evening had already started dissolving into fog.  The bus moved slowly along the highway like an old thought refusing to leave the mind.

 

            I had taken this route many times before…during burning summers, dusty monsoons, and now deep winter. The roadside shops looked smaller in winter. Even the trees appeared tired. Dogs curled near tea stalls. Farmers wrapped blankets around their heads while standing beside fields where smoke rose from burning crop remains.

 

            And near the old broken milestone beyond the canal bridge…I saw him again.  The same man.  The same unwashed shawl hanging from one shoulder.  The same tangled hair.  The same uncertain eyes staring not at vehicles, but somewhere beyond them.  The same slippers…one torn, one different from the other.  The same walking style, as if his body had forgotten where it was supposed to go.

 

            Months earlier, during summer, I had first noticed him standing beneath a neem tree near that highway. At that time the heat was unbearable. Everyone looked irritated by existence itself. Yet that man had stood there quietly, smiling at empty air.

 

            Today, in winter, he was still there.  Not exactly in the same spot, but within the same forgotten geography of society. 

 

                        The bus crossed him quickly, but something inside me remained standing beside him.  I kept looking through the rear window.  A little later, I noticed a truck slowing near him through the dusty rear glass. The driver shouted something playfully, and the man climbed into the back casually, as if highways themselves knew him well.  A strange discomfort entered me.  Most people inside the bus had not even noticed him.

 

            A young couple whispered softly as if protecting a private world inside the noisy bus. An elderly passenger argued with the conductor about two rupees. Near the window, a child drew shapes on the fogged glass with his finger.  Life continued normally.

 

            Only I seemed disturbed by that lonely figure.  Perhaps because repetition gives reality a deeper meaning.  Seeing a stranger once is coincidence.Seeing the same stranger repeatedly becomes a question.

 

            Who was he?  Where did he sleep during winter nights? Did he have parents once?  Did someone somewhere still wait for him? Did he also once travel in buses wearing clean clothes, carrying dreams in his pocket? Or had he always belonged to roads and dust?

 

            The conductor came shouting for tickets, breaking my thoughts.  I handed him money and looked again outside.  Winter fields passed silently under fading light.  Sometimes I feel roads remember people better than cities do.  Cities erase faces quickly. Roads do not. Roads keep collecting footsteps like old diaries.

 

            That madman had perhaps become part of the highway itself now…like a broken signboard nobody repairs because everyone has adjusted to its existence.

 

            A few kilometres later, the bus stopped near a tea stall.  Passengers hurried downward.

 

            Winter tea has its own religion in Northern Region. No sermon can unite people faster than steam rising from a steel kettle on a cold evening.

 

            I also stepped outside.  The cold air struck my face sharply.  Near the tea stall stood a bonfire made from cardboard and dry branches. A few drivers warmed their hands around it.  And then I heard someone laughing loudly.

 

            Not ordinary laughter.  The kind that sounds half-childlike and half-broken.  I turned instinctively. 

 

            It was him.  

 

            The same man.  He stood near the edge of the stall, rubbing his hands together and smiling at nobody visible.  For a moment I felt shocked, almost as if some unfinished thought had suddenly taken human form before me.  People around him behaved in predictable ways.  Some ignored him completely.  Some smirked.  One teenager mocked his walking style to impress friends.  A shopkeeper waved his hand impatiently whenever the man came too close.

 

            Yet the man himself seemed detached from all reactions.

 

            He kept staring toward the fire.  Not asking for tea.  Not asking for money.  Only looking at warmth.  That sight pierced me strangely.

 

            Human beings can survive hunger longer than they can survive exclusion.

 

            Cold outside is painful.  Coldness from society is worse. 

 

            I bought tea and stood silently nearby.  The tea seller noticed me looking toward the man.

 

            “He’s mad,” he said casually while pouring tea into small glasses. “Keeps roaming around this highway. Sometimes disappears for days. Then comes back.”

 

            “Does nobody know him?” I asked.

