Chapter 2 - The Girl on the dusty Road

 

2

 

 

            A few days later, I found myself once again near a bus window.

 

            Perhaps that is the strange thing about roads - they never allow thoughtful people to stay away for long. After my previous journey, life had returned to its ordinary rhythm, yet something inside me still wandered among highways, villages, and unknown faces.

 

            That morning, the bus rolled slowly out of the town and entered the open countryside.

 

            June had grown harsher now. The fields shimmered beneath the burning sun. Farmers worked silently in distant corners of land while dusty winds moved lazily across the roads. Inside the bus, passengers carried their own worlds - some sleepy, some lost in mobile phones, some staring outside without expression.

 

            I rested my head lightly against the window.

 

            And then I saw her.  A schoolgirl walking alone on the side of the village road…Perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old.

 

            White salwar. Blue kameez. Faded school bag hanging from one shoulder. A few notebooks pressed tightly against her chest as if they were something precious, something that could not be allowed to fall.

 

            The bus crossed her within seconds. 

 

            But something about her remained in my mind.  I turned my neck slightly to keep watching until she disappeared behind a cloud of dust.

 

            There was nothing extraordinary about her appearance.

 

            No dramatic scene.

 

            No tears.

 

            No cinematic background music.

 

            Just a village girl walking under the ruthless afternoon sun.

 

            Yet my heart suddenly became heavy.  Because I knew that road.  Not the exact road perhaps, but the kind of road.  A road where dreams walk silently.  A road where ambition has no audience.  A road where nobody claps for your struggle.

 

            The bus continued moving, but my thoughts remained with the girl.

 

            How far was her school?

 

            Three kilometres?

 

            Five?

 

            Maybe more.

 

            In villages, distance is not measured the way cities measure it. A city child complains if the school bus arrives five minutes late. But village children often walk miles daily without complaint. Their shoes break quietly. Their uniforms fade quietly. Their dreams also grow quietly.

 

            No motivational speaker ever comes to those dusty roads.

 

            No giant banners say: “Believe in yourself.”

 

            No social media influencer records videos there saying: “Rise and grind.”

            No coaching institute promises: “Guaranteed success.”

 

            And yet, every morning, thousands of children still walk toward schools carrying invisible hopes.

 

            The girl I saw was one among them.

 

            I began imagining her life.

 

            Perhaps she wakes before sunrise.  Maybe her mother shakes her gently from sleep while darkness still hangs over the village.  Maybe she helps knead dough before school.  Maybe she fills water from the hand pump.  Maybe she feeds cattle before touching her books.  Then she walks several kilometres to attend classes in a building where fans barely work during power cuts.

 

            Still she studies.

 

            Still she memorises lessons.

 

            Still she writes answers carefully in neat handwriting.

 

            Still she dreams.

 

            Dreams are strange things.

 

            In cities, dreams often become fashion.

 

Children announce them proudly:

“I want to become this.”

“I want to become that.”

 

            Parents upload achievements online. Certificates become social media posts. Success becomes public performance.

 

            But village dreams are usually quieter.  A village child rarely announces dreams loudly because life teaches caution very early.  Dream too much, and people laugh.

 

            Study too much, and relatives ask:  “What is the need?” 

 

            Especially if the dream belongs to a girl.

 

            I looked outside again.

 

            The road had become emptier now. Heat waves rose from the earth like invisible smoke. Somewhere far away, a tractor moved slowly through fields.

 

            And suddenly I remembered my own school days.

 

            How easily we forget our beginnings once life moves ahead.

 

            There was a time when even reaching school felt like achievement. Some children crossed canals. Some travelled on broken bicycles. Some studied under lanterns during electricity cuts.

 

            Yet today society only celebrates the final result.  Nobody sees the road.  Everybody applauds the officer.  Nobody remembers the child who once walked barefoot to school.

 

            The bus stopped briefly near a small village chowk.

 

            A tea seller climbed inside carrying a steel kettle.

 

            “Tea... tea...”

 

            A few passengers bought cups lazily. The conductor shouted for people to hurry.

 

            Near the bus stand, I saw two little girls sharing one ice cream while standing under the shadow of a closed shop. Both were wearing school uniforms.

 

            Again my thoughts returned to that girl on the road.  What kind of future waits for children like her?  That question disturbed me deeply. 

 

            Because villages are full of unfinished stories.  A brilliant student leaves studies because the family cannot afford further education.  A girl tops her class but gets married at eighteen.  A boy prepares for exams while also working in fields.  Another abandons school because the nearest college is too far away.

 

            Talent is everywhere.  Opportunity is not.

 

            That is the real tragedy. 

