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.