We spend three days in Boston staying with friends before I return to Elsewhere on my own. Rocky and Bins, having bonded during the India trip, decide to go out camping in Vermont. Needless to say, they leave me with their luggage: one giant suitcase full of laddoos and the other giant suitcase full of books. My giant suitcase is filled with table linen and Fabindia cushions with mirror-work covers to give away as gifts. The wonderful thing about cushions is that 20 of them can be squished down tight and I can still pick up the suitcase with one hand.

Their bus leaves before mine. We say our farewells and I settle down to wait. But the incoming bus from Cape Cod is an hour late. The 4.30 departure is merged with the 6.30 bus. Thick clouds are hanging low over our heads when we finally leave at seven o’clock. At 7.15 it begins to rain. At 7.45 it begins to pour. At 8pm the driver announces that he’s going to have to make an emergency halt because his left front tyre has sprung a leak.

He pulls in to the nearest bus-station in a town called Plainsville. It’s closed for the night but he calls the local manager and gets him to open it up. It’s raining so hard we have to hold our breath leaving the bus for fear of inhaling water. We also have to wrestle our suitcases off the bus. Inside, the single-room bus station looks like it got remaindered in the 1950s: there’s a single tube light overhead and a single toilet, for gents and ladies alike, that seems like a World War II survivor. There are no chips in the self-service machine but the drinking water fountain is functioning.

The driver says he’ll “do my best” to get us a fresh bus before the night is out. There are 11 passengers: three women, eight men. I wonder whether to offer everyone laddoos but decide to do a Fabindia promotion instead. I hand out cushions and tablecloths, saying we might as well make ourselves comfortable. The handiwork is greatly admired. Someone brings out the sandwiches their daughter packed for them. Someone else shares a cylinder of onion-flavoured Pringles. We drink toasts to one another in water from paper cups.

At 10 o’clock, hallelujah! A fresh bus draws up. The rain has slowed to an ordinary downpour. We clamber back on. I tell everyone that they can keep their cushions and tablecloths on the condition that someone will help me get my suitcases from the road to my apartment building. The driver agrees to make an unscheduled halt right by my doorstep in view of the lateness of the hour.

It’s 11pm by the time we arrive. Six burly male passengers haul my cases off the bus and deposit them in my hallway. “Live long and prosper,” I say, giving everyone a packet of laddoos.

Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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