Telugu original: Gajoji Srinivas
Translated by Rajeshwar Mittapalli

Evening was about to set in. Now and then a few drops fell from the sky, and then they turned into a fierce downpour.

Punjagutta central circle, which is crowded every day, filled up even more because of the heavy rain and a traffic jam. Kamalakar thought about the children at home. He knew that if he worked in such traffic it would get very late, and he began to feel impatient. He worried that the children might feel scared if he reached home late after they returned from school. The rain came down fast and hard and showed no sign of stopping.

Just then his phone rang.

“Dad, when’re you coming? It’s raining, the power’s gone, we’re scared,” the children said on the phone.

He soothed them, told them to be brave, and then ended the call.

~*~

“Ticket! Ticket!!” He moved down the bus, giving tickets. One of the passengers looked at him and said, “Conductor garu, you’re always smiling and very jolly.”

Kamalakar smiled and laughed to himself.

“Hey, Conductor, why’re you laughing like that?” someone asked.

“Ha… nothing,” he replied.

“Your duty is good. You talk with everyone and you do your work with such cheer,” the passenger said.

At that moment Kamalakar remembered the corporation rule about duty — “Keep smiling while on duty.”

They only see my smiling face. Who will understand the sorrow in my heart? he thought, and he laughed to himself and wandered back into his memories.

After he finished his studies, Kamalakar left Jagtial for Hyderabad for the sake of a job. He held the appointment letter from the Road Transport Corporation in his pocket, boarded a bus and reached JBS. He took up his duties as a conductor at Farooqnagar depot in the city. The city was new to him and he started his working life with a sense of hesitation and unease. He lived in Hyderabad on a just?enough salary, managing things with great difficulty.

At four in the morning, while he was getting ready for duty, he heard his phone ring.

Who could it be at this hour? he thought and checked the screen. It was his mother.

A kind of anxiety rose in his chest. Why is Amma calling so early in the morning? He picked up the call.

His mother’s words faltered. They did not come out properly. Fear charged every word.

“What happened, Amma? Why’re you so agitated? Tell me clearly, what happened? Why’re you crying? How’s Dad? Give the phone to Dad, I’ll talk to him.”

“There’s pain in your father’s chest. For some time now he’s been clutching his chest and saying it hurts. I don’t know what to do. I feel frightened. Where should I take him at this hour?” his mother cried.

He tried to comfort her. Then he left for Jagtial at once. They admitted his father in the hospital. No one was there to stay with his father, so he remained there for two days. He called the depot, told them about the matter, and said that he could not come on duty.

His senior said, “If you stay in the hospital, who should do your duty here? Should I do your duty?”

“I’m not in the city, Sir. I’ve come to Jagtial,” he said.

“Now you must definitely return to duty. The buses are stranded in the depot and the manager is scolding me. I’m telling you for your own good. Do not get into trouble over your duty.”

“Father’s condition is serious, Sir. I am the only son. I must look after him. How can I come now, Sir?”

“Duty is as important as family.”

“That’s correct, Sir, I won’t deny it. But I can’t come to duty now. Please try to understand me, Sir.”

“We too have faced such situations. Did we stop doing duty?” the officer said.

“Sir, my mother doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know how to speak with doctors. That’s why I have to stay here. Please, Sir.”

“I’m telling you like an elder brother, like a friend. Coming back to duty now is in your best interest,” he said and ended the call.

His father’s condition did not look promising. His mother sat and cried.

“We broke our backs to educate you this far. We pinned so many hopes on you. Now how can you leave your father in hospital and go on duty? If not you, who else do we have to look after us?” she wept.

Kamalakar did not like the thought of leaving his father and going on duty. He called home and told his wife everything.

“I’ll start now. I’ll come and stay there. You return, send the children to school and go on duty,” she said and gave him strength.

With a heavy heart, wiping away his tears, Kamalakar left the hospital.

~*~

“Ticket! Ticket!! Show your Aadhaar card.”

