Bus Ride to Kathmandu.

• There are more than 50 people without a seat squeezed between the aisles of the rackety old bus or sitting on the roof. Every square inch is occupied by people, luggage, animals, and body parts searching for release among the crowd. 
• This is no longer an armrest: it is the remains of a barrier gnawed on by infants, the ruins of a fort containing bodies on the other side. 
• Here there is no such thing as private property or owned space. Even your body is no longer your own: your stomach and your breasts become the crib on an infant who you watched fondling her genitals a few hours back--lets hope she doesn't pee-- your arm becomes the cushion of a boy, your shoulder the support for a woman's breasts, your thighs a wardrobe where people store their handbags. 
• Where is the space you want to claim as your own? The space you reserved and payed for? Take it! Put it in your pocket and hide it! How? -- How will you surround the space with your arms, hide it from sight, keep it from the reach of others? Everyone here payed equally for their ticket, and every quantity of space you do not occupy is open to somebody else: the teenager sleeping on the backrest of the seat in front of me, holding on to the backrest of my seat to keep his balance..  (since I did not occupy that space before, my head goes tilted at a fifty degree angle for the remainder of the trip)  the string of women who poke their heads between my face and knees, looking out the window for their stop, yelling at the street vendors for some water and potato chips. 
• Of course everybody is uncomfortable. Privilege does not mean having first class seats, but rather having a place to sit. If I do not have to remain standing during the next six hour bumpy bus ride in this awful road, what right do I have to get angry with those that have to endure it? If I can be a crib, a cushion, a bra strap or a wardrobe so that somebody else can travel a bit more comfortably (impermanent as comfort may be), so what? Everybody is uncomfortable, but I can allow this infant to fall asleep, her mother to rest her arms, her brother to find a spot to sit on in the floor.. at least they're a bit more comfortable. Fudge it.