Looking for an Hotel

[FranktheFrank]

I look and strain my eyes but cannot see anyone who even
slightly resembles the person personnel had described
would be waiting to greet me and usher to a nice comfortable
hotel. They did not actually say the words, ‘comfortable’
or ‘nice’. I felt it was implicit, me being management.

There was no one there, that being the case, get on with it.
I waited at a bus stop, taxis are unreliable personnel had advised,
with my suitcase. I asked a native,
‘Does this bus go to the International.’ The man nodded.
Maybe he spoke English, but a nod would do. Perhaps he thought
why would an expatriate travel to a country not speaking the language,
not having an inkling of a single word of what is being said.
Why would he bother to answer such an ignoramus,
and yet he’d nodded quite affably. Maybe he didn’t want to show
that he didn’t speak English and was an ignoramus just like me.

Maybe. Here is a bus. I am caught up in the rush and am transported
into the doors. I get jammed in the door. Lots of voices, the driver shakes
his head side to side and points to the roof. Hands seize me, propel
me to a ladder outside, place my own foot on a rung until I realise
luggage goes on top.

Silly me. The driver accepts my five rupee note, a fellow traveller
it seems, well–worn and stained with what, I know not what.
He gives me change in strange coins some with centre holes.
I shout above the hubbub, ‘THE INTERNATIONAL.’
He smiles benignly as if I have been let out of an asylum
for the backward and the lost who never learned
to speak a civilised tongue.

Standing room only, when the bus lurches on a curve, our bodies
lurch with the centrifugal force. We rebound after the curve,
springs soak up kinetic energy and release. We rub up against
each other avoiding eye contact When the bus hits a pothole
we jump in unison. When it accelerates, we lean back,
when our driver races to beat the red light, and fails,
to break suddenly we dip forward and bow
as if he is a puppeteer and we dumb extensions
of his movements. He has polite manners and says,
‘Sorry,’ quite often. I feel he has, at one time,
either been a mechanic with or seen the film
circuit de la Sarthe.

The monsoon rain beats down on us, it drums the roof unrelentingly.
Vapour raises from us like spirits of the dead ascending moon wise.
The bus drives headlong into puddles which splash up
on the windows with a murky muddy mess. It is impossible to fall,
fellow travellers hold one up. The bus stops on its route to shed
intrepid passengers. Palm trees bend with the slash of the storm.

The press is getting easier, more people getting off than on.
I find a seat. It is hot. Sweat trickles down my back,
I worry about my suit, what executive wants to interview
a sweat–stained company rep. A woman joins me on the seat,
she is older, and speaks English when I advise of my intended
destination. ‘It is the last stop,’ she says, ‘We are going
on the roundabout route.’ I smile, it could be worse,
we could be on the way to Timbuctoo.

[BobBradshaw]

A good travelogue. Send it out to a flash fiction magazine.