The rickety bus is a spectacle unique to us underprivileged people of the world. ( Underprivileged here includes Sales Trainees amongst a few other classes). My encounter with this miracle began about a year ago, amongst the throes of people in a demure village of Asansol, West bengal, and has taken me around Mahrashtra, Chattisgarh and Orissa in it's course.
This miracle of an invention is an amazing breeding ground for new thoughts and ideas, as thinking is all that one can do in the crammed space. It gives a whole new meaning to the famous Launchpad ( Duck tales fame) line, " It's gonna be a bumpyyyy ride!!".
A part conspirator in the coming about of this innovation is also the road system in India. The unrelenting bravery with which this system has braved season upon season of monsoon, refusing to change itself even a bit, lest it loose some of its splendid sheen, is a tribute to the grittiness of the nation and it's people in itself.
Nonetheless, make no mistake, I am in no way trying to condemn any profession, and even a nonbeliever may never dare to pass sarcasm over God's own miracles that I mention here.
I call these a miracle because they have taught me lessons my teachers never could. ( In all fairness to them, I never really listened to them and treated the classroom as the unofficial bedroom sans a bed.)
The rickety bus taught me the extent of our nation. It taught me the importance of running at breakneck speeds to put a handkerchief on the seat to block it for oneself. It reminded me of my place amongst this huge mass. It told me that outside the comfort of my home, I m just a meager speck in the multitude.
This bus taught me off the real wealth of this nation. Yes, I am talking of the people, and yet, of more, of that material eloquence that we generally mean when we say wealth. Would you believe that in a village 448 km from Bhubhaneshwar, a man owns a personal helicopter? Would you believe that one of the biggest builders in this part of the world has his office in the crowded streets of Kendrapada, a small business town in Orissa. Would you believe that entire ships of stocks of soaps with no M.R.P. unload in West Bengal every month, and disappear somewhere in the villages of the state. Would you believe if I tell you that I saw a mercedes in a village 270 kms from a Kolkotta. Yes, the rickety bus took me there.
The bus taught me of how shorthanded our sixty year journey of independence has been. How people, clamour in the one and only means of transportation, running after their dreams. How, on non existing roads, the rickety bus symbolizes the aspiration of the growing youth of this country. Don't worry, they are coming. Those kids who play around stacks of coal, who sell "paani pouch" for watching a movie in the evening, who use railway tracks as shit holes, they are coming, to take this country ahead. They are coming because this country may not have given them roads, it may not have given them prosperity, but it did give them The rickety bus.
I have watched these kids stand amazed around my laptop in a bus, bouncing all around just for a glimpse. I have seen them stand outside the only shop watching TV adds. I have seen the torn posters of cars stolen from dumps as their prized possessions. And in some of their eyes, I have seen their dreams.
I have seen the determination, when nobody asks a bus to stop even when a lady shits inside the bus, because these people have to get to the main town on time. I have seen the grit, when amongst the utter disregard for humanity represented by the crowd inside the bus, people hang on for their lives to reach that destination. I have seen the effort when an enormous mob erupts at the 4:30 a.m. bus in a race to be the first to reach the mandi.
Don't call me a cynic for bringing out the hard side of life. I have seen more than fifty drunk people beet the hell out huge drums for 12 continous hours, and the music they produced would beat the drumlines of many music schools in the flip of a second. And I have seen this celebration in a village 300km from Nagpur. I have shared rounds of sattu in a village on Bihar/ WB border, and I have seen these people share and solve each other's problems in a way the modern civilized society would find fit enough to be a part of the eloquent dream of eutopia. Life their has a meaning much deeper than what we have in our cities. And it is this meaning that they bring with themselves that convinces me of the impending glory.
Let the powers that be behold the miracle of the rickety bus, and the dream of India shining shall come tumbling in it.
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