I checked the bus timings and my wrist watch one last time before I grabbed my bag and jacket and made a run for the main door. The exit door of the building was a few meters ahead and I had to reach the bus stop within 60 seconds. Because 60 seconds is the time the bus takes to reach the stop closest to my building from the bigger stop where it is scheduled to arrive at 10:11 PM.

I glanced my watch again as I pushed the heavy steel exit door with my tired hands. The minute hand was slightly past 11 minutes and the second hand was moving effortlessly towards the completion of another goddamn minute. The moment I stepped out of the artificially heated structure and stepped on the bare concrete pavement, a cold wind brushed past my ears, reminding me that I had forgotten to employ my jacket's hood. Straggling with my loose bag and flowing jacket, I managed to wear my hood and cover more distance towards the stop.

I saw the bus coming from the other side. It rode the pavement with a considerable effort and engaged itself against me in a 200 meter parallel sprint towards the final destination - the bus stop. I could hear my own cold escalated breath and the crunching sound of fallen leaves beneath my stamping feet. I realized the beginning of fall.

Not much later, about 30 seconds after, I made it to the stop and climbed the bus. The driver nodded and smiled at me in a manner athletes often do after finishing a race. But it wasn't him that caught me off gaurd. It was something else.

It was this strong stench flooded in the bus that caught me and my nostril hair off gaurd. The stench of alcohol. And noises and shrieks too.

Friday, Alcohol, What else? I thought and moved on.

I moved past many shoulders to find a seat at the back side of the bus, where nobody was daring to go and sit and why so, I don't know why. But I came to know the answer of 'why', soon after. The back side was more or less taken by the people who had troubled the olfactory receptors of the sober commuters. Making my way past drunk, shabby haired, half dressed undergrad girls and boys, I found a seat in the corner but before I could find some rest from the sprint I had a minute ago, I found myself talking to a guy who was having a normal Friday.

Guy: Whoa dude, so you been studying?
Me: Uhm, yeah? (I looked at my bag I had now kept in my lap and nodded)
Guy: Wow. You're studying till 10pm on a Friday and am getting drunk. 
Me: Well, no-not really..
Guy:I will be prolly working for you someday. 

Me: huh?

And then he broke the conversation in the same sudden manner he had started it. I took some time to figure the last line he spoke to me and pretended busy in my own thoughts. Then their was a she-friend of this guy, who was talking pictures of herself and her gang and yelling to everyone, "I am 21 and I can drink, how about you?".

I looked at my bag once again and of all those things that I did on this Friday and all those boring things that I will be doing on this Friday night. Then I thought I am 21 too.

But am I living my age? Are we all living our age? Are we living? At all?