Tour dẽ stink

At an early hour of the morning – 0800 hours, I call it early coz I don’t like to rouse up so early; I was in the bus to my office. It takes me around 1 to one hour and half to reach my office daily. In the bus first thing is to perform my daily ritual of hunting for the window seat. That too the seat should be on the right side facing the west, as I believe, I am suffering from some kind of phobia to sunlight which may temper with my daily nap of about half an hour in the bus. Although nothing gre8 about getting a window seat, every time I win it, I have a feeling of triumph in the war to wheedle out a hold on a gateway to the fresh air . Following the routine, I generally catch the morning news through the newspaper or browse thru some pages of a novel before my customary doze. But that day it was somewhat different and in the hurry to catch up for the meeting with client, I had forgotten the newspaper as well as the novel. Although, I emerged victorious in the battle to avoid a succumb to a perpetual non windowed claustrophobic world, I never knew that this window will be a kind of life cylinder.
Then came in the women I would rather call a poster of makeup and perfume, a placard which is trying to reflect that how the modern art of today is very much beyond the comprehension of the common man. But I must tell u that the canvas, her face, was very big which could accommodate tons of jewelry and make up stuffs and she made full utilization of the each square mm available. And as if to maintain the harmony her body was also rotund enough.
But one of the good things were that her eyes were not scrutinizing each and every seat. The general habit of the Ladies, in our office bus, is to inspect the seats and the next occupant suitably. It sometimes feels to me as if they are solving a Sudoku of these bus seats where they are the numbers and trying to find the perfect post for themselves. This lady rather had a sparkle in her eyes when she saw a seat next to me which was one of the very few vacant seats.
Now as she approached my seat, my nose enjoyed a feeble and sweet aroma of a ladies perfume flowing like a cold zephyr over a hot barren land. But as she came closer to the seat the aroma transformed to a strong whiff and then to an odor. Although it was definitely a perfume and not her body odor, this smell was somewhat unacceptable by my nostrils. I was missing a regulator through which I could control my smelling capability. Initially I thought its my aversion to the strong ladies’ perfumes which was making me feel irritated but as the time passed I felt as if this scent has permanently settled in my nose as an illegal encroachment and there is no way to get rid of this.
Some time later when I felt my half of the nasal hair are burnt by this stink I had to pinch my nose with my fingers in an unsuccessful attempt to seal the nostrils. Sweat was dropping from the forehead and I was feeling as been put into a gas chamber by Hitler, left to be choked to the last breath. My nose was cursing itself for being a specialist in sensing any kind of smell. This incident was topping my charts of encounter with suffocation superseding the previous champion – a choking experience in Mumbai local. Luckily ,the smell of an open garbage bean came to my respite. For the first time I was thankful to the municipal committee to let the garbage and peels of rotten fruits conspire against the so named fragrance of the lady.
I was feeling very cold, still I fully opened the window coz I preferred to die of cold fresh air then an anesthesia of the body spray. I felt like an insect who was found to be the culprit to offend a flower and was sentenced to a penalty of insecticides.
Luckily before the nausea would overcome my conscious, my bus reached office . As soon as the bus stopped I wanted to jump out of it but to my fate I had to follow the queue system and wait for my turn to come. This encounter with reek had left me dumbfounded and till date a shiver runs through my spine when I recall the moments of that tour de stink.