All robots look alike!!!

9:30 in the evening, I was on my way back home in the company bus. After gobbling down my daily share of chana dal and peanuts, my hand automatically went into the side pocket of my gym bag, as if programmed to do that everyday, and pulled out my i-pod like white-wired earphones. The other hand went into my trouser pockets and pulled out my cell phone - an almost extinct Motorola model. I continued my robotic tasks of removing the socket cover and skillfully pushed the pin of the ear-phone smoothly into the spot. I achieved the same satisfaction doing that as Monika achieved hearing the clicking sound of putting back the marker cap.

Within no time, the ear-plugs were in my ears(duh) and they fitted so perfectly that it seemed that they were customized for my ears. And suddenly, I was listening to the song "Late goodbye". It was so instantaneous that I didn't realize when I had unlocked the keypad, gone to the music folder and played the last song on the list.

I have a psychological compulsion to start either from the first song or the last song - don't ask me why because even I don't know.

I tilted my head back slightly to enhance the flow of music from my ears to my brain. I was in some other world when the bus suddenly jumped over a bump. I made an unsuccessful attempt to think what might have happened because I was fast asleep when it happened and now the bus was moving smoothly again.I looked around at my co-passengers to get some idea and I didn't believe what my eyes saw. The guy sitting beside me was not anyone else but me and he was looking at me with the same surprised expression which I was wearing on my face at that time. I got scared and turned to the girl sitting on the other side. I almost fainted when I saw my face again just that she had longer hair than me and her earphone was black in colour. I quickly turned my face and bent my head down.

I was shocked like hell and first thing that came to my mind was "Ramsay Brothers". And exactly like the "not so anxious but idiot" victims of the Zee Horror Show, I gathered courage to lift my head up and turned to look at the guy on my right. I was about to die of a heart attack when the bus jumped again on another bump and with beautiful special effects, my face on the other guy's shoulders dissolved and re-surfaced again with a completely different face. The same animation happened all around. Now there were different faces everywhere just that everyone was stressed and tired, nobody was talking, all plugged with ear-phones looking blankly outside the nearest window, with sleep in their eyes, quest to reach home and hug their bed so that they can come back the next day and work harder.

They were all software engineers.