The conductor said “adjust”, and somehow forty of us became a family for eleven kilometres. A man with a harmonium case took the aisle. Two schoolgirls shared one seat and one pair of earphones. The bus smelled of diesel, marigolds and somebody’s tiffin. When the matador coughed to a stop at Muthi, nobody left. It was 6:40 in the evening and the light was the colour of kahwa. The driver opened the bonnet the way you open a letter with bad news — slowly, already knowing. “Twenty minutes,” he said, which in Jammu means forty. The harmonium came out first. Then the samosas — a full newspaper bundle of them, passed backwards over heads, no one counting. The schoolgirls knew all the words to songs older than their parents. An uncle who had frowned since Bikram Chowk turned out to have the best voice on the bus. We reached Akhnoor two hours late. No one complained to anyone, because there was no one to complain to who hadn’t been singing. My mother asked why I looked so happy about a broken bus. I told her the truth: it was the best evening of my week, and I hadn’t even reached anywhere.