A Few Moments in a Bus

 

Ten years is more than sufficient time to unleash massive changes in a metropolis like Delhi. But certain features are so deep-rooted that one can feel their shadows even while the things seem to have changed drastically. This sketch about Delhi is exactly a decade old but I’m sure you will still feel these lingering shadows when you visit the national capital.

Here is an early December morning. Salutes Delhi! To make it sound normal you are two-eyed. But there are different visions, different dreams, different destinations. Too much for a pair of eyes, for sure.

One of your pan-shots captures the swanky glitz-and-glamour of the resurgent India. Whether it is right-eye pan-shot or the left-eye, I do not know. But yes, the other eye’s camera shot pervasively covers the classic tragedies spread out in black and white. It’s a grizzled, murky screen having classic farce and tragedies spinning, whirring around the same axis.

It’s Muharram today. Many offices are closed. It just means you can drop your purse on the DTC bus floor and still you are left with a realistic chance of retrieving it. Eighth wonder almost! So at least you can see a few square feet of space around you. Great solace indeed. The air too is not stuffed with guffaws let out by infected throats and lungs, disordered stomachs, cheap scents and Deos from Palika Bazaar and above all the usual individual and collective frustrations drenched with hot, musty sweat.

See, when the vehicle-maker offers these buses (allegedly along with the kickbacks per piece and which is more important to our rampaging politicians), the real cost of the machine is just meant to carry this type of load, the festival load, once-in-a-time load when not many people 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. Boy he is a real man, carries a pole that would tower above the poor bus if their vertical components competed. He slants it, his small hands manoeuvre it smartly and the camel is safely in the room. The pole is the dancing axis of many types of cheapest toys as you might say can be afforded by the childhoods mushrooming in the slums. All fellow-riders watch him in half amuse and half irritation. Some lampoons like yours truly even laugh 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 to the conductor seat after killing all the apprehensions and objections of the buswala about the pole falling and the kids-stuff getting a playground on their heads. The boy-entrepreneur gets the 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 manner in which his cheap jacket is buttoned up to the collar, the way trousers tightly fit his thin legs and the way the shoes purchased from the road-side hawker stand decently cleaned, all these portend a good, successful business plan.

One problem with the new DTC bus is that its doors open too invitingly with a hiss, as if it is specially welcoming you for a joy-ride. Carried by the swift winds of one such invitation, an adivasi family raids the semi-occupied bus. The conductor baulks, 'Not without tickets you thieves!' 'Hutt you miser, we have money!' the dark old lady draped in a big raggish blanket shouts. Only God knows how many of them are in the group! It is a defiant pariah unit cocking a snook at the organized hordes of Delhi. One monkey-like infant immediately grabs the handrails overhead and tries gymnastics. One of its itching fingers busts the balloon tied at the upper end of the toy pole. Both its owner and the conductor shriek painfully.

Many unclean, bright-eyed kids clad almost in rags carry their unsuspecting selves to the empty seats and dump the gypsy spirit for a while. Their neighbours almost vomit in disgust. They feel their dignity has been severely violated. A slim lady carries a toddler on her shoulder, an infant on her hip and most probably one more life inside her as the glossy black bulge of her abdomen shines from the short kurti she is wearing above the gracious folds of a grimy long skirt.

It just becomes a thoroughfare. The conductor fights for tickets. They stand their positions, gibberishly, savagely. And where are they going? The entire national capital region is their destination. No particular destination means destinations everywhere. It is just a matter of holding onto the ride till the fight with the conductor acquires serious colours. And the moment it does, they just dump themselves with the same teasing indecency like they had raided the bus and vanish from the scene.

Well, we missed a parting shot. As they get down and try to scrape through the jostling crowd, they block the path of a brand new Mercedes for a long moment. Delhi, salutes! You bear witness to the two paradoxical movie-makings by the camera lenses in your eyes!