Travelling in buses and the woes....

A Moment of 'ETERNAL BLISS' ..........is when?????????

when you are eating? when you are praised ? when you are singing or listening to music? when you are out with your friends?

........NO NO NO NO!!! You are probably missing out on something more important!

None of this can beat the pleasure of seeing a DTC bus come towards you and ..and ..and...STOPPP!! (rare for a DTC vehicle , isn't it?) . So , you are now a relieved soul... it'll quickly take you to your college , in a matter of hours and minutes (well , maybe not that quick) .

Exaggerative you say??? (...huh!!!) then you either don't travel to college by bus or live somewhere near to your college , coz only then can you be 'stone hearted' enough to not understand a day-ski's (day scholar , you maybe knowing!) plight ! 

Jokes apart ( though i wasn't really joking) , how many of us had ever thought that some day we'll have to PRAY for a DTC (an 879 is my own savior everyday) to come so that we don't get late for college . A DTC coming towards you is not enough dear , you are yet to achieve your 'goal' ......forget all your entrance exams , now prove your mettle by battling a multi dozen other people , more experienced than you in terms of travelling in buses , to get into your bus . Do all that you can , use all that you have ; push , pull, drag , run behind the bus or RUN OVER another......forget the age difference , your manners too for a while coz the other people on the bus stop with you are now your COMPETITORS .

Its not such a do-or-die situation ,though ,coz even if you miss the DTC , there MUST be a blueline coming your way , there are loads of them infact running every now and then . Fine then, get onto the blueline and see the difference . 'Enjoy' the blueline ride for DOUBLE the time than what a DTC would have taken , put in your earphones and have a nice time listening to your favorite music , you may even take a nap ...coz the blueline would be stopping every 1-2 minutes and so you may want to spend this time someway other than simply looking around!

And then , the Delhi bus ride won't spare you either. Get onto it and be all geared up to be thrown away here and there like luggage by people who have to get out and need to make their way through the crowd for the same , unless you are lucky enough to be in a non-crowded (read LESS crowded!) bus . And then , for girls , matters are no less than worse ! 

Seriously , its not as easy travelling in buses for girls as it maybe for boys. And i am pretty sure about it since i have seen and heard my own friends bemoan the same plight everywhere, even in Facebook statuses .Take for example , an incident that a friend of mine recently came across. She was  was this headstrong girl , not ready to tolerate any kind of nuisance , travelling in a blueline . Nothing could have bothered the studious girl ,who is often studying sitting in the bus ( thank god , not when she is standing !! !!) , except for a cloud of cigarette smoke . So here was this conductor , smoking heavily , right in front of the 'NO-SMOKING' board , thinking that none would bother, or rather ,dare to protest . None did actually , except this friend of mine who raised a strong voice against it and said to him " bhaiyya , aap ko woh board nazar nhi ata jo apke piche hi hai....bus mein smoke krna mana hai !!!!!!"..........

.........oooooohhhhhh.......great , isn't it? Finally , somebody could raise her voice against what was not right ! kudos to her!! Deserves applause!!!

BUT, what happened then , you didn't ask me that (oh, how can you ..haha!!) . Well , nothing major , except that the conductor now came and occupied a seat just behind her and directed his smoke RIGHT ONTO her!!!

That just speaks it all ... our plight (i am here representing the community of female travelers)  .....though i haven't yet talked about the DEADLY STARES (NOT VERY UNUSUAL FOR FEMALES HERE IN INDIA ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE , ISN'T IT?), THE MISBEHAVING PEOPLE , THE SEAT FIGHTS , THE BUMPY RIDE ITSELF ........and what not. 

But ,to an extent , it depends on us too . We have to decide our tolerance levels . Like another very good friend of mine . When she is sitting in a bus , people , men that is, can't stand even near her seat . If they dare to do so , they'll get some really "sweet" words from her (you understand the 'sweetness' here , right???) !! And this is one of the things i really praise about her.

I admit , i myself am yet to get into these ways of dealing with all this nuisance , though i have improved much more now ( seems like i am talking of academics!!!!!) . I surely have come a long way since the time when i had to be dropped and picked up by my father from wherever i had to go , which infact is the way with many of us  , before entering college.

So , this is the first major change in the lifestyles of maybe not all , but many of us ,after coming to college-leaving the comfort of our own vehicles to travel in the rickety buses of Delhi  .I guess , i got more focussed on the plight of female commuters here , but ,as a matter of fact , IT IS JUSTIFIED. Travelling in buses here in India is not always easy . What i just said is only a little part of the actual situation. I sincerely hope , that the condition improves ,somewhere in the near future..........though there is MUCH MUCH MUCH that needs to be done !!!!

