His friend didn't know. That was the problem.

He didn't know, but that was obvious. Otherwise, he never would've asked his friend in the first place. 

But he did ask, and the friend didn't know. 

And so, out of the multitude that stood, sat, and shook around him, he singled out one person and looked him right in the eye. Me. 

Moving close to me, his face close to, but at a respectable distance from mine own, eyes still firmly fixed, he opened his mouth. And the voice, a nice voice, as one would expect to correspondingly belong to a nice man, uttered these words:

"Bitch. Bitch, stop."

One who is sitting around and minding his own business does not generally expected to be confronted by profanity. Not in any ordinary circumstances, and most definitely not from an absolute stranger, one upon whom one's eyes have never set.  

It was thus, with a mortified look upon my face, that I gazed into the eyes of this co-passenger, situated merely inches from me, and moving back and forth in tandem with the haphazard motion generally associated with the movement of any bus motoring about the streets of Madras. 

Words escaped me, for all I could think about was the peculiar (if peculiar can be adequately used to describe it) behaviour of this individual. Lost thus in deep contemplation, I had neglected to notice that the soul in front of me was waiting for a response, one which I was in no position to deliver. 

This is one instance that the kindness of human beings, ironic as it may seem, is brought out. Not by this abusive man in front of me, mind you, but by the gentleman seated to my right. 

This good Samaritan, possibly unacquainted with English, was more than acquainted with common sense, and so, very adroitly, informed the other man that he need wait for another twenty minutes at most. 

For after all, this person who was seemingly the very epitome of rudeness, had merely been inquiring as to when the beach stop would be reached.