 

            We often speak proudly about successful people from villages. We celebrate rare examples like miracles.  But perhaps the bigger truth is this:  For every person who succeeds, hundreds disappear silently into responsibilities.  Not because they lacked intelligence.  But because survival arrived before opportunity.

 

            The bus started moving again.

 

            An elderly woman sitting nearby suddenly spoke to another passenger about her granddaughter. 

“She studies very well,” she said proudly. “Wants to become a doctor.”

 

            The other passenger smiled politely, but I noticed uncertainty in his expression.  Maybe he was calculating expenses in his mind.  Maybe he knew how difficult such dreams are for ordinary families.

 

            Education in villages is not only about intelligence.  It is about endurance.  Endurance against poverty.  Against distance.  Against social pressure.  Against hopelessness.  Against the invisible belief that some people are simply not meant to dream big. 

 

            I closed my eyes for a moment. 

 

            And in my imagination, I saw that schoolgirl years later.  Perhaps she becomes a teacher.  Perhaps a nurse.  Perhaps an officer.  Or perhaps nothing society considers “successful.”  Maybe she eventually marries into another village and spends her life managing household responsibilities.

 

            But even then, would her struggle become meaningless?

                       

            No.  Because education does something deeper.  Even when it does not change income immediately, it changes awareness. It changes the way a person sees the world. It changes how mothers raise children. It changes how families think.

 

            A single educated girl can quietly transform generations.

 

            That is why the sight of girls walking toward schools in villages always feels powerful to me. 

It is not merely movement.  It is resistance.  Resistance against centuries of silence.  Resistance against limitations accepted as destiny.  Resistance against the belief that rural lives should remain small.

 

            Outside the bus, clouds had started gathering slowly.

 

            The harsh sunlight softened a little.

 

            Somewhere children were flying kites from rooftops despite the heat. A group of boys played cricket in an open ground using bricks as wickets.

 

            Life never stops completely in villages.  Even hardship learns to smile there.

 

            I suddenly wondered whether the girl knew the value of what she carried against her chest.  Those books.  Simple notebooks.  Perhaps covered with brown paper.  Maybe names written carefully in blue ink. 

 

            To the world, they looked ordinary.  But for many village children, books are not objects.  They are doors.  Doors toward dignity.  Toward confidence.  Toward escape.  Toward possibility.  And sometimes, simply toward self-respect.

 

            The tragedy is that privileged people often underestimate silent struggles.

 

            A student sitting in an air-conditioned coaching centre may never understand the determination of a girl who studies after completing household work under a dim bulb.

 

            One studies with resources.  The other studies with hunger. And yet both appear for the same examination.  Life is rarely fair.  But perhaps courage is born precisely from unfairness.

 

            The bus crossed another village.

 

            Outside a government school, I saw a faded slogan painted on the wall: “Padhegi Beti, Badhega Desh.”  The paint had cracked.  Part of the sentence had faded under rain and sunlight.  Yet somehow it looked beautiful to me.  Because even faded hope matters.

 

            I thought again about modern society.  Today everybody wants quick success stories.  Thirty-second motivational videos.  Instant inspiration.  Instant fame.  Instant results.  But real struggles do not fit inside short videos.

 

            Nobody records the girl walking four kilometres daily under burning heat.

 

            Nobody posts reels about mothers saving coins secretly for school fees.

 

            Nobody applauds fathers who continue educating daughters despite financial pressure.

 

            These stories remain invisible.  Perhaps that is why they are pure.

 

            The bus entered a rough patch of road and shook violently.  Passengers adjusted themselves irritably.  A child began crying.  The conductor moved through the aisle collecting fares.  Ordinary scenes.  Ordinary people.  Ordinary journeys. Yet somewhere among them lived extraordinary endurance.

 

            I looked outside once more and saw another lone figure walking along the road - this time a boy carrying a school bag.

 

            For a moment both images merged in my mind.  Thousands of children.  Thousands of dusty roads.  Thousands of hidden dreams walking silently every day across villages of India.  Without applause.  Without headlines.  Without guarantees.

 

            And suddenly I realised something.  Perhaps the real strength of this country does not live in famous speeches or television debates.  Perhaps it lives in these unnoticed journeys.  In the farmer working under brutal heat.  In the mother waiting for her child outside a government school.  In the student studying despite uncertainty.  In the girl walking alone on a village road carrying books against her chest like fragile hope itself.

 

            The bus moved ahead endlessly.

 

            But my thoughts refused to move on.  Long after that girl had disappeared from sight, she remained seated beside me like a question. 

 

            A painful question.

