An unimportant important decision

 

Quiet but her thoughts scream inside her, looks lonely but has a world of herself, looks fragile but even the worst nightmares don't scare her, pretends to be unaware but she could write a  book about the topic of discussion. Looks can be deceiving. And her looks have deceived a lot of humans.

She has been mistreated thinking she was not aware of what was going on.  She has been deceived, that's what people thought. She has known all along about that but chose to stay quiet. She has been charged more than she was meant to be charged. Yet she didn't speak up, she found bliss in seeing people smirk at their victory or their foolishness.

A typical example came when she had to travel. An ongoing bias against conductors had always caught her interest. She always thought one man could not determine the characteristics of the whole population in the profession. But since she started to travel by bus she got close to the topic at hand.  The more she got on the bus, the more she realized why people had this thinking about this topic. The belief that every one of them was not so was fading away.

Then she came across an incident. She was sitting in the second last seat of the bus and the conductor forgot to take her fare and then the fight inside her head began. Past times when conductors had seemingly taken advantage of her came rushing into her brain.

She tried calling the conductor back to hand over her fare. Her voice didn't come out. Something was stopping her maybe the tit for tat feeling. Maybe a feeling of revenge sparked inside her.  Maybe when she saw him cheating on an aunt to take more fare her will to call him back diminished.

She wondered will I be the same as him if I decide not to hand him over the fare which he seemingly had forgotten. Will I be dishonest? But he took more fare of the aunt than he should have taken. The battle between her values and her rationality then began.

She was in a daze. She was not in the belly of the beast but she was uneasy and restless. The bus had passed her stop and still she was still thinking about what should she do. Time passed and distance swiped away. The last stop arrived, she was still thinking.

She then got up from her seat when the bus came to halt and walked like a tortoise to the door. She had decided, the little fare made no difference to the conductor but it would leave her uneasy. Even if she didn't pay him he would continue smirking while cheating on another passenger. But she would think of her as a dishonest person and her value system would be cracked.

She would not want a stain on her self respect. So she moved ahead and called the conductor who was in his world after collecting the fare and completing his duty. She handed over the money, and he looked at it in confusion. "Dai vhada" she said and he took it and give her the change.

Then she walked away from the bus proud of herself that she had stuck to her values. That didn't last long though. She panicked she was already too far from her stop. Now what?