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A STRANGE IDEA

Do you remember doing exercises like "fill in the blanks" in your English classes? Well, I do. And particularly one episode that I am going to talk about, here.

It was a fine Monday morning (actually I do not remember what day it was. But then, as if you do...) The morning assembly had just got over and we were all, as was the custom, sitting in our places in utter silence waiting for the teacher to come.
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Whatever! You didn't believe that, did you? The 21st century students that we are, is something like that even close to being possible? 

So, it's understood that we were all, as always, taking advantage of the teacher's absence and creating a hullabaloo, total ruckus inside and around the classroom—gossiping, passing around (or rather throwing) things to/at each other, sharing each other's woes (all of us were girls, may I add) and doing everything else that didn't matter at all. Now, though I don't remember if something like this happened or not, but in this kind of a situation—which is a teacher's truest nightmare, of all other things— Mrs.Romila must have come to the class; to repeat her most unwanted lecture—on utilizing our time better by 1)studying, as it was going to be our first tryst with the boards (huh! The tenth standard boards, how they scared us to hell about them and what they actually turned out to be!) and 2)doing some pranayam and meditation in our free time till the teacher came. (YES! she actually imagined we could do so—something so sO SO not in the '100 THINGS TO DO WHEN THE TEACHER IS NOT IN CLASS ' list of students!

Anyway, so it was supposed to be an English class, taken by Mrs. Elizabeth Chacko. Mrs. Elizabeth Chacko:a very experienced and a very very boring teacher who didn't indulge in any kind of 'out of the course' discussions, murmured her lecture to a class of 40+students, could dare think that we would 'actually' do an English homework (imagine!) and taught lessons in the most monotonous manner possible. How interesting, no? 

That day, we were going to do the English workbook—the most boring part of English classes, I guess; comprising of exercises like 'fill in the blanks' , 'make sentences' ,'choose the correct answer' and all that.

Now, here was an exercise that Mrs.Chacko asked us to do in 10 minutes. But, as was customary in her class, we spent the entire period chatting and each time she asked in her gentle voice, 'children. Done with it?' we'd yell in unison, 'ma'am we are doing. 5 more minutes!'

Finally, when just 5 minutes were left for the bell to ring she asked one of us to read out what we had written. And that 'one' was, me!

Nothing to panick about, for I had done it. I read what it was. A fill in the blanks exercise of which, one of my answers didn't really impress her. 

Q. If I were god I would ______

and I had written :

If I were god I would destroy the whole world.


and she suddenly showed an "expression" (not very typical of her, you see—to show any expression for that matter.)  She raise an eye-brow and said, 'what ? What did you say, just repeat it?' I followed the instruction. But didn't elaborate on it, her expressions were weird enough to refrain me from saying anything more. Further then she asked me simply 'but why do you say so?'


 trinng..trinnnng...trinnnng....trinnng.......trinnnnnng!

Sorry for the interruption; but that is exactly how the school bell interrupted at that time.


Thus, I got a little distracted from the idea that had made me say what I said and write what I wrote. Plus, I just wanted to get her really big eyes off me, she was staring at me as if I was an alien who had come to actually destroy the planet. So I decided to just wind it up with a callous, 'umm, just like that.' (as we say in Hindi , "aise hi" )


She gave another, scarier, look and started collecting her books to leave the class, but only after making this statement: 'I don't know why you say so. But you sound very destructive.'


I felt odd, really odd. even though she hadn't really meant to call me destructive, but then, even I hadn't meant what she took it to be. Now I'll tell you what had brought me to the noble idea:


I thought, as god, I'll be able to do just about anything: with anyone, everyone, anything in the world. 
So, what should it be? Rid us all of terrorism? Or to do away with the multifarious (albeit self-created) barriers—of caste, creed, color, region, status e.t.c? Or to reduce the level of global warming which is putting Earth's future at risk? Or teach the basic lesson of happiness through contentment to humans? or...or...or...

And I just realized, there are way too many problems in and with this world, this planet and us. 


Actually, the universe has come a long way since its inception, not only in terms of advancement but also in terms of its extirpation. The only way to make it free from all the hostility between human-beings and nature would be to start it allover again, and in a more fool-proof way this time, so that, we would be able to live in the world that we all want, but don't truly strive for. 


Now, was it that bad an idea?
Or maybe, my fault was that I didn't  fill the blank completely—the way I wanted to.
But then, they say we should be very precise and to-the-point in our answers in the subject. Don't they?

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