The old engine stutters to life as the beaten-down bus prepares for daily commute. Three middle-aged women, all wearing dark shades, rush to claim the first row of seats, oblivious to the fact that it is theirs by law. Although the rest of the bus is empty, the three of them choose to cram together in camaraderie, smiling even as their closeness brings on mild discomfort. The woman on the far-right struggles as she opens the tainted window, only to close it soon after succeeding. “Too much dust,” she says, even as the rise in mercury draws a trickle of sweat down her forehead.

A young kid of maybe 13 hops on the bus to report for duty, wearing tattered shoes and a visibility vest that is not so visible because of the dirt. In as coarse a voice that he can manage, without breaking a cough, he makes a declaration for the start of the journey. The bus comes to motion, but at an ever so sluggish pace. For some reason, my eyes are fixated on the young man’s shoes. How long did he have to wear these to get it so dilapidated? And how much longer does he intend on wearing them? I look up at the boy, but he doesn’t seem to care. His hawkish gaze is fixed on the pedestrians strutting along the sidewalks. To every person the bus passes by, the boy puts forth a proposition “Ratnapark? Sundhara? You want to go?”. Some people wave him off, others just ignore him. A few of them acquiesce, but it’s not like they needed an invite.

As the bus meanders through the lazy streets of Kathmandu, my eyes bear witness to the passing houses, the people and the stray dogs. But these visuals only end up transitioning to the sight of the shoes. I find myself falling prey to the magnetic spell from a seemingly inanimate object, which against all reason, feels so alive. It’s as if his shoes, having aided the boy in every step of his life, bear the story of his existence.

Slowly my gaze moves up from the shoes to his pants. The dark blue of the colour suggests a public school. For some reason, my subconscious conjures up an image of the boy as being amongst the brighter bunch in his class. But then again, it’s midday on a Monday and he is nowhere near a school, now is he?

As I fiddle with my thoughts, the three women up front are busy having a conversation of their own. One of them opens her purse to give the boy a hundred rupee note. He takes the cash only to hand it back quickly.

“This one is torn.”

“But I got this while riding on a bus,” says the woman in protest.

“That doesn’t make it right. There’s no way I’ll take that,” replies the boy firmly.

The woman says something incomprehensible in discontent, but nonetheless takes the note back and hands the boy another one—marking the end of that chapter. Other kids grow with age. This kid right here grows with experiences like this.

What was I doing when I was his age? I go back through the corridors of time, but all I can come up with is an opaque and scattered recollection of an uneventful childhood wasted playing Beyblade and Pokemon. But that’s the idea, isn’t it? As a kid under a certain age, your life simply consists of a routine where you don’t do anything worthy of recollection. You eat, play, sleep, study, excrete and that’s about it. I would even argue that an uneventful childhood is the right of a child. But tragically, a lifestyle as such is not going to work for this young man over here.

Take for instance the earlier incident of the torn hundred rupee note. Had he responded with the naiveté, innocence and temperament of a youngling, he wouldn’t be able to get the respect that his role demands. Unbeknownst to him is the fact that society, not just the politicians, has robbed him of his childhood, forcing him to grow up, more rapidly and quickly than others his age. The silver lining is that at least the kid doesn’t need to get to ninth grade to know about Darwinism, especially when his own life is the personification of the term “survival of the fittest”.

The bus comes to a stop and the three women waddle off, all the while maintaining their conversation as they take it someplace else. The boy shuts the door on the world outside, quickly as if to not let the temptations get the better of him. And while he does a very good job of playing the role of this mature man, there are brief moments when his innocence shines through. Little gestures like tapping the floor to the imaginary beats going on his head; the way he keeps fiddling with the chain of his jacket even though there is nothing wrong with it; these and a few other traits offer glimpses to the side of him that he so desperately wants to suppress.

As old faces disappear into the world outside, new ones board in. The once empty bus now only has a single seat to offer. Just when the vehicle is about to get on the move, the boy bangs on the door—the telltale sign that a passenger is coming.

“Where?” inquires the driver as he tries to spot the reflection of the potential commuter in the side mirror.

“Leave him be,” he adds after seeing the approaching figure of the man some 50m away. “The other bus might overtake us.”

The driver hits the accelerator, and for the first in the commute—thanks to the bus lurking behind us—we move along at a good speed. The vehicle makes a sharp turn, and I sway to my right, succumbing to the centrifugal force of the moment. As I lean to the body of the stranger beside me for support, I get a glimpse of his shoes—the second pair that gets my attention today. It’s not as tattered as the boy’s, but there is one thing quite peculiar about it. The brand on the shoes reads ‘Aike’, as opposed to what you’d normally expect with the tick mark. I immediately smile thinking of Lebron James and his multimillion-dollar deal with the footwear company, which in this time and place means absolutely nothing to these people.

Everyone in this country seems to know how to be content with what they have. Part of me even thinks that all these tourists swarming our valleys are here to look, not at the mountains

and rivers—cause that’s literally in every continent—but at the people, at us; so that when they go back to their lives, they can feel a little better about themselves the next time they want to complain about the lack of any materialistic possessions. The way the everyday Nepali accepts things as they are makes for an almost stoic approach to life.

The bus comes to a stop and four people get on, all of whom are forced to contort as they try to squeeze in on the remainder of the small space. Suddenly there are no shoes in sight and there’s no road in sight. There’s no man; there’s no woman; there’s no rich; there’s no poor. All of us combine and transform into a unified group. The light becomes dim and the fresh oxygen supply is hindered. But somehow it works. Not just today, but always. In this moment of vulnerability, all you have as guidance is the coarse voice of the youngling who’ll hopefully get you to your destination—and he does. This is when you realise that his age and his mettle is not shown on his birth certificate; it is reflected clearly and visibly on his tattered sneakers.

“Let’s make some space. We all have to go somewhere,” says the kid in an attempt to assuage the murmurs of discontent that he, from experience, knows will die down soon enough. Alas! If only our politicians were so accommodating. But then again you cannot expect people who don’t take public transportation to be aware of the golden rule of life in Kathmandu—there’s always room for one more.