 

            How many dreams are still walking alone on dusty village roads while the world remains too busy to notice them?

 

            And another question followed quietly behind it:

 

            If those children continue walking despite everything…then what right do the rest of us have to surrender so easily?

 

Chapter 1 - The Farmer

 

1

 

            The bus arrived with a tired groan, as if it too had already lived through half the day before sunrise. Its faded blue body carried scratches of forgotten journeys, political slogans written in dust, and fingerprints of countless passengers who had held onto its iron bars while life rushed past them. I climbed in slowly, adjusting the cloth bag hanging from my shoulder, and searched for a window seat. A bus journey without a window seat always feels incomplete, like reading only half a novel.

 

            It was the middle of June.

 

            Even at seven in the morning, the air already carried the warning of a cruel afternoon. The sun had not fully risen, yet the roads looked exhausted. Tea sellers beside the bus stand were pouring steaming tea into small glasses while flies circled lazily around sugar jars. A few labourers sat silently on a broken bench, their lunch wrapped in old newspapers. School children, half awake, leaned against their mothers. Conductors shouted names of destinations with the urgency of men who believed the world might end if one passenger was left behind.

 

            I sat beside the window and wiped the glass with my handkerchief. The bus jerked forward with a sudden cough of smoke. Slowly, the town began slipping behind us.

 

            Morning roads have a strange honesty.

 

            People are not yet hidden behind the masks they wear later in the day. Faces look natural, worries look genuine, and conversations have not yet become performances. A milkman riding a bicycle with two silver cans tied behind him. A shopkeeper sweeping dust outside his shutter before opening the shop. A stray dog stretching lazily under a tree. These ordinary scenes often feel more truthful than the loud speeches given by powerful men on television every night.

 

            Inside the bus, passengers settled into their own small worlds. Some closed their eyes immediately as if sleep were a form of resistance against life itself. Some stared continuously into their phones. An old woman took out prayer beads and whispered something under her breath. Two college boys discussed cricket with the seriousness of philosophers discussing the future of civilization.

 

            The bus moved out of the town and entered the open countryside.

 

            Fields stretched endlessly on both sides like giant green oceans frozen under the sun. Tube-wells stood silently like lonely soldiers guarding the land. Buffaloes rested near muddy ponds, flicking their tails lazily against flies. Occasionally the smell of wet soil entered through the window, carrying memories older than language itself.

 

            For nearly an hour, I remained lost in these moving pictures.

 

            There is something deeply spiritual about watching villages from a bus window. You never fully belong to the scene, yet for a few seconds you become part of it. A woman washing clothes near a hand pump. Children running barefoot behind a tractor. An old man sitting under a tree smoking a hookah. The bus keeps moving, but fragments of their lives remain sitting beside you long after they disappear from sight.

 

            By ten o’clock, the heat had become merciless.

 

            The sunlight no longer fell softly upon the earth. It attacked it.

 

            The metal frame of the window had become too hot to touch. Dry wind entered the bus like air from an open furnace. Passengers began covering their heads with towels and dupattas. The conductor’s shirt was soaked with sweat. Even the trees outside appeared defeated, their leaves hanging motionless as though surrendering to the afternoon.

 

            And then I saw him.

 

            Far away in a field near the road, a farmer was working alone.

 

            At first he looked like a dark moving shadow against the burning land. The bus came closer, and slowly his figure became clearer. He was bending repeatedly, perhaps clearing weeds or preparing the soil for another crop. His turban was soaked with sweat. His clothes clung to his body. The earth around him looked cracked and thirsty. There was not a single tree nearby to offer shade.

 

            Yet he continued working.

 

            The bus sped ahead, but my eyes remained fixed upon him until he disappeared behind clouds of dust.

 

            Something about that man refused to leave my mind.

 

            Inside the bus, debates had already begun.

 

            One passenger was criticizing politicians. Another blamed religion for the country’s problems. Someone else argued loudly about corruption, caste, and unemployment. A young man wearing earphones interrupted occasionally to give his opinion gathered from social media videos watched late at night.

 

            The arguments grew louder.

 

            Each person spoke as though truth belonged exclusively to him.

 

            Yet somewhere behind us, under the brutal June Sun, that farmer continued working silently.

 

            No speech.

 

            No ideology.

 

            No performance.

 

            Only labour.

 

            I leaned my head against the vibrating window and kept thinking about him.

 

            Perhaps distance from noise protects certain souls.

 

            Cities produce clever minds but tired hearts. Villages, despite poverty and hardship, sometimes preserve a kind of inner simplicity that educated urban people slowly lose. In cities, every opinion becomes a weapon. Every conversation becomes a battlefield. People endlessly discuss humanity while becoming less human with each passing year.

