On a bus

Crowds are a ubiquitous feature in India. There are congregated masses of people and unending queues everywhere. Simply everywhere. On roads, in shops and malls, hospitals, temples, railway stations, bus-stops, airports, trains and buses. You name it. Dense, suffocating crowds. Herds. These are dangerous entities. For, they are dramatically different from each of the individuals who constitute them. They are also insensitive and selfish. Traveling in crowded local buses, trains, metroes, or for that matter, walking on crowded streets often exposes our worst side. Sometimes our amusingly insensitive side, and sometimes our morally declining one.

I am a regular bus rider. I take the bus to and from work on most days. The state of public transportation in Bangalore leaves a lot to be desired, but when I moved here last year, I was lucky to find a lovely apartment that is, on a traffic-free morning, just a 10 minutes bus-ride from my work. My door to door morning commute time is between 20 to 25 minutes, which is less than one-third of my morning commute time in Bombay. The buses are fairly empty with enough room. The roads are empty and allow the bus to breeze through the 6 kilometres stretch in 10-12 minutes. Evenings of course, are a different story. The 10-12 minute travel time changes to anything between 30 to 45 minutes. Add an additional 10-15 minutes to cross the roads, both near my workplace and when I get off the bus near my house. There are no traffic signals for a very long stretch, and the only way pedestrians can cross the super busy road at both the points is by adopting a wait and watch policy. Travel time in the evening is still between less than half to two-thirds of the time I used to take in Bombay. But in Bombay, my apartment was over 22 kilometres from my office, here it is just 6 kilometres!

The crowd inside the bus during the evening hours is another story. I wish people followed some basic guidelines on how to keep their hair and clothes when using public transportation. 

For one, I wish women with long hair using buses and local trains during peak traffic hours really tied their hair or at least hung the classy locks forward on their shoulders instead of letting them fly about randomly in the air, allowing them to trespass into other people's facial territory, getting into their eyes, nose and mouth and stroking their faces. It feels really awful. I'm sure they have their hair admirers in the private space. What I don't understand is that why they subject complete stranger fellow women travellers, to this abominable, hairy touch. 

Second, I really wish that women wearing sarees or long flowy dupattas somehow held on to the free end of their garment instead of letting it flow and wave freely in the air (and trail on the steps like a wedding gown train). They pose a real hazard to people immediately behind them in the queue to get off. I have witnessed several dupatta accidents while getting off from the bus. One particular episode was really animated. The woman in front of me, while stepping down from the bus, absent mindedly stepped on one such flowing train, and the lady moved forward pulling her dupatta with force. The woman behind didn't fall down. However, the story of the preceding woman's dupatta was different. With a foot firmly on it, the poor, pretty, inanimate devil had to feel the weight of a body - and between the force acting on it from two different women, the dupatta gave away. A crescent shaped tear resulted and the woman turned back and looked at the mutilated cloth with horror. Words were exchanged, some of which were audible to me and I could gather that this wasn't any exchange of pleasantries, for the words were "blind", "Miss Universe", "idiot", "vulgar", "crude" and "get your own goddamned car!"

To be clear, I wear long, flowy dupattas with my outfits often, but when on the bus, I wrap these closely around my neck.

Then there are people who put their phone radios on speaker to listen to their kind of music. After a long day's work, I don't particularly look forward to lyrics like "1-2-3-4, get on the dance floor" or "lungi dance, lungi dance", or for that matter "main lovely ho gayee yaar" blaring. 

Often I see elderly people struggle into the bus and continue to stand, as people several decades younger continue to occupy seats meant for "elderly" and "senior citizens" and "physically disabled". Once in a while, there is a sweet, young girl, with a Wipro badge hanging around her neck, who would get up and offer her seat. But these instances are few. Perhaps even I would have been like the ones who don't bother, had I not seen from very close quarters how debilitating old age can be. Family and world leap forward to help out the helpless toddler, but helping a helpless elderly does not come quite as easily to us. Perhaps we are wired to prefer the potential of future over the gratitude for deeds already done. For most people that is. I will grow into one such old person; oh, I shudder to think of the helplessness of old age of the ordinary person. The rich and the powerful don't paint such a helpless picture. They seem to get all they want. My suspicion though, is that it is not gratitude for what they have done, but awe or fear of their power, or greed for their wealth make people behave well with them in majority of the cases. 

