Quite a ride

By Godaya

Godaya commutes. Almost two hours each way, every day. When one lives around 60 km away from work, one has to do that. The office bus (which for some weird Italian-influenced reason is called City of Verona) is one awesome place.

When you spend almost four hours with a bunch of people, they kind of grow on you, and become second family. Which has happened with the "citizens" of City of Verona. Last Christmas, we had a Christmas party. We celebrate birthdays with high spirits. We have a wedding coming up. We have become second family.

To use a cliché, we're so tight, we make spandex look slack. And to (mis)quote from the movie Bruce Almighty, the bus is like one big cookie. But with a lot of nuts thrown in. Let me start at the back, and move forward. Describe the interesting characters that make up City of Verona.

Sitting next to me, is my mom. The only interesting thing about her, is her son. Next to that, is the wise-uncle-from-the-bus. An ex-soldier of sorts, he's now working for an international humanitarian organisation. He's full of wise and enlightening insights, witty stories and anecdotes. In addition, he has an endless supply of funny emails.

Moving forward, there is the registrar. Interesting would be an understatement. He's not the marriage-funeral registrar type, but one wishes he was. He's actually the registrar of [Censored]. There is (among others) the lawyer-akki, then religious-one-who-is-not, the VIP, and the tax-consultant. I shall talk about the rest of them on another day.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, recently our beloved pilot messed up his back. And we had a replacement pilot coming in. All of us pooled in (well, mother dearest pays for me) got a whole bunch of goodies and went to see him. It's all very family-like.

Which brings me to point of writing this. Sometimes you get close to people you never thought you would warm up to. And in some weird little way, they grow on you. And one day when they are gone, even for a short while, you look back and realise that a large part of your life was with them, and sometimes you regret not spending enough time with them, or giving them the (metaphorical) cold shoulder.

Be it from the bus, work, classes, school, or even the roadside shop where you get vadai from, open up to the people you spend a large part of your life with. Because when they are gone, you'll definitely miss them. Just like I'm going to miss everybody at office during the next week.