 

            The tea seller shrugged.  “Who cares? Maybe family threw him out. Maybe he ran away. These mad people have stories nobody has time for.”

 

            That sentence stayed inside me.  Stories nobody has time for.  Perhaps that is how madness begins.  Not suddenly.  Not dramatically.  Sometimes a person slowly becomes invisible until his own mind stops believing he exists. 

 

            The man came closer to the fire now. Someone pushed him lightly away.

 

            “Stay back,” a truck driver snapped. “You smell terrible.”

 

            The madman looked at him blankly.  Then suddenly he smiled.  Not insulted. Not angry.  Just smiling.  That smile disturbed me more than anger would have.  Because it carried surrender.  The surrender of someone who has been humiliated so many times that humiliation no longer reaches the heart.

 

            I walked closer and handed him a cup of tea.  For a second he stared suspiciously, as if kindness itself had become unfamiliar.  Then he took the glass carefully with trembling fingers.

 

            “Hot,” I said softly.

 

            He nodded.  And then something unexpected happened.  He looked directly into my eyes and said: “Winter becomes easier when somebody remembers you.”

 

            I froze.

 

            Before I could respond, he walked away slowly toward the roadside fog, sipping tea carefully.  Not shouting.  Not behaving wildly.  Not speaking nonsense.  Just walking like a tired philosopher abandoned by civilisation.

 

            The bus horn blew loudly.

            Passengers began climbing back.  But my thoughts remained near that sentence.

 

            Winter becomes easier when somebody remembers you.

 

            Inside the bus, heaters did not work properly. Windows carried thin moisture patterns. Night had deepened now.    I sat quietly while darkness moved beside us.  The highway lights appeared and disappeared like uncertain memories.  And I kept thinking about madness.

 

            Society has a very convenient habit.

 

            We first break people slowly.  Then we mock the shape of their brokenness.  A child ignored becomes “strange.”  A lonely man becomes “unstable.”  A woman carrying invisible grief becomes “difficult.”  An old man talking to himself becomes “mad.”

 

            Labels are often society’s method of avoiding responsibility.  Sometimes people are not destroyed by tragedy.  They are destroyed by continuous small abandonments.

 

            A father never listening.  Friends disappearing during failure.  Humiliation repeated casually.  Poverty eating dignity daily.  Dreams dying silently.  Love turning transactional.

 

            The mind is not stone.  Even walls crack under constant winters.

 

            I remembered an incident from my Army days.

 

            Once, near a remote posting, there was a soldier everybody mocked quietly. He spoke less, forgot instructions occasionally, and stared into distance during conversations. Officers considered him mentally weak.

 

            One night during duty, I sat beside him for hours. Slowly he began speaking.  His wife had died during childbirth.  His child had survived but lived with grandparents far away.  He had never received leave during her final illness because operational conditions were tense.  After that, something inside him had changed permanently.

 

            He was not weak.  He was carrying unfinished grief.  But institutions often measure efficiency, not wounds.

 

            Years later I realised something painful:  Many people called mad are actually people whose sorrow exceeded society’s patience.

 

            The bus moved through dense fog now. Visibility had reduced greatly. Even headlights looked tired.  Passengers had become quieter too.  Winter nights create accidental philosophers.  Perhaps darkness helps people hear their own thoughts.

 

            An old woman near me whispered prayers softly while counting beads. Across the aisle, a young man slept with his head against the vibrating window. A labourer covered his face entirely with a shawl, exhausted beyond dreams.

 

            And somewhere outside, that wandering man continued walking through cold roads nobody truly owned.

 

            I wondered where he would sleep tonight.  Under a bridge?  Near a closed shop?  At a bus stand bench?  Or perhaps nowhere permanently.

 

            Maybe society had turned movement itself into his home.

 

            There is a special loneliness in being recognised everywhere but welcomed nowhere.

 

            I looked outside again.  Fog had hidden almost everything now.

 

            Only occasional silhouettes appeared briefly…trees, electric poles, tea stalls, stray dogs…before disappearing again.

