A ticketless busride

 Well, once we tried a ticketless ride in a bus. The 1983 world cup victory was roughly seven years old at that time. The momentum was carried throughout the country in the form of a massive craze for the game. I must have been thirteen or fourteen at that time. We had a cricket match at the neighboring town, lost it badly and thought of winning it against the state roadways. We didn’t return as a triumphant unit. We came back like a scattered, defeated army in retreat.

I and another dusted player in the one-sided match chose a rickety roadways bus, almost a jangling junk cabin, for it appeared to provide the best chance of a ticketless journey. Each of us carried a one rupee coin on our person. The rest was spent in devouring bananas to beat the pathos of humiliating jeering and abuses by the few dozens of spectators leering from the side of the host team. The fair was only this much, one crisp rupee or coin, so who won’t try to save the precious thing. We hid the property in our socks. The conductor approached for at least a half ticket. We lamented and cried a chorus, ‘No Money with us!’ He muttered his anguish but left us to our own fate.

We sat almost hidden in the corner at the rear end where the massive spare tyre dumped right inside the bus gave us a precarious perch. The roads were potholed and the buses went almost cascading as if jumping over the off-road ravines of the present day. It shook one’s bones. Maybe it provided skeletal strength to the people. All well so far. But the flying squad came in the way of this totally bumpy ride. The burly inspector knew the secret of the coins in the socks. He must have grown up doing the same himself. Our hidden property was drawn out and put at the disposal of the state government.

As a consequence we had tickets in our hands apart from critical reprimands regarding our immoral conduct. A village elder stared at us. We knew him well but he looked apprehensive as to our domicile. As young boys we had our screen of boyhood anonymity. We knew it quite well that if we got down at the village bus stand another round of grilling would be launched by the village elder. It would then leave bigger tidal waves that would reach our own doors. So we presented ourselves as boys from the neighboring villages as we confidently disembarked at the stop preceding out village and walked off, trying to drill it in his mind that we weren’t from his village as he suspected.

Our faked destination was two kilometers from our village. ‘He will think we are from this village!’ we chimed with scheming laughter. Then we walked across the agricultural farms for two kilometers with tickets in our pockets. It was a nice walk with roadways tickets in pockets. On the way we planned that we had to keep a very curtailed and low profile lest he saw us and grill us about the crime. The elders were very efficient informers during those times. They would share the news of such infringements to the entire village without fail. So we kept ourselves on keen guard for a few months and even afterwards avoided coming across that particular village elder. It’s good that the life in the old age gives dulled memories to the beholder of ripe age. Even many months later he just curiously peered into our faces. But thank God there was no direct recalling into the chambers of his conscious brain from the vague imprints of our mischief lying faded on his subconscious mind.