A Busful of a Sky

Roop Lal is in his early thirties, comes from a village in Haryana, has graduation to his credit, belongs to the scheduled caste and thus the reserved category and hence should have been into a government job, but he isn’t because the famed political weapon of job reservation helps only those whose fathers and grandfathers have been lucky to get it. In a rare outburst of his otherwise genteel demeanour he did even lash out judgementally, ‘Why don’t they limit the reservation facility to just first generational claimants so that more and more poor dalit families get covered leaving out the rich kids of richer dalit parents who climbed the reservation ladder to give good education to their children’ But then it might do good to many poor dalit families, it however isn’t politically suitable to most of the parties in India. And also who cares about the opinion of a common man. India on a daily basis has trillions of such valid opinions. Only the politically effective ones survive. So his opinion having gone down a filthy drain, Roop Lal has hitched a job ride on the Delhi State Transport’s bus as an adhoc conductor, the mammoth public transport carrier in the national capital having decided to work as per the profiteering private sector by enrolling temporary workers on its payroll, on strict private sector rules of miserly payment counted on the basis of hours spent on the crowded bus floor. In this manner you escape the problem of overstaffed, nonperforming, overpaid, long-term parasitic employees and provide at least employment to a larger section of the society. Well, it seemed to be the only justification. Further, it is very convenient to delist and push out the temporary employees as the changing winds would require. 

 

Each morning he arrives in Delhi, travelling in the packed passenger trains full of cackling commuters, who travel on the same path, day after day, months after months, years after years, playing the same game of cards, discussing the same politics till some member of the group goes missing either on account of retirement, or when somebody dies. He also has been accepted by one such group of card-gamesters who put tiny sums on stake, grab the same seats in a corner in the same compartment. So lost in the dead serious game of cards he reaches Delhi. Salutes Delhi! This is his overpowering emotion. He likes Delhi because it gives him bread and butter otherwise his nagging wife would have definitely eaten his soul. She is too much of a fee-fawing feminine version of a monster, and he a wee bit gentle to weather the storm on a daily basis, so he feels more than obliged to the DTC and Delhi that these keep him busy in their clattering noise far away from his ranting, rampaging wife.

The Delhi around him is two-eyed. Two cosmically bulging eyes having different visions, different dreams, different destinations. One of its pan-shots swankily zooms on the glizz-and-glamour of the resurgent India. Whether it is the right-eye pan-shot or the left-eye, it is not possible to tell. The eye's flash-shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. It’s a grizzled, murky screen having classic comedies and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis. It’s the first Monday in the second week of December, the festival of Muhharram to be precise, and another chilly fresh day for Roop Lal who has a reason to smile today because his wife just completed weaving the woollen jersey that she had been working upon for almost couple of months during her non-ranting time. So in lieu of so many of his sweetmeats that he regularly fetched for her as a bribe to stop her mouth from ranting for some time and relish the sugary melt in her mouth. He is looking a bit smarter in his black and white patterned woollen jersey.

Many offices are closed on account of the Muhharram. It means a bit better luck for him for he can accidently drop some coin on the DTC bus floor and still left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. At least he could see through a radius of few feet around him. Great solace. The air too is not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deodorants from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations. When the manufacturer of these low-floored and environmentally friendly buses offered them to the DTC (along with the alleged ‘kickbacks per piece to the Sheila Dixit government’--the prevalent rumour embalinng truth, falsehood, judgement and frustrated opinions in the jib and jibe of meaningless, ineffective talk) the real cost of the vehicle was just meant to carry this type of load. The festival load. The holiday load. The once-in-a-time-load when people do not travel on account of holidays or some other emergency.

On this observable stage a 14-year-old man-kid jumbles into the finally justified interiors of the poor green line bus. Boy he is a man rather! Carries a pole that would tower above the poor bus if its vertical angularity is completed. He is holding it at an angle, slanted, his small hands manoeuvring it smartly and the camel is safely in the room, the roomful of a bus. The pole is the dancing axis of so many types of cheapest kid toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhood mushrooming in slums. All fellow-riders watch him in half amuse and half irritation. A few lampoons even laughed at the free show. Anyways, coming back to this character valiantly playing its part in the grizzly black and white ever-spooling movie. He rushes in after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the bus conductor about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. Roop Lal’s protest is too feeble, the boy’s resolve to cling onto the footholds in Delhi is too strong. Even their voices have starkly different pitches: the bus conductor speaks in slow-paced affably roughened notes; the boy-cum-manly-resolved passenger has a sabre-rattling tone. Left with no option, Roop Lal now fights for his bus-conducting right of asking for the ticket money.