 

            Life itself feels similar sometimes.  People enter visibility for a moment, then vanish into personal fogs.  Yet certain faces remain. 

 

            That madman’s face would remain with me now.

 

            Not because he was strange.  But because he reflected something uncomfortable about humanity itself.  Civilisation proudly builds universities, flyovers, shopping malls, and digital networks.

 

            Yet it still fails at one simple task:  Keeping wounded people emotionally alive.

 

            The richest societies often produce the loneliest minds.  Perhaps madness is not always an illness.  Sometimes it is exile.  Exile from acceptance.  Exile from conversation.  Exile from dignity.  Exile from belonging.  And once someone is pushed outside society’s emotional circle, the same society points fingers and says:

 

            “Look… a madman.”

 

            The bus finally entered the town.

 

            Shops glowed under yellow winter lights. Vendors sold roasted peanuts beside roads. Smoke rose from food stalls. Life looked normal again.

 

            But inside me, something had shifted quietly.

 

            I realised that every city probably has such forgotten figures wandering through its edges…people carrying invisible collapses.  And perhaps humanity should not be judged by how it treats successful people.  But by how gently it treats those who have fallen outside usefulness.

 

            As I stepped down from the bus, cold wind touched my face again.

 

            Somewhere far behind, beyond fog and highways and sleeping fields, that wandering man was still walking.  And strangely, he no longer seemed completely mad to me.  Maybe he was only standing outside a world that had itself lost balance long ago.

 

            Sometimes the person talking alone on the roadside is not the only broken one.

 

            Sometimes the entire society is speaking nonsense together…only more fashionably dressed.

Chapter 19 - A Roadside Tea Stall

 

19

 

            Winter evenings have their own hunger.

 

            Not the hunger of the stomach alone..but the hunger of warmth.

 

            That evening, the bus had been moving through fog-covered roads for hours. The windows had turned pale with mist. Passengers kept rubbing circles on the glass with their palms to look outside, but the world beyond seemed unfinished. Trees appeared for a second and disappeared again. Electric poles stood like lonely soldiers guarding sleeping villages.

 

            Inside the bus, silence and noise were sitting together.

 

            Someone was snoring in the back seat.   Some boys were watching comedy videos on a phone without earphones, forcing the whole bus to hear broken laughter.  A mother wrapped her child inside a shawl like protecting a small secret from winter.  An old man kept coughing softly into his muffler.  And the conductor, tired of shouting destination names all day, now sat quietly near the door counting crumpled notes under the dim yellow light.

 

            Winter journeys make people impatient.  Every passenger begins searching for small comforts…a little sunshine, a little leg space, a little human kindness… or sometimes just a hot cup of tea.

 

            Suddenly the bus slowed down with a tired groan.  Outside stood a roadside tea stall glowing under a weak bulb.

 

            The driver shouted, “Five minutes only!”

                       

            But every passenger knew that “five minutes” at a winter tea stall actually means fifteen.  Before the bus had even stopped properly, passengers rushed toward the stall as if someone had announced free salvation.  For a moment, it looked funny to me.  People who had been sitting lazily for hours suddenly became athletes.  Blankets fell.  Bags slipped.  Sleep vanished.  Even the old coughing man walked faster than before.

 

            Because tea during winter is never just tea.  It is temporary hope served in a glass.

 

            Steam rose from the aluminum kettle like prayers escaping toward the sky. The tea seller moved quickly with blackened hands hardened by years of heat. His stall was tiny…just a wooden counter, a stove, some hanging biscuit packets, and a bench tilted slightly to one side.

 

            Yet in that cold evening, it looked more important than luxury hotels.  Sometimes life reduces happiness to very small things.  A dry place during rain.  A chair during tiredness.  A hand during grief.  And tea during winter travel.

 

            I also stepped down from the bus.

 

            The cold air hit my face sharply. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked at nothing visible. A tractor passed slowly through fog carrying sugarcane. From another tea stall farther away came the smell of burning coal.

