Route 83...

This is a take on the many sensations one goes through when traveling on a bus in Mumbai .. eyes closed... a day in the life for me ....

I have my office in Worli. The place is basically the pad for the accomplished and a host of others who want to make a similar illusion. We at work belong to the latter. This way into “town” (god knows why these guys call it so) and is a stiff hour on the bus.

Every morning I make my way from Santa Cruz station, from a mammoth crumbling edifice which gives the strict warning of not attempting to scratch the walls lest you discover the mother goddess from Harrappa embedded inside. I gave up the train and all the crotch rubbing one goes through for the bus which takes more time but does not violate ones personal space to such an extent.

Mumbai’s bus service like all other forms of public transport, is good, comparatively frequency, clean (thank goodness) and a fairly well to do crowd.

I used to carry a book with me to kill time and possibly have a laughing fit which would, to my glee, cause all other co passengers repulse (thus allowing more space “ gaand phailake baithna” in delhi terminology).

But there is a queer aspect of those running this service. These services are state run which in most other states would mean that the individual is born without a sense of time and any form of responsibility. Bus drivers in Mumbai on the other hand have another aspect. They love mind games.

Say you notice the bus pulling into those stops and you are an easy 15 meters away. You break into a run. The driver with his trained eyes sees you sprint a miracle mile. He immediately activates telepathy to read your mind. The moment you are like 3 meter away from the boarding door, as if on cue he revs the engine and tries a 0 to 60 in 6 seconds flat. You of course do not believe it and keep running towards the door. The driver is good in physics ( I guess it is one of the holy prerequisites). 45 kmph along with your feeble 15 kmph, that is 60 kmph. With an amrs length of 60 cm ( when you catch the side bar and attempt a flying tackle with the fluidity of a tai chi artist, you swing and bang yourself on the sideboard with approximately 600 kilo newtons of force. Rattled and disoriented you struggle up the bus not knowing whether you are to meet a ravishing airhostess or the gruff conductor. Sorry , it is the gruff conductor who tries to capitalize on the disorientation and asks you your destination atleast 3 times. Atleast once in every three days you end up forgetting if you are coming back from office or going to it. Resulting in the moronic chanting of the same stop you got on as your destination. Pan stained teeth greet your hapless fuddle. If he had a chance he would put me on public address. The driver meanwhile takes out his diary and makes a caveman mark (for his writing skills he fairly well read though often giving you a speech on the history of Maharashtra if you venture too close to the gate where you get off) tagging the number of victims for the day. He is sure to go home a open a bottle in celebration with wife in tow of his achievements for the day. Hey the bus service is good though, I just did not know where to put in the disclaimer “all characters in this mess are fictitious in nature, any resemblance to one living or dead (thank god) is pure a matter of someone sleeping with primates”.

Well you got on and bought the little piece of paper which is the answer to your prayers of safe passage and sidle into a corner. I usually choose the back seat. Something from school days where the back was synonymous with invisibility, protection from stares from the better students who would be appalled at your sheer lack of knowledge of any subject, the best being the option to doze off.

This experiment with truth (what ? you thought only fathers of the nation tried such stuff ? by the way how do you write that you mean different fathers for different nations and not a draupadi situation?, yeah write to me. I will make paper boats of it) comes at a time when I stopped carrying a book to office out of sheer laziness. I wanted to breeze in and breeze out of office (without anyone noticing , carry a bag and you sure would come across stifled snickers)

The first sensation is that of the breeze that hits you. Remember the miracle mile , dislodged collar bone and intense questioning, you just want some air. The first part which feels cool is the hairline. This is where all the sweat holds on. The next place (hey I do not carry a timer to define how many seconds pass between one place and the other. If you want to know, you carry one yourself.. psycho!!) is the little triangle (hey hey space cadet its up here) between your nose and cheekbone. It is refreshing as you have just been subject to insane pressures of everyday life in this megalopolis.

You settle in with your mind having realigned to where you were going and the hundreds of traffic snarls you would be waiting in. The freshness of the air leaves you in a nanosecond when you realize that you are smelling dust. Now Mumbai has a lot of dividers and typically busses are supposed to be traveling on the lanes close to the pedestrian side rather than the divider. So the bus actually blows up all this dust which had settled between the divider stone and the road and you are going to be caked in it before you reach any where. The good thing is anybody you meet would have the same up his nostrils so he would not be able to tell the difference (except the ladies I guess who dart into the womens room before they step into the office, no I did not stand hiding somewhere to notice that) so that kind of levels it out.

The back of the bus is obviously bumpier like you are sitting on the end of a diving board. That’s the whole point dude, sensation , sensation. But then you notice that the bus, even when not trying to jump you off the seat, keeps vibrating. The sensation is clearly felt on your cheeks. They like jiggle around. No I am not padded with puppy fat, well not all that much I am sure. The vibration is noticeable when you close your eyes. Why? Did you not read the first line? But you’d want to know why this constant vibration persists? I guess it is the interlocking stones that make up most roads. This habit borders fanaticism here. Give a square foot of space to the conservancy guys and they would put in a dozen of these blocks. As to kill the monotony they mix red one and yellow ones in slanting lines. They are all over the place, footpaths and roads alike.

