Sailing to Byzantium

People who are expecting that I will talk about some nice, picturesque escape route to my dream land, like Yeats (he is the poet for this one, right?) might be disappointed. I am rather going to write about my very realistic, painful yet adventurous trips on the bus from Tarnaka to Punjagutta, where my office is. First thing I loathe the most about it is the beginning, where I have to get up early in the morning to catch the bus. After a brisk short walk I reach my bus stop and hope against hope for two things, one that the bus comes on time and two that the bus has just enough space to accommodate the lesser mortals like me, who can’t afford an auto to work every day. Alas! Nothing of the two happens and right then the adventure begins. I and the rest, boarding the bus from the same bus stop, immediately become enemies after having spotted the bus that comes blissfully unaware of the panic it has caused so many of us and merrily comes crawling at its own sweet pace. Now ready to charge, we rush to be the first one to get on to the ugly, misshapen body, which at this moment seems nothing more than a mass of hands and legs, a few heads all attached together. After having squeezed myself into that whole mass of distorted human body parts. I try to find an inch of space to land my feet. Aha! I have spotted one, between to fat women that will be pretty comfortable, isn’t it? But nothing, comfort is this alien word in this moving planet. After having stationed myself there I realize the mounting pressure from all four sides and curse myself to have taken the endeavor. But just then this sweet lady compromises and lets me have some more of space that she all this while had managed to keep to herself. That really did come as a rescue as I could atleast get my other feet on ground now. I realized that these girls, who stared at you with disgust the moment you tried to nudge, are so very comforting when they realize that the whole trauma is new for you. They make you get used to it. The trips that I began loathing are now very much a part of me . I do not detest the mixed smell of coconut oil and jasmine now.

I am getting so used to my Bus journeys that now I have begun to recognize faces, faces that smile, a happy comforting smile even in the most uncomfortable postures, when they see me enter that mass. Faces that perhaps will miss me, when from day after I won’t get on to the bus at my bus stop. Now that I would no more be traveling by these buses, I wish I had a few more days. So this one is to all the pretty, Hyderabad girls with whom I have spent quite some time now, in those crammed spaces, where inspite of being so protective of the spaces entitled to us by the goddess of APSRTC, we have been so very accommodating to others