 

            I ordered tea and stood quietly near the stove.  Passengers surrounded the stall with the seriousness of politicians surrounding power.

 

            One man shouted, “Less sugar!”

 

            Another said, “Extra strong!”

 

            A third asked, “Put ginger!”

 

            A fourth wanted disposable cups because he feared infections.

 

            The tea seller nodded at everyone with the patience of a saint who had already accepted humanity’s foolishness long ago.  And then I remembered another tea stall incident from years earlier.

 

            It happened somewhere in another town.

 

            That tea stall stood directly opposite a police station. I used to stop there occasionally during travel. The owner was a thin middle-aged man with tired eyes and extraordinary observation skills. He knew more about human nature than many professors.

 

            One afternoon I was standing there with a cup of tea in my hand when suddenly a CRPF truck stopped near the stall.  Around fifteen or sixteen constables jumped down together.  Heavy boots.  Rifles hanging.  Dust rising.

 

            One of them shouted cheerfully, “Oye bhai, make tea for all of us!”

 

            For a moment I thought the tea seller had become lucky.  Sixteen cups together meant good business.  But to everyone’s shock, the tea seller immediately refused.

 

            “No,” he said calmly. “I cannot make tea for all of you.”

 

            The constables laughed, thinking he was joking.  One of them even took out money in advance.

 

            “Take payment first then,” he said. 

 

            But the tea seller shook his head stubbornly.  “No. I have to serve the police station people and other customers too. I don’t have enough milk.”

 

            The CRPF men looked surprised.  People nearby exchanged confused glances.  Even I was shocked.  Which shopkeeper refuses sixteen customers?

 

            The constables waited a little, smiled among themselves, and then finally left after buying biscuits and cigarettes only.

 

            For days that incident remained in my mind.  Not because the tea seller refused business…ut because he refused it without fear.

 

            A few days later I again stopped at that tea stall and asked him the reason.  He laughed while washing glasses in hot water.  Then he said something that still makes me smile.

 

            “Sir, if I had made sixteen cups for them that day, then sixteen complaints would also have arrived.” 

 

            I laughed.  But he continued seriously.

 

            “One would say sugar is less. Another would say sugar is too much. Third would complain tea leaves didn’t boil properly. Fourth would ask why the tea is cold. Fifth would compare it with tea from another state. Sixth would want more ginger.” 

 

            He smiled knowingly.  “Sixteen cups… thirty-two complaints.”

 

            I burst into laughter.

 

            The tea seller also laughed and continued pouring tea into glasses as if he had decoded humanity completely.  That day while returning, I kept thinking about his words. 

 

            Human beings are strange creatures.  We ask life for blessings… and after receiving them, we immediately begin reviewing them.  We complain inside comfort.  We criticize inside safety.  We search for flaws even while drinking warmth in winter.  Perhaps dissatisfaction is humanity’s oldest addiction.

 

            Back at the present tea stall, passengers were still busy giving instructions.  One man returned his tea saying it was too cold.  Another demanded more sugar.  A woman complained the cup was dirty.

 

            The tea seller silently adjusted everything without argument.  And suddenly that old tea seller’s words echoed again inside me:

 

            “Sixteen cups… thirty-two complaints.”

 

            I smiled alone.

 

            The man standing beside me misunderstood and asked, “Tea is good?”

 

            “Yes,” I replied softly, “very good.”

 

            But I was not talking about the tea.  I was talking about life.  There is something deeply philosophical about roadside tea stalls.  Rich and poor stand together there.   Officers and laborers drink from similar glasses.  Travelers from different religions warm their hands around the same stove.  For five minutes, social status becomes weaker than winter.  Even silence tastes similar there.

 

            A young boy at the stall was continuously washing used glasses in a bucket of lukewarm water. His sweater had holes near the elbows. Yet he kept smiling while serving everyone quickly.

 

            I wondered whether he attended school.  Or whether life had already employed him permanently.  Winter often exposes invisible workers.  Tea sellers.  Drivers.  Night guards.  Bus conductors.  Roadside mechanics.  People who remain awake so others can travel comfortably.  Society remembers successful people.  But civilization survives because of unnoticed people.

