An Hour of Travel in Bus

A chill morning I decided to travel in bus. Headed to bus station & I made sure I sit in a comfortable seat. As soon as I settled down, I bought tickets from the conductor and started watching and observing people. As the number of people was less in the initial stop of the bus, after the conductor gave the tickets to all the passengers in the bus, he went to his close friend in the bus, the driver & started talking. He spoke to the driver till the next passenger got into the bus. Not sure if the conductor was happy for the fact that the passenger got into the bus or if he was cursing the passenger as he was disturbed with his talk with the driver. I was not able to make out anything from his facial expression. But anyways, he went towards the passenger to give the tickets to him. Conductor asked for exact change from the passenger, but passenger didn’t have the exact change. So conductor gave the ticket & wrote the change he needs to give back to the passenger at the back of the ticket. He went back to the driver & started talking again.

In the next stop more passengers got into the bus and the conductor was busy giving the tickets to everyone & he made sure he asked for exact change with everyone J I wondered what he would do with so many changes!!! I guess, conductor has realized that change is the only constant in the world. J

As soon as people got into the bus, they were eagerly deciding on which seat to sit in, some people were even shifting between seats. After making sure they are seated comfortably, more than couple of them started calling their friends & SMS. As the bus started preceding further, at a traffic signal, the driver of the bus I was travelling started talking to the driver of the other bus also waiting at the traffic signal. Cross communication defined at its best!!!!

A lady sat next to me. Initially, I thought she was a student as she was busy reading some text book & she was reading about RDBMS. She read that book and probably the same page for 30mins. Another lady sat right opposite to me & she started listening to music. I saw another passenger who sat comfortably in the bus & slept happily. Some people are blessed!!! They can sleep anywhere & everywhere they want to sleep. Or was the person deprived of sleep that he could sleep in the bus with all the noises/music in the bus. Whatever is the case, I still tend to think that the person is just too blessed that he can sleep any where & everywhere.

As time progressed and bus proceeded further, bus got more crowded. I see that people are searching for empty seats… both the eyes are synchronous in finding the seat. A girl and a boy got into the bus at one of the stops. One of the passengers got down the bus & both of them had only that seat to occupy in the entire bus. I realized that they must be very good friends when I see them adjust & share the same seat throughout their journey. We human beings are good at adjusting… What do you think?

As I look through the window, I see few familiar faces outside. Festivals being round the corner, I see sugar canes, lumps of them, & people busy buying it. Looks like some of them also are bargaining with the vendor. I cannot hear what they are conversing as I am sitting in the A/C bus & I am cut off from external noises. But by all probability I think it is the bargaining which is happening outside there.

In the next stop a girl gets into this bus… She also managed to find a seat in the bus. Since I had got into this mode of observing people, I observed that she works for my previous company. Yeah, she had her ID card in the side pouch of her bag, which had my previous company’s logo. This took me back to the initial days of my career, my learnings, my friends, my last project there…many more thoughts like this. When I give it a thought, which travels faster, I am sure it is our mind which travels faster than light. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but mind can travel at infinite speed. Traffic signal & people trying to get down the bus brought me back to the current date and time. Bus stop is less than 300 meters from the traffic signal. Every single person who aims to get down in the next stop is trying to get down in the traffic signal. This made me wonder if everyone has the same attitude of not walking that extra 300 meters or is it the convenience. I tried to convince myself that it is indeed convenience…

As we pass through the signal & get near the bus stop, people are struggling hard to find out which bus is approaching the stop. I watch through the window again & see the chaos in people to get into the bus. As if the crowd wasn’t enough in the bus, driver started screaming at the top of his voice, calling out the last stop of the bus. More & more people got into the bus. Ticket, exact change, some writing @ the back of the ticket etc continues. One of the person bought the ticket, but got down without paying the money to conductor. Conductor realized this after sometime & started checking the tickets of every person whom he suspected. I noticed that one lady was trying to help conductor. She says “bus door was not opened at all, so he must be in the bus only. Do you remember the shirt he was wearing”? Wow, yes, definitely yes, MEN ARE FROM MARS & WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS. Ladies try to give suggestions & help others even without asking them. But she was genuinely trying to help the conductor. Yes, I could make out that. Conductor suddenly changed his attitude & started showing his irritation & anger on other passengersJ. After seeing this, today I can appreciate if conductors & drivers lose their temper with passengers.

Lady who sat right opposite to me, started yawning & looks like she could not listen to those songs any more. She could not control her yawn. So she takes out a POLO- A mint with a Hole & she chews it slowly. It pepped her up. Looking at her, lady, who sat next to me, whom I thought was student initially started searching her bag & took out VICKS tablet – Vicks Ki goli lo, kich kich door karo!!!

Music continues in the bus, I see people tapping their feet, moving their body slowly to the music, some of them nodding their head to the music. Irritated conductor asks the driver to switch off the music & the driver does it to please his friend in the bus, as he is the only one who will travel with him throughout the day. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

I glance through the other end of the bus & find out that there was a lady whom I missed looking at the earlier time I spent in bus. She had her hands decorated with mehandi. Did she attend some function & come? Or has she applied mehandi for the festival round the corner? Or did she get engaged? Or is she going out for a marriage? No clue… But I must admit, her mehandi designs were definitely good J. She was busy reading some holy book. None of the disturbances in the bus seemed to affect her. What a concentration. Wow!!

World is small. Indeed very small. A man who was sitting behind my seat recognized a lady & they both started conversing with each other. Started with hi, how are you? It then turned into some relative getting discharged in the hospital to work to their spouses… they spoke quite a bit.

Lady who sat next to me got down in her stop. Lady who was trying to help the conductor comes & sits next to me…Picks up her cell phone & calls someone. Then she calls her husband who is also in the bus & starts talking something to him again. In the next stop, girl with her batch ID of my previous company gets down. I realize that I need to get down too in the next stop as all others did. As I get ready to get off the bus, lady who helped the conductor few mins back & sat next to me, calls her husband & tells him, “come here, she will get down. You can sit here, right next to meJ”.

Like all others did, I also got off/ got down the bus at my stop. But before getting down, I made sure I looked back at all them once & smile at all of them to thank them for helping me try to observe them. Not sure even if one single person recognized that smile, the most beautiful curve one can ever have, as one of my close friends says, but it definitely made me feel good that I could smile at all those strangers. If one hour of travel in bus can give me such an awesome experience, imagine the amount of experience & thrill I would gain, if I travel the world…!!! I am sure I will sit & write a blog on the world travel experience too sometime sooner or laterJ.