I boarded bus 195 yesterday afternoon and took an empty seat beside this middle-aged mustachioed Indian man who was to keep me busy throughout the journey. He was visibly interested in the MP3 player I was using from the curious glances he stole at it, making me feel quite uneasy. After a while he started speaking to me in his heavily accented English, most of which I couldn't quite catch so I'll just use '....' to subsitute.

Indian man: ..... your CD player?
Me: (bewildered look) This? It's an MP3 player.
Indian man: .....the handphone? ..... or CD player?
Me: No no, M-Pee-Threee player
Indian man: CD player? Is it?
Me: Alright, CD player (with the -_-'' face)
Indian man: ahh....(enlightened)

After that short exchange which I impatiently participated in, there was a brief pause and I thought it was all over, but to my horror he uttered a few more words in his impossible-to-comprehend language (at this point I started to suspect he hasn't been using English after all) and passed me a note with an address written on it. I assumed he was asking me where that place is so I quickly replied "it's a few more stops away" in my more-unfriendly-than-usual tone and turned away to ignore him. And then I alighted abruptly at my destination without taking another look at him.

It was after I got down from the bus that the guilty pangs started to hit me. Why did I behave so coldly towards him? So what if he is hard of hearing and inarticulate in English? What reason do I have to treat him so differently compared to how I would a young pretty lady, for instance? Is it his race? (no no, I'm far from being racist!) Is it his haggard appearance and I look down on him? Or is it the fact that I am too used to ignoring the person sitting beside me on buses, that I am always staring forward and pretending that the whole world of people out there did not really exist?

Sigh. I am such a let down of the four million smiles campaign.