The Return of the Retired Civil Servant - Part # 1
At eight in the evening, the city loosened its collar but did not rest. The air above the road held that particular Mumbai fatigue—warm, salted faintly by the sea, yet softened by dusk. From the front window of the upper deck, Sanjiv Sharma felt the wind flatten against his face and slide past him like a patient hand. He did not move. He allowed it to comb through the day.
The bus groaned into motion from Electric House, its body protesting the load of commuters who had decided, like him, that trains could wait one day. The conductor’s whistle pierced through layered conversations: office gossip, half-finished phone calls, arguments about cricket scores, someone explaining loudly how onions were again becoming a national crisis. The upper deck was a balcony to the city, and Sanjiv occupied the front seat like a quiet spectator to a performance he had seen all his life yet never tired of.
He worked only a few lanes away from the grand façade of Regal Cinema, folding shirts, stacking denim, convincing customers that a color suited them when it did not, and sometimes convincing them that it did when it did. Retail was theatre. He had learned to smile with the precision of a shop mirror: wide enough to reassure, narrow enough to conserve energy. Today the crowd had been relentless. A shipment had arrived late. Two customers had argued over a discount. A child had hidden inside a rack of winter jackets and refused to come out. By closing time his calves felt packed with sand.
The bus curved away from Colaba and began its slow northward crawl. Lights flickered alive in office towers like sequential thoughts. Sanjiv let his head rest against the metal bar and drifted inward.
He saw Chembur the way memory preferred it: not as it was, but as it had layered itself over years. His grandfather, Naik Havaldar Jairam Sharma, marched through those memories in sepia. A man of straight lines and polished boots. The old stories returned whenever Sanjiv grew tired: Poona Cantonment, the last years of British command, the strange pride of wearing a uniform that belonged to a country not yet fully its own. His grandfather rarely spoke of war, but he spoke of discipline as if it were a living relative. When he retired and moved with fellow soldiers to the emerging outskirts of Bombay, they carried their regimental camaraderie like a portable homeland. Chembur then was dust and promise. The Bombay Improvement Trust chawls rose in practical rows, unadorned, determined.
Sanjiv had grown inside those corridors of shared kitchens and shared arguments. Doors were rarely shut; privacy was a negotiable idea. His childhood smelled of frying onions, kerosene, incense, and damp newspapers. He had run barefoot across the corridor with Shalini, both of them scolded by multiple mothers who believed themselves collectively responsible. He smiled faintly at the memory of her braids, always too tight, her irritation at arithmetic, her triumph when she beat him in spelling tests.
The bus lurched. Someone laughed too loudly behind him. A ringtone erupted with devotional music. The city stitched itself back into his awareness.
He pictured Shalini now, probably coaxing Vijay into finishing dinner. Their son negotiated every spoonful as if it were a legal contract. Sunita, at three, would already be asleep, one arm flung across her pillow like a fallen dancer. Sanjiv felt a sudden swell of protectiveness so intense it bordered on fear. He wanted for them what he could not yet name in concrete terms—only a broad, shining assurance that their lives would travel smoother roads than his. Education, he told himself. That was the bridge. He had seen boys from the chawls become engineers, accountants, men who returned in cars that looked like visiting dignitaries. He did not envy them; he catalogued them as evidence.
The bus stopped again. More passengers pressed upward, filling the stairwell with the smell of sweat and talcum powder. An elderly gentleman emerged, gripping the railing with deliberate care. His hair was white but not defeated; it clung neatly to his scalp. He wore a pale shirt ironed with old-fashioned pride. A small cotton cloth bag dangled from his wrist, and a plastic bottle caught the overhead light.
He paused near Sanjiv’s seat, scanning for space. The only available spot was beside him. Sanjiv shifted immediately, knees angling inward to make room.
“Please,” he said.
The old man nodded, breath slightly labored, and lowered himself with a sigh that carried the weight of the day. He took a sip from his bottle, closed his eyes for a second as if sealing in the comfort, then leaned back. The bus resumed its rhythm. Outside, Marine Drive’s curve glittered like a necklace carelessly thrown on black velvet.
Sanjiv tried not to stare, but he felt the presence of the man the way one feels a book placed beside them—full of untold pages. He wondered about the cotton bag. It had the modest dignity of long use. His grandfather had carried something similar: documents, receipts, a folded umbrella, always arranged with military logic.
His thoughts wandered again, this time to the arithmetic of survival. Rent was stable for now, but school fees would rise. Shalini had mentioned English-medium tuition. He did not resent the expense; he resented only his own limitations. If he could climb higher in the shop—assistant manager, manager—perhaps one day he could open a small store of his own. He pictured a signboard: “Sharma Readymades.” The idea felt audacious and fragile, like glass warmed in the hand.
The elderly gentleman’s head tilted slightly, sleep flirting with him. The cotton bag slipped. It fell with a soft, final thud onto the floor, unnoticed by its owner.
Sanjiv reacted before thinking. He leaned forward, fingers brushing the dusty bus floor, and retrieved the bag. It was lighter than he expected. He tapped the man gently on the arm.
“Sir…”
The old man startled awake, eyes sharpening with embarrassed alertness. Sanjiv held out the bag.
“This fell.”
A flicker of alarm crossed the man’s face, then relief. He accepted it with both hands, as though receiving something ceremonial.
“Ah—thank you, thank you,” he murmured. His voice carried the rounded cadence of the south, polished by decades in offices where clarity mattered. “These old fingers, they betray me.”
They shared a brief laugh, the kind strangers exchange to confirm mutual goodwill. The man adjusted the bag securely on his lap and extended his hand.
“I am Chakrapani Srinivasan,” he said. “Retired civil servant. And tonight, apparently, a danger to my own belongings.”
Sanjiv shook his hand, surprised by the firmness of the grip. “Sanjiv Sharma. I work in Colaba. Going home.”
“Chembur?” Chakrapani asked, with uncanny accuracy.
Sanjiv blinked. “Yes! How did you—”
“This bus,” the old man said, gesturing grandly to their rattling chariot. “It carries only the faithful. We are a community of the tired.”
They laughed again, and conversation opened easily, as if it had been waiting. Chakrapani spoke of files and ministries, of decades spent navigating corridors where decisions moved slower than the ceiling fans. He had seen governments change like monsoon moods. Yet retirement, he confessed, was a stranger terrain. Time stretched differently. He now measured days by walks to the market and arguments with his gardener.
“And you?” he asked. “Family?”
Sanjiv described Shalini, the children, the chawl. He did not dress his life in apology; he narrated it plainly. Chakrapani listened with an attentiveness that felt like respect.
“Diamond Gardens,” the old man said suddenly. “That is where I live. A small bungalow. Old construction. My wife refuses to leave it. Says the walls know her moods.”
Sanjiv’s eyes widened. “I live near the railway station. In the old chawls. Five minutes from Diamond Gardens.”
For a second they stared at each other, mapping the invisible threads of proximity. Then the absurdity struck them. Two men, divided by architecture and income, carried nightly by the same bus, breathing the same tired air.
Chakrapani chuckled. “See? This city. It arranges us in different houses and seats us on the same bench.”
“Bombay is a grand equaliser,” Sanjiv said, the phrase arriving fully formed.
“Yes,” the old man agreed softly. “Here, the bus does not care who you were. Only where you are going.”
Outside, the city streamed past—shops closing, couples arguing gently, a boy racing a stray dog. Inside, on the upper deck, they rode in companionable silence, two residents of the same neighborhood, newly aware of each other, equal passengers in the long, humming vehicle that carried them home.
(c) Bharat Bhushan
16 February 2026
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