Yes, I'm rather cynical. I have seen too much of the world and its differential treatments, the different set of rules for different sets of people, to be so naive as to take everything at face value. The rich and the powerful have the world at their disposal. They don't have to get on a rickety BMTC bus. And, if they do, it is more of a statement than need, and they will be given all the help they need. People won't be the same with a retired bank officer or a retired professor or a retired nobody like me.

On one of my bus rides home, there was one guy who kept brushing against a young woman's body again and again. This same guy stopped me by placing a hand on my shoulder when I tried to get up and leave, with a bus full of people watching or looking away. I am struck by both the audacity of the boys and the apathy of the crowd. It is another matter that I lost my cool and slapped the guy, as did the other girl he was bothering and the guy fell (or feigned to be) unconscious for a brief while. The amusing part was that I had to hand over the water bottle I carry to people who tried to revive him. I walked down from the bus with a sense of bewilderment at the audacity of a guy who didn't have the physical stamina to stand up to a couple of slaps from women who were very average in weight and height, and yet showed no restraint in bothering the women. Perhaps, he thought that being a guy was sufficient in this country and he would get away with light eve teasing and fun.

Two sisters

I lead an interesting life. Small and insignificant, probably, but adventurous and full of new experiences. I have come to believe that I have a knack for making my life thus - being drawn to unusual and novel experiences - and staying small and insignificant all the time. I chance upon the profoundest of reflections when observing the general humdrum of life. I am often told that I read too much into ordinary things. May be, I do. I have also learnt that I hold on too tightly to a few memories.

I take the public bus to work every morning. It takes me less than twenty-five minutes to get to my desk from the time I leave my apartment in the morning. The bus-ride is usually between ten to fifteen minutes. Even in the badly maintained, rickety public buses, the morning ride is a pleasure. The buses are largely empty, roads are clear, no traffic delaying the early morning flight of the bus, fresh and cool breeze sweeping through my face, lush greenery on most stretches, two small lakes on the right side. Mornings are the biggest blessings of my life. The brief, but totally enjoyable and pleasant morning ride gives me a chance to observe my fellow travelers, to wonder what kind of lives they lead. Often, something I see brings back some memories.

A few mornings ago, I saw two sisters in school uniforms get on the bus, chatting away happily. They sat across the aisle from me, discussing something, oblivious of my attention. When I saw them, figures of two little girls in navy blue skirts and white blouses, wearing polished black buckled shoes and navy blue socks came floating to my eyes. One with short hair, the other with two ponytails, each with a heavy schoolbag hanging from shoulders, walking to the bright green gates of a white grainy castle-like exterior, chatting away, just like these girls. Oh! the fun those two had. Teaming up against parents, troubling the housekeeper, doing "experiments" in the kitchen, cutting off each others' hair to the horror of everyone, confusing teachers because of their resemblance, fighting, trying to second guess, jumping, playing, running a riot!! I thought about the two little girls - how far we had come in life - and my eyes moistened slightly with nostalgia, pride and a diffused sense of yearning to be a child again. It would be more than twenty-five years ago that my sister and I were like the sisters I saw on the bus, and whose picture I impulsively, albeit surreptitiously took. It was the younger one who turned around and noticed me fumbling with my relatively cheap phone camera and blinking my moist eyes. "My sister and I used to be just like you two.." I smiled.

I have always felt lucky to have a sister, a partner in crime, but it is only now that I so deeply appreciate having grown up with my sister. I know that I grew up to be a better person than I would have otherwise been, because I grew up with her.