Misadventure on wheels

FOR THOSE who seek excitement in the midst of the staid and automatic life in a metro, the transport system is a godsend, offering unexpected and unforeseen adventures everyday. Be it a working day, holiday or a festival, the mysterious logic of the transport corporation is intriguing, to say the least.

As one waits anxiously at a bus stop, yellow boards whizz past and cut services come to an enticing halt. The choice is between walking one or two kilometres backwards or onwards, alighting where the first category stops or the second terminates. They have probably taken the cue from autorickshaw drivers, who are always reluctant to go where you wish to go.

Recently, on a Sunday, we decided to go to the beach. Not wanting to take an auto all the way across the city, we got off at the bus terminus, thinking we would take a bus. After all, at that point, we would get seats, although one or two stops later, to which we could have walked, the bus would have got packed. Approach to the bus terminus is cut off these days by a one-way system and so we had to abandon the auto almost halfway and walk the rest of the distance. There could not be a better setting for a tragic-comedy than a bus terminus. Anxious commuters running from pillar to post looking for a bus, asking directions, and assistance was conspicuous by its absence.

After walking around a few times, we saw the bus that we wanted hiding in a corner and ran to it, only to be told that it would not leave for an hour. Wandering around, looking for alternatives, we saw another of its kind enter the bay, take a sharp turn and race to the exit. We ran after it for all we were worth, not wanting to miss it, as we were already almost an hour behind schedule. Jostling, pushing, being pushed and punched in turn, we scrambled into the bus, but not nimbly enough - no seats available, we had to take a stand in the aisle. The bus which had been moving all along now came to a screeching halt and the conductor and driver sauntered away, ignoring our dismayed question.

While we were gazing at them, off roared the bus we had first seen, tucked away in a corner, its departure unaccountably advanced by twenty minutes. There was a mad scramble to get out of the bus into which we had just got in and a dash to the one which was tantalisingly poised at the entrance, waiting for a chance to turn into the speeding traffic. We thought we would never make it, but the crowd rushed us along and swept us up the steps until we found ourselves packed tight between sweating but jubilant beach-goers. We were on our way at last, although we looked longingly at the corner seats we might have occupied if we had just waited for this bus to move instead of trying our luck at others.

Running around, dashing into and out of buses, swaying and sweating, nothing could dampen our enthusiasm when at last we got off near the beach; in fact, all this exercise seemed to have exhilarated us and we felt like mountaineers when they reach a particularly difficult peak. Two hours of splashing, splurging, munching and later, we thought it was time to go home and braved the bus terminus once again. Boards announcing the number and destination of buses could be seen at regular intervals and we went all the way to the back, to the board that displayed ours. Just as we got there, it came tearing in, and not taking any notice of the crowd waiting for it, raced to the very exit.

Oh, how we ran after it! No Olympic sprint could have improved upon our dash. Another scramble, but this time we got places to sit. As we looked jubilantly around, us, and pitied those who had to stand, the conductor came up to the driver and together they walked away, impervious to our questions. While we gaped in astonishment, the driver came back and switched off the lights. "The battery is weak" he commented, leaving us in darkness.

As the youngest of our gang, I was forced by the others to find an explanation. I went to the information booth as the person in charge was just preparing to leave. "There will be only one bus, at 10 p.m. The buses before that have been cancelled," he announced. Before I could ask him why, he had disappeared into a tea shop.

We had nearly one hour to wait, inside that dark and crowded bus. We dare not get down for fear of losing our places, and may be even the bus, which might be whisked away at any time. We were helpness but had to wait and anticipate the welcome we would receive when - if - we reached home around 11 o'clock.

We could pretend that we were soldiers hiding to strike at the enemy, or divers looking for treasures in the gloomy depths of the ocean, or astronauts striking out across space - just about anything, in fact, while we waited to go home.

At the end of a hectic day we were being given the time to think, to dream, to conjecture, to conquer horizons in our imaginative ramblings. The bus did leave at last, at ten minutes past ten, but we were too tired to wonder any more about the whimsies of our transport system at the end of our expedition to the beach.

VASUPRADA IYENGAR

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