I had a lot of "bus-friends," as my mother used to call them. If one travelled an hour by the same bus everyday from home to college and was garrulous enough, it's the easiest thing to make friends on the daily trips. Though I never mixed with them socially in any other way, they were more than just acquaintances. Through our conversations, I knew about their families, where they studied or worked, their interests and the people in their lives. So they did broadly come under the category of friends.

Vandana was one such friend. She appeared on our "bus scene" suddenly one day. She must have been 26 or 27, was good-looking and smartly dressed, always wore lipstick and carried an umbrella. At first, I thought she was a snob as she kept aloof and wouldn't talk to anybody, most often staring out of the window. As I had enough friends on the bus without having to befriend a snooty type, I left her alone.

One day, she happened to be sitting when I got into the bus and she asked to take my bag and file from me to keep. This was a custom amongst the regulars on the bus as they appreciated the fact that it would take almost an hour to reach our destinations and that managing to hold on to our bags in the crowd was an arduous task. But I had not expected Vandana to do it. As luck would have it, I got the seat next to hers and thanked her as I got my stuff from her. Then we got talking.

She talked as much and as eagerly as me and seemed completely different from the person I had imagined her to be. She was new to the city and state. A Malayali brought up and married in Bombay, she and her husband had just moved to my suburb to live with her in-laws. She had been married for about three years and did not have any children. She worked in a private firm and from what I gathered, her husband worked out of home. Unfamiliarity with Tamil accounted for her aloofness, as she had found out not many people could speak English or Hindi.

After that, we became firm bus-friends. She seemed glad to have somebody to speak to in English but never said anything personal. She missed Bombay, where her parents and two sisters still lived. (The umbrella was a hangover from her days there - protection against the rain and the sun). She talked about her college life, her friends, the books she liked and a little about her office. There seemed to be something amiss; she would seem preoccupied at times and I would catch her looking out of the window with a sad look on her face.

Then suddenly for days together I didn't see her. I found out from another bus-friend that her husband had passed away; he had had cancer, they knew he didn't have much time and that's why they had shifted, to be with his parents during his last days. I was stunned. My heart went out to Vandana as I thought of the pain she must have been carrying all those days I knew her, yet not able to talk about it to anyone. I never saw her after that but her sweet, sad face is still a fresh memory.