Thursday, 8.10 pm at Deccan bus stand. I was sitting in a city bus, waiting for it to start and take me home. Tired and hungry after a hard day at work, I was getting impatient.

Bus driver and conductor nowhere in sight, other people sitting in bus were also fidgeting. Some of them got down from the bus. And then I noticed.....a guy had left his messenger bag on a seat, had got down, and was walking away from the bus. He soon disappeared in the crowd.

I was surprised at first. Nobody left their baggage behind like that; at least didn't leave it somewhere out of sight. Then in a split-second suspicion struck me...... the bag might contain a bomb! I suddenly remembered London bus bombings, and the recent bomb blasts in Delhi and Gujrat. Fear made me numb for few moments, I didn't know what to do.

The first thoughts that came to my mind were of death and its consequences. What would my parents do, if I died now? Would they be able to cope with such a shock? Why didn't I get my life insurance done in time? But then, didn't I read somewhere that such insurance did not cover losses due to acts of terrorism?

I looked around, about a dozen people still in the bus. Should I alert them? Should I get down quickly and ask them to follow suite. Probably they will laugh at me, how did I get that idea in my head? Even if they listened to me, could they get away from the bus quickly enough? What about the people outside? I shuddered at the thought of a stampede that might ensue.

At a closer look, the bag did not seem to contain any hard or big object. But who knows; an explosive could be small, or even liquid, and still be deadly. I tried to remember how the bag guy looked like. Maybe I could help police identify him. But then the futility of the exercise dawned on me. How could I help identify the assailant, if I was dead?

Finally, I made up my mind to alert other passengers. I was just about to address the woman in front of me, when I saw.....the bag guy walking back towards the bus, the bus driver and conductor behind him. He probably was smoking, or had made a trip to the loo.

8.20 pm, all aboard and the bus started moving. The most stressful 10 minutes of my day had just passed. But even though this “bomb scare” was a false alarm, I am worried. It could have actually happened....

I guess I am getting paranoid, sort of. Now I check beneath my seat, when I board a bus.

Tags: terrorism, bomb, blasts, death, paranoid, alert, safety