Another sensation is the play of light on your closed eyelids. You have noticed how even with closed eyes you can tell when your brother is creeping up on you to pull your hair. It is something like that. The occasional glass clad building wakes you up from deep trance while the trees and other vehicles moving in the opposite direction keep moving a finger of light across the eyelids. Its fun.

Never travel wearing short sleeves. You have to understand that touching skin in this place is no big deal. The arm hair of the person sitting beside you can be the weirdest sensations. But the bus throws up all sorts of petty silent squabbles. The first one is the proportion of the seat that you occupy. When seating oneself, it is usually done by using gravity to create as much or more space on the seat. Then when you have uncomfortably landed half your ass on the other mans lap, he is sure to shift laterally to avoid getting some part of is leg in a not so comfy area. Well I am sure there are some who would fanaticize about this. Hey move away.

Ensuing the loss of precious real estate on the seat, the next battle for shoulder space starts. You must have played a childhood game called “thumb wrestling”. This is something similar. Only the participants here have stubble coming out of every pore and grey hair in the most unexpected places. This is a long game, no easy winner. Little like chess also, you know, waiting on the others preoccupation with a pair of tight jeans or a lady in a passing car, combing her hair, and bingo, advantage gangly alien. There are some great ways to circumvent this but anybody having to appear in an office upon getting of this bus would not be able to indulge in that ace. All you need is a shirt with paint drops all over and a can of half opened paint can. Pronto, you have monopoly to real estate and shoulder space, more so if you sit beside one carrying a laptop and talking on the cellphone.

There are some games played with instruments as well. This comes from a deep seated thought of promoting competition when making mundane journeys on this form of transport. It is the window , chumps. I really cannot come up with why the specification of the size of the window and the seats need to follow the Napiers series. But it seems to be. Why could we not have one window to every seat prefixed. The glass shutters are movable which brings us to the third game of this traveling Olympiad, “share the window bozzo”. The width of the open window is directly proportional to the stubble and belly size (recall how obese guys always carry a very small hanky when you know that inkeeping with their sheer volume, they should be carrying a larger one, well). This is a game which requires you to exert a lot of force when your face belies any sort of effort. The method is to push the glass shutter in the opposite direction using elbow all the while staring into wide open space or with ones eyes shut and make the other feel that the moving shutter is a part of the general design. Or in case he is sporting enough to push back, the lack of movement should appear as though the whole shutter is jammed up or something. Onto better stuff now.

The real weird- plus-one sensation is the crotch rub on shoulder. Yet another strange oversight. Imagine you needing to have to put up with the soft push of a crotch on your shoulder. A boner on the guy is all you are hoping, does not come around. You can do the WWF type of move to land yourself hard with a “blame it on the bus” look but that is unlikely if you do not want to end up with nightmares on the same lines. So you put up with this and try bending forward and crouching so that it would take a pair of bent knees to reach you shoulder. Well that is assuming he is not fantasizing about your ear. There are natural reasons for him to play the little “hug me tender, hug me sweet” part as most of them do not carry the money for the tickets in their pockets so one needs to dig out the purse, open it (two hand movement) which leaves a wildly oscillating hip. I am sure with practice one can learn the art of climaxing in this short period if overwhelmed by the sensation. Gawd!!

Dosing and half dreaming you would reach somewhere which is close to your destination which would prompt you to start wiggling around. You can have a little game here as well. The whole idea is that the wiggle and straightening of ones spine attracts those standing beside you like an overdose of pheromones and a small battle for rights could ensue among the multitudes standing around. Alpha males usually have strong looks and arms or stink of sweat which automatically discourages the others. Well the game is to make a small song and dance like you’re about to get up. Then look a bit blank, jaws open like trying to read the sign boards which are clearly too far away and a scribble to see then seat yourself back. The whole act would have excited the alpha male who now is fantasizing of your seat that the sign of you sitting back almost feels like a plump bunny escaping the lions jaw on a hot and dry afternoon in Serengeti. Of course there are no bunnies in Serengeti which by the way is the whole point. Although repetitions of this game could prove painful and attract undue attention from the conductor who on every journey believes that he is weighed down by the responsibilities of reprimanding people for seemingly no cause and that he is the seventeenth generation conductor which makes him a subject matter expert by birth.

After a few stomps you decide to get off. All the way, you stamp other peoples shoes and get stamped which trivializes the morning act of bothering to clean your shoes. One needs to get off from the front door. Something borrowed from the buses in the movies. The driver has copyright of ogling at all the asses getting off the bus. Give the guy a break, believe me he needs it his kicks. The streets are bad so I guess it is deserved.

What? it was not funny enough? Give me a break yaar. Try typing 5 pages while sitting on you bed, mosquitoes and cramps then come back to me with your smartass comments.

Go to work and make your home a better place.