Waiting, indefinetly

He walked into the restaurant as commandingly as he could. The place was deserted, except for the dark man reading a newspaper by the door. He looked up almost frightened. There was a man in the restaurant! At 11AM! And he was American! What to do?

The American set down his heavy pack slowly against the wall on a seat alongside a table in the back. Then he took the smaller bag slung across his shoulder off and laid it alongside. Then he sat down, trying to look grim. Determined. The man at the door left the newspaper and called to another man who spoke English.

"You have food?" asked the American. Both dark men were stunned. "Food," he repeated. "Lunch?"
"Yes. Lunch. Breakfast..." anything, just quit looking like that.
The American looked at his watch. It was 11:07.
"You know. Lunch? Lunch."
The dark man who spoke English suddenly understood the word. "Lunch, yes. Dal... rice... chappati" he formed each word carefully. The American nodded.
Both dark men disapeared into another room where they yelled to another man to begin making a thali. Once they were gone, the American relaxed and sank his head into his hands. He had been waiting already for nearly 5 hours.

At first the waiting wasn't that bad. There were four buses leaving for Hanumanchatti, at least according to the station attendant the day before. He had written them down in a shaky hand on a loose scrap of brown paper that the American now held in his pocket. He had woke before dawn and packed his things into the large bag then set out down the road through the sleepy town as the sweepers cleared away the nights garbage from the streets. At the chowk he turned left down a steep set of cement stairs to the lower road where the buses came and the taxis waited to steal away newcomers and people who were too impatient to wait for a bus.

The taxi drivers were one-note birds. Each had their own call.
"Yes Sir Taxi" was one. "Ah, Taxi Dehradun" was another, and still more common was the "Dehradoon Dehradoon Dehradoon!" He frowned them all off and headed straight for the ticket window where a different old station agent sat behind the small grated metal hole than the day before.
"Which bus is to Hannumanchatti?" he asked. This sparked some sort of a discussion with other men whom he could not see. They seemed not to be of much help.
"Hannumanchatti Parala." said the agent.
"Will there be another bus? Later on?"
"Sorry. My English is not Hindi so good."
"Okay," said the American laughing to himself. So much for that method. Even if he missed the first bus there would still be 3 more throughout the day. So he waited.

First he smoked a cigarette. That killed about 10 minutes. Then he bought some chips to eat, at which point the sun came out and it got to hot to sit out on the cement stairs so he moved into a shaded building with benches in it. The taxi drivers had forgotten who he was in 20 minutes and all tried to get him to go to Dehra Dun again.

A boy came out from the back room of the restaurant and handed him his plate of thali. It was steaming hot and he thanked him. The boy recessed off to a corner and watched the American eat. The American put aside the story he was writing while he had been waiting for his food. He decided it was finished anyway. The story read: "After I finished sleeping, I woke up."

At the time the second bus was set to leave all the buses in queue were sightseeing buses filled with fat men and their happy burgeoning little families.
"Where does this bus go?" The American asked, leaning his head in the door.
One man punched another next to him, apparently the English speaker of the bunch, and he stuttered: "This tour bus. Day tour. To Kelty."

The American had waited and watched them all go, smoking another cigarette. He had resigned himself to one smoke per hour for as long as it took. Once all the sightseeing buses had gone he waited some more by looking at the crowd melt in the morning sun. Occasionally he would see a woman with long dark hair and a stunning shape. But whenever those women turned around they were holding babies. Or they were prepubescent. No single women walked around this bus stand. Or this country. They were all either budding breasts or milking ones.

The waiting would have been easier if it wasn't for all the honking. All the buses honked as they arrived. Honked as they backed into their waiting gates. Honked as they left. All the passing cars honked at the pedestrians. Honked around each blind curve. They honked to signal that they were backing up. They honked to signal they were moving forward. When cars jammed into the part of the road where the gravel obscured one lane and channeled everyone to the right, everyone honked all the time. Once a car had gone past another car waiting to come through it honked to say 'thank you for yeilding, asshole.' The honking was giving him a headache.

He ate the lunch they gave him and was almost finished by the time the boy came out with the rice. He had forgotten about the rice. He ate that too and then paid the boy, who relayed the money to one of the dark men, who gave him change, which he relayed back to the American. The American left a large tip and saddled his bags back onto his shoulders. He decided to smoke another cigarette while he waited. The cars honked at him as he stood and smoked, so he backed up into a wall. "Ah sir, taxi?" asked a taxi driver.

The third bus should be along in about an hour he thought. 1 o'clock. So he went back to the agent at the window to confirm. 1:15 the agent said.
"Where should I go?" asked the American, "where will the bus be?"
"Go up to the chowk," said the agent.

The American went up the hill in the blistering midday sun to the chowk. No buses were stopping here. There were fruit sellers and trinket merchants and fat happy families weaving in and out of the bustling honking bazaar, casting odd glances at him. Why was he here? Why did he have that large backpack?

He waited until 1. Then 1:15. Then 1:30. A bus drove passed and the thought struck him that he would need to flag it down in order to board, or even to find out if it was going where he wanted to go. But he didn't flag it down. There would be another bus along sometime around 3. It occurred to him that he might end up waiting, indefinitely. Then it occured to him that that would be another good story.