Memories of a ₹1 Ticket
In the pocket of an old red bag, I keep a few of my treasured memories. One of them is a ₹1 ticket.
Let me take you back to June 2004. I stood at an empty bus stop with my grandfather, staring into the horizon for the faint outline of the local bus. Soon enough, just beside the orange glow of the sun, a pale blue shape appeared.
It was my first day of fifth standard, and for the first time I would travel to school by city bus. Until then, it had always been the school bus or my own two feet. This felt like a leap.
The bus lurched to a stop, brakes squealing. My grandfather nudged me forward and we climbed in together. The bus was half-full — schoolchildren in uniforms, office-goers with bags slung low. The air smelled of diesel, the wind from the open windows ruffled the hair he had carefully combed that morning.
The conductor came by, coins clinking in his pouch. My grandfather handed him a ₹10 note and said, “Richmond Circle, one and a half.” Two tickets were torn and handed back. He held on to his, and passed me the other.
It was no longer than my index finger, stamped “01-00” in blue. I studied it with awe. A ticket so flimsy, yet mine. When the wind threatened to blow it away, I stuffed it into the breast pocket of my light-blue shirt and guarded it as if my life depended on it.
I wish that is where the memory ended — simple, proud, unspoiled. But alongside the joy comes the ache of what followed. Years later, as a teenager, I fought with my grandfather over something so silly I cannot even recall it now. What I do remember is my pride. I turned my face away. He tried to reach out. I ignored him, certain I was the bigger man.
That silence lasted until 2020, when his heart stopped before my pride did.
He had been the man who opened my world — slipping me R.K. Narayan’s stories, teaching me how to read the newspaper, guiding my first formal letter, even helping me raise money for an orphanage. All of that, and still I stayed silent.
It has been five years since he passed. And every time I take out that ticket, regret presses on my chest like a stone. A one-rupee stub, fragile and weightless in the hand — yet heavier than anything I have carried since.