 

            But farmers rarely have the luxury of such noise.

 

            The soil does not care about political debates. Crops do not grow through social media arguments. The land demands sweat, patience, and silence. Perhaps that is why many villagers still possess a certain honesty that educated society often mistakes for ignorance.

 

            I remembered how people in cities proudly announce their ideologies at parties, offices, and online platforms. They divide themselves into camps and tribes. Religion against religion. Language against language. Rich against poor. Left against right. Every person convinced that he alone understands justice.

 

            But the farmer in that field probably had no time for these fashionable wars.

 

            The Sun above him was real.

 

            The thirst was real.

 

            The debt was real.

            The crop failure was real.

 

            And perhaps because his struggles were real, his mind remained free from many artificial conflicts created by comfortable people sitting in air-conditioned rooms.

 

            The bus stopped briefly near a roadside stall.

 

            Passengers rushed out for water bottles and cold drinks. I remained seated near the window. Outside, the road shimmered under the heat like melting glass. A little boy carrying cucumbers walked from bus to bus hoping someone would buy from him. His face looked dry and tired, but every time a passenger looked at him, he forced a smile.

 

            I bought two cucumbers from him.

 

            As he handed them over, I noticed his fingers covered in dust and tiny cuts. Children in cities spend summers inside malls and gaming rooms. This child spent his summer walking on burning roads under a punishing sky.

 

            Again the same thought returned to me:

 

            Who truly understands life more deeply?

 

            The educated man discussing morality online?

 

            Or the farmer who silently feeds strangers?

 

            The child selling cucumbers to support his family?

                       

            Or the city intellectual writing essays about poverty from expensive cafés?

 

            The bus resumed its journey.

 

            Fields continued passing like scenes from an endless documentary. Somewhere women were transplanting paddy with their feet buried in muddy water. Somewhere an old farmer repaired a broken water pipe with bare hands. Somewhere smoke rose slowly from a brick kiln under the white afternoon sky.

 

            India often survives not because of its powerful people but because of ordinary people who continue working quietly despite disappointment, heat, and neglect.

 

            The farmer I had seen earlier became larger inside my thoughts than he had appeared in reality.

 

            I imagined his life.

 

            Perhaps he had woken before dawn. Perhaps he had checked the electricity supply for irrigation during the night. Perhaps he carried loans on his shoulders heavier than sacks of grain. Perhaps his children studied in some distant town while he continued battling weather, market prices, insects, and uncertainty.

 

            Yet no television debate would ever invite him.

 

            No newspaper headline would celebrate his endurance.

 

            His suffering would remain private, buried inside the fields like seeds waiting for rain.

 

            The bus crossed a small canal.

 

            Water flowed slowly beneath us, reflecting harsh sunlight like broken mirrors. A group of boys jumped into the canal laughing fearlessly. For a moment their laughter cut through the heat and noise like fresh rain upon dry land.

 

            Life is strange that way.

 

            Pain and beauty travel together.

 

            Exhaustion and hope sit beside each other like silent passengers inside the same bus.

 

            I noticed an elderly man across the aisle staring outside just as deeply as I was. Our eyes met briefly. He smiled faintly, as though he too had spent years learning from roads instead of books.

 

            Perhaps all travelers become philosophers eventually.

 

            Continuous movement changes a person.

 

            When you sit by windows for long enough, watching unknown people pass through unknown villages, you slowly realize how temporary everything is. Human ego begins looking foolish. Our arguments, ambitions, and rivalries suddenly appear very small against the endlessness of roads and seasons.

 

            The bus entered another town around noon.

 

            Shops blared film songs through dusty speakers. Rickshaw drivers waited lazily under trees. Fruit sellers sprinkled water over watermelons to keep them cool. The heat had emptied most streets. Even stray animals searched desperately for shade.

 

            As passengers prepared to leave, I looked once more toward the distant fields visible beyond the buildings.

 

            Somewhere out there, countless farmers were still working under the cruel June Sun.

 

            And perhaps none of them knew that a stranger passing through in a noisy bus had carried their image deep into his heart.

 

            The conductor shouted the name of the stop.

 

            I stood up slowly, holding the warm iron rod for support as the bus trembled to a halt. Before stepping down, I looked back once at the long aisle filled with tired passengers, hanging bags, sleeping children, and dust floating through sunlight.

 

            A bus journey is never only about reaching somewhere.

 

            Sometimes it quietly introduces you to truths that were waiting beside the road all along.

 

            That day, the truth wore a sweat-soaked turban and stood alone in a burning field beneath the merciless June sky.