My LOCAL Bus
I had seen a couple of them on TV, heard of them from cousins narrating their experiences in local buses & finally seniors from school who went to Delhi University to pursue college. And as footsteps would follow, I too landed in the Capital city to pursue studies.
Ashok Vihaar was a good 6kms away from our PG and therefore local buses to commute to such distances. I wasn’t psyched to catch a glimpse of these rickety buses tilted on a side with people hanging out of the gates, one leg up on the stair as if it were a big tree laden with rich fruits. I wondered how one could make spaces to enter inside the bus & what if someone had to get down. And also imagined what it would be like to sit inside a crowded bus until I travelled to my college.
We push through the people on the gates; manage to reach the second stair & zoom the bus goes off. Managing our way forth we reach the conductor who is royally seated - unperturbed & unaffected in his neatly ironed khaki shirt, strands of white hair combed carefully & an old black money bag with a thin long strip around his shoulder gathering the coins as if it were a way of life for him. All kinds of people – school kids, college students, salaried workers and the jobless! Crammed buses sweating out the freshly smeared talcum & deodorants making it almost impossible to breathe the fresh air. The separator dividing the seats on each end had chunks of people & more mushrooming every moment. Ladies' seat squatted by men of all ages. Each of us was crushed to three times our sizes with barely our hands being allowed to grab the roof handle to be able to stand. How could it have been pleasure for them – the prosperous jobless junta!
And there comes LB College – girls rushing past the rest pushing, stretching & screaming their way ahead. Six periods and its time to hunt for the relatively less crowded bus again & here begin the struggle to reach home. 3 years and each day I’ve sworn to never take this bus ride. And each day I ended with a newer story to share on a local bus. There were familiar faces by the end of these 3 years so much that those fewer trips towards the end of the term had a few of them generously smiling not afraid of being asked a favor anymore.
To this day, when I fondly remember those early mornings, the foggy bus shelters, quick cups of Chai & Rusk to be able to grab a comfortable seat on 912 (nau so barah – as we still call it)! It is so much a part of life that I realize the old conductor who would have identified his life with the DTC bus services – the otherwise lifeline of Delhi.
Ashok Vihaar was a good 6kms away from our PG and therefore local buses to commute to such distances. I wasn’t psyched to catch a glimpse of these rickety buses tilted on a side with people hanging out of the gates, one leg up on the stair as if it were a big tree laden with rich fruits. I wondered how one could make spaces to enter inside the bus & what if someone had to get down. And also imagined what it would be like to sit inside a crowded bus until I travelled to my college.
We push through the people on the gates; manage to reach the second stair & zoom the bus goes off. Managing our way forth we reach the conductor who is royally seated - unperturbed & unaffected in his neatly ironed khaki shirt, strands of white hair combed carefully & an old black money bag with a thin long strip around his shoulder gathering the coins as if it were a way of life for him. All kinds of people – school kids, college students, salaried workers and the jobless! Crammed buses sweating out the freshly smeared talcum & deodorants making it almost impossible to breathe the fresh air. The separator dividing the seats on each end had chunks of people & more mushrooming every moment. Ladies' seat squatted by men of all ages. Each of us was crushed to three times our sizes with barely our hands being allowed to grab the roof handle to be able to stand. How could it have been pleasure for them – the prosperous jobless junta!
And there comes LB College – girls rushing past the rest pushing, stretching & screaming their way ahead. Six periods and its time to hunt for the relatively less crowded bus again & here begin the struggle to reach home. 3 years and each day I’ve sworn to never take this bus ride. And each day I ended with a newer story to share on a local bus. There were familiar faces by the end of these 3 years so much that those fewer trips towards the end of the term had a few of them generously smiling not afraid of being asked a favor anymore.
To this day, when I fondly remember those early mornings, the foggy bus shelters, quick cups of Chai & Rusk to be able to grab a comfortable seat on 912 (nau so barah – as we still call it)! It is so much a part of life that I realize the old conductor who would have identified his life with the DTC bus services – the otherwise lifeline of Delhi.
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