“You give me the ticket first. In this crowd how do you expect us to take out our Aadhaar cards? There is no room even to stand,” some women muttered.

He gave them their tickets and said, “All right, show the Aadhaar cards later,” and went on issuing tickets to the others.

While the women searched for their Aadhaar cards in their bags, the bus passed the next stop. Then it reached Kachiguda bus station.

“Kachiguda station… those who want to get off be ready,” he called, and at that moment the checking squad boarded the bus at the stop. They checked the bus. Two passengers did not have Aadhaar cards.

“We must have forgotten them at home,” they said, their faces turning pale. Kamalakar began to feel anxious and worried about what complaint they might file.

“What sort of duty are you doing, Conductor?” the officer asked.

“Sir, I asked them to show their Aadhaar cards. They said it is in the bag and they’ll show it, but first I should give them the ticket. That’s why I gave the tickets, Sir.”

“Don’t you know that you should issue the tickets only after checking the Aadhaar cards?”

“I know, Sir. A lot of people were standing near the footboard. They were struggling to take out their Aadhaar cards, that’s why I waited, Sir.”

“Don’t tell us all that. When we check the bus, we only see whether everything is in order or not. At least from now on, do your duty properly,” the officer said curtly. He then gave a charge memo to Kamalakar and left. 

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t — the saying came to his mind. He thought to himself that his duty was quite a bit like that, and then fell silent.

~*~

The next day, when Kamalakar went to the depot, the controller just said “Depot spare” and set him aside without putting him on duty. The very thing that he had feared now happened.

They made Kamalakar wait without duty for a whole week, and then they sent him to the manager.

“Kamalakar, tell me what happened,” the manager asked.

“Sir!...” He recounted everything.

“From now on be careful in your duty. If you do your duty well, you, your family and our Corporation will all prosper.”

“Sir, I didn’t do anything on purpose,” he said.

“I can understand your position. There will be some problems in everyone’s duty. We must face them and move forward. We must cultivate a positive mind in every situation. We must accept duty not as a burden but as a responsibility. Only then can we perform our duty successfully.”

“All right, Sir,” said Kamalakar.

“Do your work properly. Don’t keep anything in your mind. Don’t let such a thing happen again. Do your duty happily,” the manager told him and sent him away.

“Thank you, Sir,” Kamalakar said and came out of the manager’s office.

They said it was a departmental action, stopped his increment, and then put him on duty again.

Being made a scapegoat for a fault he had not committed, and the lack of job security, caused Kamalakar deep distress. At times, even a little generosity shown to passengers turns into a curse for a conductor. When they make him wait without duty, he has to go through both counselling from the officers and loss of pay. In some cases he has to suffer the fear that they may not give him duty again at all.

If a conductor firmly insists on seeing a bus pass or, in the case of women, an Aadhaar card, complaints sometimes reach the officers that the conductor has behaved rudely towards the passengers.

The officers treat whatever the passengers say as true. . Even when they know that it is not the conductor’s fault, they still impose some punishment in the name of discipline.

~*~

Kamalakar worked the Charminar to Secunderabad route. Since the timing of the route was the same every day, those who travelled at that hour usually came by his bus. He spoke with everyone and mixed well with them.

Some of them would say, “If there’s any job anywhere, please let us know.” If anything came up through people he knew, he would try to get them placed. When they later spoke with him with bright faces because they had found work, he saw their joy in their eyes and felt glad. He felt proud as a conductor that, through him, someone had found a livelihood and one more home had the chance to eat in comfort.

When festivals came to everyone else’s homes, they spent them very happily with family. In Kamalakar’s case, he often could not get leave and had to go on duty. Many times the children sulked and made a fuss at him.

“Our friends’ dads stay with them during festivals, and you go on duty. You don’t even come to the parents’ meetings at school, you say you’ve got duty,” they would say.

Whenever they spoke like that, Kamalakar stayed silent and hid his tears inside. He wanted to play with the children after they came back from school and help them with their homework, but his duty hours did not match, and very often he could not spend time with them. The pain of not being able to spend that time with his children still stayed with him.

