Another One Rides The Bus

There are things in life one does, neither for the first, nor for the last time, and yet somewhere you wish you could stop doing those things. Imagine then, our protagonist (call him SK in the interest of brevity) strolling out of the IIT campus at the end of a hard day's sleep to go back home. SK does not have any transport of his own that day, and therefore decides to rely on public transport. With barely twenty of the local currency in his pocket, he realises that comfort is something he can ill-afford. Therefore, SK decides to take the bus. It's not the first time he's been on a bus, sure as hell won't be the last, but he makes a few earth-shattering observations on this bus ride.

Let's call the bus route 764, because 786 would just be too Bollywood. (Beside the fact that there was nothing holy about this route). The bus route connects N to NP. NP is the official hub of the town. N is the Jat (a community known for it's "delicate" handling of matters) capital. Needless to say, the bus has gentlemen for driver and support staff. The bus was already overflowing with people by the time it reached the IIT bus stop. SK has spent three years in a place called DU which changed his conception of what they call an 'empty bus'. So he boards the bus. Luckily for him he gets a seat (albeit on the ladies side). This is the cue for the Gods to go out and have their share of fun with him.

Observation numero uno : Ladies, you're not the only ones who have to suffer getting felt up in a bus. Thankfully for SK though, he's not at the receiving end of such pleasant treatment, yet. SK, being one of a mathematical bent of mind, lets his mind run and comes up with a law of bus rides. "In, Delhi", he thinks to himself, "as time elapses in a bus ride, the percentage of one's body in contact with a solid surface decreases exponentially". Just as he is lauding himself on the profundity of this new law, a lady yanks him of his seat with a nonchalant "Haanji bhaiya ladis seat". Grumbling, he gets up and is suddenly made aware of the incredibly loud music.

Buses in Delhi don't exactly provide the traveller a very wide choice in music. The choice quite literally is between the colorful music of the 80's and early 90's, or Himesh. Smart as he is, SK decides to put on music through his earphones to circumvent this issue. This creates a new problem. Now, the loud music in the earphones and the loud music outside are mixing to create a new, morbidly unbearable form of music. As Chris Reshammiya starts singing "Show Me How to Suroor" into his ear, the bus halts at a stop where everyone seems to have one aim in life : get to NP. To accomodate this extra humanity into an already filled bus, the two conductors gently start pushing people into the middle of the bus, the one at the back tells people to go to the front, the one at the front tells people to go back. In the ruckus, SK realises that his only contacts with solid (inanimate) surfaces are his index finger (on the bar above), and his big toe (on the floor of the bus below). We won't talk about contact with animate solid surfaces.

The journey continues. And just as Eddie Sanu sings "I'm still mohabbat karta hun" and SK painfully shifts his weight from one toe to another, wondering when life(or the bus atleast) will spare him, the conductor behind yells in his special language, the only words his parents ever taught him, "Agge jaao agge, bus to khalli padi hai".

True Story.