The Sonata Watch

This morning, I was on a plane from Bengaluru to Chennai. As I sat on my seat, I noticed the man next to me wore a gold-coloured 'Sonata' wristwatch and it brought me back to that first time I travelled home from Delhi. 

I was 14 years old at the time and my mom was worried that I was too young to travel back alone from Delhi to Mizoram. Back then, there wasn't a flight connection between Delhi and Mizoram. So, we had to take a 36 hours train ride from Delhi to Guwahati. And then, from Guwahati to Aizawl, we had to take another 16 hours bus ride. From Aizawl to my hometown it was another 9 hours bus ride. 

Somehow, my mom found another girl who was about 17 years old at the time that was also going back the same time as me. So, together, we went back from Delhi to Assam by train, and from Guwahati we took a bus to Mizoram. Once inside the bus, my friend, being the older one, graciously made me sit next to the window while she took the aisle seat.

Now, our travel dates coincidentally was in July, the worst monsoon period in the mountains. During this period, it was a given thing that somewhere between Assam and Mizoram, there would be a road block caused by landslides. Sometimes the roadblock lasted for few hours, at times even up to a week. We'd frequently get stranded on the road for days at a time, relying on food bought/given by nearby villagers, other commuters. (How I used to hate the mountains then!)

It so happened that, on this trip too, there was yet another landslide just before we reached Solan in Nagaon district, Assam. During the night, the bus halted in the middle of nowhere and all of us were informed that there was a landslide and situation was too dangerous to venture further so, we'd wait there on the road at night and re-assess the situation after the next daylight. 

With nothing we could do, we went back to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, my friend vigorously shook and woke me up. I was confused. 

"Yes, what happened?" I asked her. 

She was shaking. "That guy at the back was fondling my breasts while I slept!" 

"What?! Which one?"

"That guy in the last seat, middle one. What should we do?"

I craned my neck to look at the man. It was too dark to see his face as all the lights were switched off inside the bus. I could see a thin man who appeared to have dark skin. 

"I don't know. Should we scream or complain to the bus driver?"

"I don't know!" she replied. 

We discussed options. We'd never experienced this before. We were in the middle of nowhere, in state of Assam where we didn't know anyone or spoke their language. It would be wiser to wait until sunrise and then complain about him. People would wake up by then, and there might also be other Mizos in the bus and other stranded buses like ours. 

"Yeah, let's ensure he gets a good slap. How dare he!! In the meanwhile, we must keep guard and not let him escape. If he tries to leave the bus, we will scream. Let's do an alternate sleep watch." We agreed. 

But that was not to be so. We just did the 36 hours shitty-train ride and boarded that bus straight from the train station. Not to mention that we were growing teenagers, very much infused with the sleep hormone. 

Both of us fell asleep. Unknowingly. 

By the time we woke up, the sun had risen and half of the passengers had got down from the bus, including our culprit. We got down the bus and search for him. Totally futile move. 

There were passengers walking about from our bus and at least 3 other stranded buses. There were so many Indian (Aryan featured) men and all of them looked exactly the same to us!! 

I think we pointed at all the men asking ourselves, "Is that him?" "No, that guy looks at us, maybe that's him?" or "That guy, he's thin. Is that him?" 

That wasn't all. 

After our failed suspect/culprit identification, we decided to sit down by the road so we could fully focus and remember the man's face. That was when my friend looked down and saw that she was wearing this  cheap, 'Sonata' gold coloured wristwatch on her right arm. 

That bugger,  for some reason, in addition to fondling her breasts, also made her wear his watch while she slept. 

"How did that happened?!" 

Was it before or during the fondling, or after we kept 'guard' and fell asleep? We had no idea!

Oh the trauma, anger and helplessness we felt!! 

The guy never came back to the bus and we ended up giving the wristwatch to this one drunk Mizo guy who happened to be in the same bus as us.  

To this day, every time I see a Sonata wristwatch with a gold-coloured metal/stainless steel chain, I laugh.