Never miss the bus

Its been a long time since I posted something on my blog. Thanks to laziness, work pressure and thanks to IPL too.

I've always believed that one should never miss the bus. And being the stickler that I am, I kept the record intact for 7 long years right from my college days. And 2 weeks back this streak ended when I missed the bus for the very first time. I guess a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was badly shaken and stirred by the near miss while driving home the previous night.
Anyways, that's another story altogether.
Everybody who knows me well enough knows that I absolutely adore my car. I'd never miss an opportunity to take her out for a long drive.In fact, she's been my only girlfriend till now.

Inspite of all this, I prefer to travel to office by company transport. One of the reasons being that I feel extremely guilty to travel alone in a car that can seat 5 people comfortably. And the other being that going by office transport means that I can outsource my driving woes through Bangalore traffic to someone else and just enjoy the goings on around me.
So what's so special in travelling by bus, so much so that I prefer doing that vis-a-vis being in company of my lady in red. Here are some random thoughts about my experiences on travelling by office bus.And as usual I've changed the names of all my colleagues to be a bit more discreet and maintain their privacy as well.

Its 8:10 AM and I get into Route 16.The driver floors the gas pedal even before I get a foothold. I seemingly lose balance and inadvertently stamp on Prathima's feet, who immediately glances at me with that "How dare you do that?" look of hers.
I walk quietly past the Rajah's seat where Lord Ranjan is reading his newspaper. I call that as the Rajah's seat because the way in which he sits on it seat reminds me those old Hindi movies where a haughty king ruled the world from his throne. And he wont budge, no matter who comes and asks him for space.

I settle down in one of the backseats, I hear a manager and a HR personnel working on the rumour mill about the HR's new foreign travel policy. I jostle myself next to a lean and short person who seems to be taking a full one and a half seats and leaving me with the rest.I think to myself, "What crap are these people discussing early in the morning!!!"

My prying eyes glance on everyone around. I find Suresh in the first seat happily dozing away to glory. And Deepti is listening to FM on her new Samsung mobile in the very next seat.

Across the aisle, there are two ladies, who don the role of regulators of the bus. Right from the route the driver takes, to the radio station that's played and all the way upto deciding the departure time in the evenings, everything has to be approved by them. Without them itseems that everything is shunya on Route 16.

Then I happen to see the two most effervescent people in the bus, Prathima and Navya.
A sleepy looking Navya is reading a magazine, or rather covertly preparing for her CAT exams. She looks cute in her blue dress, but that look on her face suggests that she hasn't slept properly for a long time now.

Prathima tries to pick up a conversation with her. On seeing Navya's keen interest in the book, Prathima gives up and rests her shoulders on Navya's and quickly pretends to fall asleep.
I'm through with glancing at all the junta in the bus, I start to aimlessly look at the world outside the bus. I see a few students waiting for their college bus. A few cabbies stopping bang in the middle of the road to pick up some passengers. All this sightseeing comes to an abrupt end, when the driver screeches the brakes as he decides to stop at a red signal for a change.

The last passenger is picked up and we all sign in the attendance, and the regulators quickly double check if everyone's signed in. All's well and quiet. The bus goes past some of the college areas, after which I decide to get my forty winks.

I manage to close my eyes for the next 300 seconds and suddenly my reverie is interrupted by a broken speaker which loudly blares, "Jinke marina...Ni jinke marina". Apparently this is the favourite song of one of the regulators, and it looks like she's literally threatened the driver to increase the volume, "Or Else...."
As I regain my senses I find that I'm not the only one who got a wake up call. I hear the people behind me mutter feebly, "Enappa ee golu". I look at the time in my watch and say, "Not bad.8:45 AM and we are already on Old Madras Road. 10 mins more and we are in office. I bet I couldn't have driven this quick in this traffic." I quickly make a mental note of things to be done for the day and also get prepared to be tormented and also to torment others.

Our driver negotiates past the million speed breakers on the Bagmane main road, everytime reminding me to work out my back, or risk a disc failure. Everybody is waiting to get out of the bus, just like a shaken can of Coca Cola is waiting to be popped open. This short travel has probably energised everyone so much that all are raring to go and start off with their day's work.


If that was about getting to work, then here's the getting back home part.

Being in the IMS team, me and most of my colleagues rarely get to leave by the 6:15 cab. So much so that we consider leaving at 6:15 as working half day. Most of the times I take the 8 PM cab, in which I have good company of Chethan who will be back from his gym workout. But the problem is, that Chethan is mostly in sasuraal, a.k.a Suwon a.k.a HQ.

If Chethan's around, most of the discussion revolves around our managers,team members and office politics. If he's in sasuraal, most my journey is spent rather uneventfully.

But sometimes the work pressure gets so much that my head involuntarily starts debugging the brilliant looking and yet crappy code in my head. To make matters worse this goes on in a for(;;)loop all the way till next morning, even after I've gotten into sleep.

The times when I get to leave after half day's work (read as 6:15 PM), the whole world seems a different place. The sunset scene when the bus goes past Ulsoor lake is simply outstanding. The silhouette of the trees and the birds perched on them just reminds me why Bangalore's so beautiful. There seems to be a flurry of activity everywhere around.
At one of the signals, I find another bus from our office standing next to us. I am shocked to see a couple of people standing and doing a sequence of animations which suggested that they were having a fight. I crosscheck with my baddy friend in that bus who's busily birdwatching outside. He quickly dispels all my doubts about an ensuing fight by saying, "Dumb Charades".

Recently I bought a new mobile of which I like to make maximum use of. So I frantically change the radio stations to see if my kind of music is being played in any of them. Finding none I fallback to the media player. And nine times out of ten, the first song that I play is Echoes by Pink Floyd, which simply seems to take me to a different ethereal world altogether.

I also have some good company in the form of Navya and Prathima who are ever exuberant and always in the mood for some good natured banter. Being the recluse that I am, I rarely can bring up a good conversation. But somehow these two ladies get me to get started off with my one liners (read as PJs).
Somehow I surmise that Navya is thinking that if she was alone with no one around, then she could have spent most of the journey chatting or texting on the mobile with her boyfriend(also can be interpreted as a friend who's a boy).

The rest of the bus seems to have dozed off into glory. As the cab wriggles its way past through the congested lanes of Bamboo Bazaar, Im momentarily depressed to see a whole lot of people living in shanties. I feel bad to see their baneful existence, and ask myself, "Why is there an ocean of poverty around an island of wealth?"
We Indians we are wealthy enough to buy out entire companies of luxury brands like Jaguar and Land Rover, but still we dont have enough money to take car of our poor and desolate. And then I feel there's still some hope as the cab slowly goes past a sculpture of Christ. If not much then the least that we all can do is pray.

Sixteen of the eighteen kilometres from office is covered in 45 minutes. But the last two take up a full 20 minutes. As my stop comes near, I nervously decide to walk up to the driver and tell him to stop the bus. Nervous, because not so long ago, when I told a driver to stop, he stopped instantaneously in the middle of the road, making me tip over onto the engine bay. Needless to say a biker rear ended our bus in the process.
I slowly tread the weary way and muse about the irony that my stop's about 3 minutes walk from my from my house. And sometimes it takes me 2 minutes to just cross the jam packed road. With this, I'm happy that I'm still fresh and re-energised enough to write this post. Happy that I didn't have to negotiate Bangalore traffic. Happy that I got to switch off from my work. And these are precisely some things that I wont be able to do when I drive down myself to office.
That's why I say, "Never miss the bus."