A crowd spills out of the movie hall, the second last show,

As a piercing scream rents the air.

The woman standing next to the boy in the tight jeans,

She screams. She is the first to not look away.

A young man had fallen off the bus that turns

Here and takes the road to the esplanade.

He lies in the road, next to parts of his brain,

In a pool of his blood,

“It’s suicide,” someone says.

“He was jilted by some girl, he took this way out.

Young people have too much license these days,

I blame cell phones.” He nodded to his audience, a pout

On his coarse, nicotine stained, lips. Someone says, an old man,

With a beard, “Suicide! The young nowadays have no respect.”

The commuter crowd swells as the tea stall regulars join it,

And the traffic policeman comes over, to serve and protect.

He pushes his way to the front of the crowd,

His walkie talkie buzzes, his buckles clink,

The woman who had screamed begins to cry. She is very loud.

The motherly-looking woman in a crumpled sari, pink, I think,

Pats her kindly, condescendingly. The bus driver still sits, cowed,

In his seat. The bus conductors have already run away.

The boy who cleans the glasses for one of the tea stalls, he is

The proverbial first to cast a stone. A hefty brick through the windshield,

Splinters of glass fall on the dead boy, the bus driver is dragged to the ground,

Beaten. More people come over, there are cars stopped everywhere,

A carnival atmosphere, freakish abandon, and hysteria, more people crying,

“Does his mother know?” thinks the woman in pink, “Poor thing.

I wonder how long it will be before I get home?”

“It’s the driver’s fault” another someone says,

One of the crowd pushing to get a shot at the hapless driver.

The police come a long time later, they quell the crowd, its thirst already quenched.

The crying woman is led away, and a lot more crying women appear.

They were there, they must have been, you just didn’t notice them before,

Before the TV crews arrived and started taking pictures.

The local MLA arrives, to posture amidst cameras,

Which, however, ignore him.

They are busy taking gory pictures

Of blood and blood, and the shallow, staring eyes of the corpse.

“The funds for the widening of the road are being allotted,” the MLA says,

To anyone who will listen.

There is a young man who shoulders past the traffic cops,

He takes out his handkerchief, he spreads it out in the air,

And he lets it fall on the dead boy’s face. He stops

A million tasteless gazes. He hides the boys face. Gives him a little something.

Dignity, maybe. Some privacy.

The policeman grabs his shirt, and jerks him away.

The crowd is scandalized.

“The young nowadays have no respect.” The old man repeats,

Blinking rheumy old eyes. “They have no respect for anything.”