It seemed like any normal bus trip home. The single deck bus 240 service plys the old Boon Lay neighbourhood and alot of foreign workers and elderly folk take it to commute from the Boon Lay Shopping Center area to Lakeside mrt station or Taman Jurong Estate. It was relatively crowded but I managed to secure a green-cushioned seat somewhere near the front, where the "Please Give Up This Seat..." yellow notice was.
A couple of bustops later, an elderly chinese man, probably in his seventies or eighties, carrying a red-colored polythene bag, boarded the bus. At this point, there were a few empty seats near the front, including the one beside mine. He paused for a moment, apparently contemplating between the seat adjacent to me or the one across the aisle. Surprisingly, he suddenly spoke in a gruff yet dulcet tone, crisply and unaccented, "Boleh duduk sebelah?"
"Sure! Duduk ar..." I almost stammered, rather taken aback at having been addressed by a complete stranger. And with that, he staggered a couple of steps forward and plonked himself down.
He was indeed an ancient specimen of a man; with the thinnest snow-white hair, small beady eyes and a gaunt, crinkled face sullied with the brownish pigments that afflict the aged. The left side of his body was leaning against mine, as if for support, with the gnarled fingers of his left hand clutching tightly at his groceries and skinny elbow conveniently resting on my lap. Seconds later, with his right hand, he fished out a banana from somewhere within the depths of his plastic bag and offered it to me roughly, as a passerby would to a dirty stray cat or dog.
When I politely refused, he rebuked disapprovingly, "Orang dah kasi, tak boleh tolak.."
I reluctantly accepted it, thinking a further refusal might only offend him. (Someone had told me once that old people can be rather sensitive about such things.)
Within the next few minutes, while munching on a banana or two, he quizzed me, in a few curt questions, about where I lived, what I was doing, whether I was married, etc. Common small-talk. I have to admit that I have a soft spot for feeble old folks, probably because my grandparents died when I was too little to remember and my grand-aunt passed away sometime late last year not long after surviving a debilitating stroke.
Out of the blue, the old man turned his head to face me and grinned wickedly (and toothlessly), "Eh.. dah keras!" And then, I felt it...
He was rubbing my groin area with his bloordy elbow!!!
It dawned upon me like a ton of bricks; he had evidently mistaken my scrunched-up denim for a hard-on! Instinctively, I gave him an incredulous look and pushed his arm away in disgust -- "But not too hard lest I break any of his freaking, fragile bones" was the wry thought that echoed in my head.
"Tak suka ke? Sikit aje.. Tak kasi rasa lagi ke?" was that vile decrepit's response. He then proceeded to place his elbow as before...
Repulsed, I immediately stood up as straight as a jack-knife and alighted at the current stop, looking outwardly, I might add, as cool as cucumber, as if I had not a care in the world; I didn't want to give that old bastard an opportunity to gloat at my discomfiture.
As the doors flipped shut behind me, and the bus rumbled away in a flurry of carbonised dust, I finally felt the mad rush of warm blood to my brain, surging like the molten lava that accumulates at the mouth of a volcano before it erupts. It was, I thought at that point in time, the most ridiculous moment of my life!
I realised then, that I was still holding the banana in my hand. Suffice to say, it landed at the bottom of the nearest bin.