Even here he has to fight a battle. It’s a bargain. The boy finally shows him a 10 rupee bill. Where do you go, tell me first, Room Lal tries to be tarter. The boy-entrepreneur is not sure, how can he be, his business might take him into any situation at any place. He doesn’t seem to have any destination in mind as well. His days in Delhi hawking the poor provisions take him to nameless destinations, the squares, the crossings, the T-points, the streets, the sidewalks. A bus ticket but takes one to a particular destination. The boy is thinking fast. He has to justify his bus-ride budget of 10 rupees. But the toy pole is too heavy, even more difficult to manage it within the confines of the bus. The effort is distracting him from being clever to dupe the conductor. Sensing it the conductor is regaining his lost confidence and finding law on his side is speaking even more sharply. The boy pretends to shuffle, and manage a stage show of fall-avoiding manoeuvres.

This self-earning-boy isn’t just a man in vocal resolve and glint in the eyes; he is the one in action as well. Roop Lal seems to paw this little mouse, and he the bullying cat, like the little mouse will plead for 10 rupees, so his voice now has even a bit of entertainment streak. The boy balances his load and himself against sudden brakes by the driver and without much effort takes out a 50 rupee bill from his pocket. He demands a DTC day-pass costing 40 rupees. Man-o-man! How much this kid earns to afford the pass? Anyways that is none of our concern like most of the Delhi things should not be. One fact is inescapable: the well-meant boy is well-prepared for the day. The way he has tied the muffler, the way his cheap jacket is buttoned up to the collar, the way the trousers well-fit his thin legs and the way well-cleaned shoes purchased from the road-side hawker, all these portend a good successful business plan. With his day-pass he is a legitimate passenger, throughout the day, in any green public transport to any destination. Possibly he has already spent almost the day’s profit in the bus ride, but that will keep him a legal bread earner for a day.

For the bus conductor the problems are never over even on a less-crowded holiday. One problem with the new DTC bus is that its door opens too invitingly with a welcoming whisper, as if it is specially inviting you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an Adivasi family now raids the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulks, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the black old lady draped in a big raggish blanket shouts. God knows how many of them there are! It is a collectively lampoonish unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabs the hand-rails overhead and tries gymnastics. One of its hands busts the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and the conductor shriek painfully. So many ragged kids carry their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dump the homeless spirit for a while. Their neighbours almost vomit. A slim woman carries a toddler on her shoulder, one infant in her lap and most probably another one inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shines from the short kurti she is wearing above the gracious folds of a dirty long skirt. It has become a thoroughfare. The conductor fights for tickets. They stand their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where are they going? Whole of the NCR is their destination. Going nowhere, still everywhere. It is just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with the conductor acquires serious colours. They have a resolve to keep occupying the bus for as long as possible. Roop Lal has is duty-bound to either legitimately extort money out of their torn pockets, or throw them out. If the ticket-checking squad catches so many ticketless passengers, he might very easily lose his temporary job. He fails to draw even a penny out of their pocket, so he now prays that they disembark at the earliest and for that he has to keep his fight on, so continues he with all his tongue’s might, continue they riding almost deaf-eared. To bring him luck, they just dump themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanish from the scene. Roop Lal exhales out a stormy breath of relaxation.

The bus conductor looks at the boy. The boy smiles back. The boy entrepreneur now appears the most civilized and well mannered one. He goes to the boy and helps in adjusting the pole suitably so that his balloons are safe. He takes out a 10 rupee note from his leather bag of collection and gives it to the boy. He will have to reimburse these 10 rupees from his salary. The boy takes it more as a friendly gesture, and less as charity. He disembarks near a very crowded square, looks back at him with a faint smile, and vanishes in the jostling crowd. The bus moves on.