~*~

That night, when he came home, it was late. The children had not eaten and were waiting, frightened because there was no electricity. Kamalakar drew them close, fed them, and said, “As soon as Grandad is discharged from the hospital, Grandma will come to our house,” and put them to bed.

Sleep did not come to Kamalakar. He could hear his children’s quiet breathing, yet his mind wandered around the hospital. The thought — I have left my father in that condition and come away — stirred up turmoil inside him. His father’s face, the silence of a home without the mother, and the innocent sleep of the children — his mind was tossing between these three. That night’s darkness covered not just the house but Kamalakar’s mind as well. Thoughts that were stronger than sleep rose inside him like silent storms.

In the morning he sent the children to school and left for duty. On the very first trip the bus was packed with passengers and he got caught up in the rush of duty.

His phone began to ring in his pocket. He picked it up.

“Hello, how’s Dad? What did the doctor say?” he asked his wife.

“Father?in?law’s not well at all, it’s still serious. They’re saying they can’t say anything right now. Mother-in-law and I feel scared. He is unable to speak. He doesn’t recognise anyone. Yesterday he was raving about you in his delirium. Come to the hospital soon. His condition is getting out of hand. It would be good if you were here. We’ve run out of the money we had,” his wife said and ended the call.

Tears filled Kamalakar’s eyes without his realising. The father who raised me is fighting for his life in the hospital. I should be with him, and I’m on duty, he thought. His grief rose higher, but he controlled himself because he was at work.

“Once my son gets a job you must see... he’ll be with me in my last moments and look after me,” his father used to tell those who came to his smithy. The sparks that flew from the furnace and fell uncounted on his father’s body, the effort his father put in to make him an educated man — all those scenes flashed before his eyes one by one, and memories of his father filled his heart.

He did so much for me, and I can’t stay by his side now, he thought, and the pain in his chest grew. If he wished to stay near his father, he risked losing his job. If he neglected his job, the whole family risked ending up on the street. He found himself on the horns of a dilemma between his father and his job. He did not know which side to choose.

He thought that, in the same way as there was maternity leave and childcare leave for women, there ought to be “parents’ care” leave as well for everyone who worked.

As he had no money to hand, he began to call people he knew and relatives and ask them for money. Now he needed leave again, and he did not quite know how to ask for it.

At Lakdikapul chaurasta the traffic light turned red and the bus stopped. A couple of passengers got off. A seat fell vacant. Until then Kamalakar had been standing. When he saw the vacant seat he moved to sit down. At that moment his phone rang — the call was from his daughter’s class teacher.

“Namaste, Sir, I am your daughter’s class teacher,” she said.

“Namaste, Madam, please go on,” said Kamalakar, feeling nervous.

“Sir, you must come to the school urgently,” she said.

“What happened, Madam?” he asked, growing anxious.

“Congratulations, Sir!”

“Thank you. Tell me what for, Madam,” he said.

“It’s just... Er… your daughter has had her menarche. Please come and take her home,” the teacher said.

“All right, Madam,” he replied.

He did not know how to share this happy news with his wife and his parents. On one side his father was fighting for his life, on the other there was this crucial moment in his daughter’s life. His parents and his wife were in the hospital, he was on duty, the girl was at school. How could he now manage the rituals that had to be done for her? There was his father’s hospital treatment, and now his daughter’s puberty function as well. All this needed money. He also needed leave. Both money and leave were turning into traps, because he had neither. He remembered his superior saying, “If you ask for leave again, I’ll have to suspend you,” and felt that his own state was like that of a bus halted at a junction by a red signal. He collapsed into the empty seat.

Behind every ticket there is a life.

Behind every smile there is a struggle.

~*~

“Tears in Rain” (titled “Varshamlo Arani Kanneeru” in Telugu) by Gajoji Srinivas was first published in Nava Telangana Sunday, 26 April, 2026.

Translated into English by Rajeshwar Mittapalli.