– Joshua D’Cunha
Let me take you on a journey. Several journeys, in fact. These journeys take place on a remarkable vehicle whose ridiculous speed belies its considerable proportions. I refer of course, to the BMTC bus.
The summer of 2018 was an eventful one for many. Mine was largely spent on two-and-a-half-hour commutes from Vidyaranyapura to the Majestic Central Station, further to an office in BTM Layout around 8 AM and the journey back at 6 PM. At the end of the summer, if someone had asked me what majestic meant, I would have stared at them in wonder about their undue interst in the philosophical meaning of a bus station before replying, “Er…it’s a symbol of the public bus transportation in Bangalore. You can take 276 from VRPura or 402B from Yelahanka to reach it”. It would then be their turn to stare at me in wonder and slowly walk away, worrying about the future of the nation. Then again, he/she doesn’t know what majestic means.
On the first day of my internship, my grandmother warned me to be careful with my belongings and went on to narrate unfortunate incidents of her and her elderly friends losing hundreds of rupees to the quick hands of cunning thieves. While I am not elderly, my reflexes are comparable with those of elderly women and that is the reason why you would see a seemingly pregnant 19-year-old boy roaming the bus terminals with a heavy bag as his long overdue baby.
BMTC has an old fleet of blue-and-white striped buses and a relatively newer fleet of green-coloured buses. Irrespective of their colour however, you are guaranteed a bumpy ride replete with jerks – both the people kind and the sudden movements that send you flying kind. The bright LCD screen with a Public Address system is but a very small consolation to the passengers in the newer buses, especially those new to the city.
The journey is made a little more enjoyable, or equally not so, by the fellow passengers. Like me, they have places to go, people to meet, and agendas to fulfill. The bus unites people of different places, interests, religions, and classes of society – unless of course you own a vehicle – and yet, we all have the same impulse to see what the person next to us is doing. We grunt in agreement when the person reading The Hindu grunts about the state of affairs in India. We sympathize with our fellow passenger over his failing marriage, glaringly evident from the WhatsApp messages. We unwittingly host movie screenings for a cramped audience with furtive eyes. Breach of privacy? Undoubtedly, but it’s something we all do.
Another thing passengers share in common is their instinct to determine exactly when other passengers are getting off the bus. This is followed by careful calculations to estimate the probability of landing a seat based on a variety of factors such as, but not limited to, distance from the seat, number of intervening passengers, proximity to senior citizens (another calculation to determine the extent of seniority must also be done), proximity to pregnant women (a quick scan to confirm that it is not a 19-year-old boy afraid of pickpockets), and distance to the destination. For passengers residing in cities like Bangalore, distance is usually a deceptive physical quantity due to the ridiculous amount of traffic and hence, is replaced with the more realistic quantity of remaining travel time.
BMTC buses are irregular and unpredictable in the same way that Namma Metro is not. The bus you want to board has a gifted ability to stealthily pass among other buses you do not want to board until by pure chance you spot it at the end of the terminal and run after it as if it has stolen something of yours (it has in fact stolen your dignity and a good portion of your sanity). A lot of this is about getting things stolen, yes.
At small bus stops, you are forced to stand as you wait for the bus, all the while rejecting the men who usher you to their private taxis with the charm of crocodiles. Consequently, the long periods of waiting have helped me to develop a high level of patience, what with these buses being the automobile equivalents of that person who reassures you every 15 minutes that he is 5 minutes away, only to appear two hours later and blame the whole affair on his alarm clock.
After the pilgrimage from your place of residence to your place of work and back again, what remains is to remove any traces – mental and physical – of the bus journey. I have found that a two-minute face, neck and hand wash is a good temporary measure although if you accidentally touched a Salman Khan fan during your commute, you should immediately take an hour-long bath. I have not yet found a way to remove the mental trauma.
All things considered, my experience with BMTC has been a lot like my first year in college – necessary but unbeneficial and something to rant about.
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