MORALITY IN TRANSIT

It was a cool, quiet evening—one of those rare days when the city seemed to exhale. I boarded the bus home from work, grateful for the unusual calm. The vehicle was only half-full, a welcome contrast to the usual chaos of rush hour. The driver was sealed off in his little cubicle up front, and we passengers were scattered like leaves on a still pond.

Among them was a man who immediately caught my eye—late 60s, wearing a crisp white cap that read 'Chosen One' in bold black letters. He was flipping through a newspaper with such frantic energy it looked like he was searching for something long lost—or perhaps arguing with the headlines themselves. Opposite him sat another older man, though you wouldn't know it from his clothes. He was dressed like a teenager—like someone clinging to relevance with both hands. Then, out of nowhere, the man in the cap spoke, loud and clear, as if addressing a courtroom rather than a quiet bus.

'Does time determine what's right or wrong? What's the world become? What've we become?'

His voice sliced through the air like a gavel striking wood. Eyes turned. Even the humming engine seemed to pause, waiting. It was as though the waves of the sea were judging mankind through the voice of the face-cap man, and immediately, all the chit-chatter in the bus came to a halt, eyes fixated on this man.

A moment passed before the man opposite him answered, his voice deep and resonant, like a church bell ringing in a cathedral.

'Of course it does. Slavery? Outlawed. Women can now own land, vote, and lead nations. What was once wrong is now right—or at least acceptable. Time moulds our morals.'

The cap man shook his head, unconvinced.

'Time may influence perception, but it doesn't define morality. Some things are simply wrong—regardless of the era. If we lose that compass, we lose ourselves.'

'So you believe in absolute morality? A timeless right and wrong?

'Call it what you will. Evil wears different clothes, but its shadow remains the same. The slavers of old—don't tell me they didn't know what they were doing was evil. Greed just spoke louder than conscience. It has a way of defeating any ounce of conscience left in the human mind.'

The bus felt like a courtroom now, and we—silent spectators to a debate we didn't know we needed—listened.

The younger-dressed man smirked, his wry expression saying, 'You're fighting a lost battle, Chosen One.'

'Laws keep peace,' he said, almost too casually. 'We follow them not because they're always right but because they're there. I believe that to live peacefully, whatever is the law has to be obeyed.'

'Even when they're wrong?'

'Exactly.'

'And what about the reckoning? The One we must all answer to in the end?'

'If you can get through life without scandal, you'll be fine when you check in up there.'

The cap man looked at him for a long moment, his eyes heavy with something more profound than disagreement.

'You sound like the rest of this generation—comfortable with normalising what isn't normal.'

'Normal is relative. In one culture, black is sacred; in another, it's cursed. Morality is a social construct, shaped by borders and beliefs.'

The cap man leaned forward slightly as if trying to make his words land more solidly.

'And this—this is why disease spreads like wildfire. Because anything goes - eat anything, sleep with anyone, inject your body with anything. Deep down, we all know it's not right. It just isn't.'

The other man exhaled, not in frustration, but in calm finality.

'Don't let it get to you, Sir. You can only control the controllable.'

'You know this isn't how it should be," the cap man said, not to his opponent but to all of us.

No one responded.

Silence followed like a curtain dropping after the final act. The air in the bus felt thick. It was as though these elders had preached a sermon and passed a judgment. No one spoke. No one moved. We rode in silence, each one of us marinating in the weight of what had just unfolded.

When my stop finally came, the bus still felt like a graveyard. And somehow, I stepped off feeling like I had witnessed something sacred—an argument not between two men but between eras, ideals, and the restless conscience of a world in flux.

Don't Forget to Be Honest!

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