Bins and I pack for two separate bus trips, both originating in Boston. We leave home at 3 pm, cross to the other side of Broadway and hop onto a local bus to get us to the Peter Pan terminal.

We must reach South Station in good time to catch our onward buses. Particularly mine. I want to arrive early enough so that my sister doesn’t have to fetch me from the terminal at midnight. “Of course you will catch the 6 o’clock bus,” says Bins. “We’re supposed to reach Boston at 5.40. It’s a weekday. The traffic will all be streaming away, not towards the city.” But I’m more experienced in this department. “Nope,” I say. “You’ll see what happens in the final half hour — all three lanes will be stuffed tight with commuters.”

Sure enough: we approach the glittering metropolis at slug-speed, the brake-lights of the cars around us stretching like cherry-red beads all the way to the skyscrapers in the distance. Our driver, who has a terrible cold, has been sneezing and spluttering throughout. “You should have sat at the back of the bus,” whispers Bins to me. “Now you’ll be late for your connection AND you’ll have the grandfather of all colds.” But I am calm. Why? Because I bought a ticket on the 7 o’clock Greyhound to Hartford, knowing that I’d arrive too late for the earlier bus.

The bus pulls in to its dock at just before six. Bins and I get down, collect our suitcases, thank the still-sniffling driver and stroll into the bustling main hall. Departing passengers are standing in patient lines even as newcomers blow in from their journeys, their cheeks red, their eyes bright with the excitement of arrival. Then I turn around to see, right next to the door through which we have just arrived, there’s an outgoing bus: the 6 pm Greyhound Express to Hartford/New York. Still at the gate.

Hurdling over obstacles between me and the gate, I burst through the swing door and gasp to the driver, “I have a ticket to Hartford! But it’s for the 7 o’clock —” The driver says, “Just show me the ticket, Miss! I’ve got to GO!” Then he leaps down, clangs open the luggage bay, hurls my small suitcase in and says, “Sorry, I just don’t have time to talk—” as I clamber in. Bins and I are both beaming like a pair of Cheshire cats as I wave goodbye. Then I fall into the first seat available and the bus roars off into the night.

My seat companion is a fellow South Indian, a software engineer by profession but motivational speaker by inclination. We spend the entire journey talking as if we were long-lost friends. The driver keeps having to stop to fix a malfunctioning panel in the back, five times in all. We arrive 20 minutes late. But my sister and niece are at the station to receive me. And we speed away, wreathed in happy smiles.

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

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