 

            The bus driver stood apart smoking quietly.  Drivers have a different relationship with tea.  For passengers, tea is refreshment.  For drivers, it is responsibility.  A sleepy passenger risks missing his stop.  A sleepy driver risks many lives.

 

            I noticed his tired eyes staring into the darkness ahead. Perhaps he was mentally calculating the remaining distance, the fog density, dangerous turns, and hidden potholes.  Some professions never fully relax.

 

            Army life had taught me that.  Even during rest, a soldier’s mind remains half-awake.

 

            Perhaps that is why I always observe drivers carefully during long journeys. In some silent way, they resemble soldiers…carrying strangers safely through uncertain roads.

 

            The tea arrived in my hands.  The glass was too hot to hold properly.  Steam touched my face.  And suddenly the entire winter evening felt softer.  It is strange how quickly tea changes human behavior.   People who were irritated inside the bus now stood peacefully.  Arguments paused.  Phones disappeared into pockets.  Hands became warm.  Faces relaxed.  Tea does not solve problems.  But it temporarily makes problems sit quietly in one corner.  Perhaps that is enough sometimes.

 

            An unsaid truth of life is: “Human beings survive not only on food…but on pauses.”

 

            A pause between two struggles.  A pause between two responsibilities. A pause between yesterday’s regret and tomorrow’s fear.  Tea stalls provide those pauses.  That is why travelers love them.  Not because tea is extraordinary……but because life becomes slower there for a few minutes.

 

            I looked around carefully.

 

            One passenger was staring silently into the steam rising from his cup as if remembering someone far away.  Another was laughing loudly with strangers he would never meet again.  A truck driver was warming both hands near burning coal.  Two village boys were sharing one tea because perhaps buying two was unnecessary luxury.  A stray dog sat near the stove understanding that kindness usually becomes easier in winter.

 

            The fog grew thicker.  Somewhere distant, a train horn floated through the night.  And for a brief moment, the tea stall no longer looked ordinary.  It looked like a temporary shelter built by humanity against loneliness.

            Perhaps that is what all small gathering places really are.  Tea stalls.  Bus stops. Army bunkers.  Hospital waiting rooms.  Railway platforms.  People arrive there as strangers but leave after silently sharing pieces of the same human exhaustion.

 

            The conductor suddenly shouted, “Let’s go! Bus leaving!”

 

            Immediately peace broke again.  Passengers hurried back carrying unfinished tea, biscuit packets, peanuts, and urgency.  One man burned his tongue trying to finish quickly.  Another requested “one parcel tea.”  Someone forgot gloves on the bench and returned running.

 

            Life resumed its movement.  I stood for a second before boarding.

 

            The tea seller was already washing glasses for the next group of travelers who would arrive soon from another direction, carrying different stories and same tiredness.  Roadside tea sellers witness thousands of lives without becoming part of any.  They hear political debates, love stories, business failures, family tensions, exam worries, drunken confessions, and travel frustrations.

 

            Yet they remain standing beside boiling kettles like silent philosophers.  Perhaps wisdom does not always live in libraries.  Sometimes it stands beside highways making tea.

 

            I climbed back into the bus.  The windows had fogged again.  Passengers wrapped themselves once more inside blankets and silence.

 

            The engine started heavily.

 

            Outside, the tea stall slowly moved away into darkness until only its tiny yellow bulb remained visible.  Then even that disappeared.  But warmth remained inside.  Not only from tea…but from the realization that human life moves forward through such tiny pauses.

 

            We think great achievements keep people alive.  But often it is smaller things.  A conversation.  A memory.  A hand on the shoulder.  A winter tea stop during a long journey. 

 

            The bus moved deeper into fog.

 

            Someone near the back seat had already started snoring again.

 

            And I smiled quietly near the window thinking:  “Perhaps peace is not a destination.  Perhaps it is only a five-minute tea break during a difficult journey.”