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.