My pongal...

I celebrated pongal with family after three years. I still remember those childhood days when we used to go to our grandparents’ place every pongal and enjoy the pleasures of village. It has been eight years that I had been to my grand parents’ place and this year my mom was hell bent to be at my grandparents’ place.

I packed my things in back pack and got ready for a 2 hour joy ride in a bus (there is no helipad at the destination so could not use my copter). Now an ardent follower of my blog would instantly understand the affinity I have for the government buses.

                The moment we entered the bus station, a couple of khaki clad men started lobbying about a bus that would not stop before our destination, and they promised to drop us there in less than two hours, once they cross the city. Given the unsuspecting nature of our parents, I ended up in a 2X2 seater, which is generally used for intra city shuttling.

                The bus was half filled when we entered, with an occasional nylon gunny bag blocking the way. My parents settled in an empty two seater and I settled beside them in an Aisle side seat as the window one was already occupied. Our khaki clad men were talented they poached upon a lot of customers and the bus was more than full now. Both of them kept on shouting non-stop incessantly. It worked, as there were lots of passengers flocking the bus like the flies flock to jaggery.

                For the next fifteen minutes, the bus stopped at any place that the bus could stop and the khaki clad men, the driver and the conductor, kept on shouting ‘non-stop’. The more they shouted non-stop more people started boarding the bus. Soon my parents went out of my sight, as the space between us was filled by a family of eight. There was a father, two mothers (my assumption) and five kids. The family happily settled on the floor and occupied the space between my limbs and my body. It’s like I immersed my left leg and left hand into the sea of people, you get the picture?

                The bus stopped again, the men shouted non-stop incessantly and the cycle continued. This time there were more people, I felt as if I was going to be part of team that won Guinness record for accommodating maximum number of humans in a small area. A space which was once occupied by just three people is now occupied by more than twenty people and some uncountable bags of God knows what. There were three people between my left hand and left leg, four kids between my legs, two bags and a person between my right leg and right hand. My shoulders and head were spared as I was wearing a T-shirt.

                The bus stopped again. I gave up and took a mental note to change the meaning of the word ‘non-stop’ as the driver shouted the word again. In a few minutes the buildings of the concrete jungle that spawned along the road were replaced by greenery. Not knowing exactly where my body parts were there, I decided to take a nap, I was almost successful if I were not to smell the aroma of under arm of one of the person surrounding me. The distance between my nose and his armpit was second only to the record set by a gentleman when I was travelling in a Mumbai local, another difference was that the gentleman used a deodorant.

                There is one more thing that is typical of buses in long journeys in our part of the world, people throwing up. There is no problem if they throw up once, but they do it as if they are paid by someone if they sporadically shout Oaaaak with special long emphasis on O and extra stress on K, hearing it for three or four times would automatically induce a nauseating feeling only amplified by the gentleman’s armpit.

                The bus stopped again, after a long interval though. When I said the bus stopped, it is not the normal stopping, where we see a bus loaded with people dashes its way into a thousand passengers waiting anxiously in the bus stop, where an undoubting onlooker would die of tension, speculating on how many would be crushed to death by those hefty tires. But this time the bus came to a screeching halt. Like in many places in India, animals like cows, buffaloes and goats pay road taxes; at least they behave so, when they use the road in a direction perpendicular to the normal crossing roads at incredibly slow speeds. Our bus encountered one such herd of lazy buffaloes. Within seconds the demography of the bus changed as if it was a migration season. The family of eight surrounding my body had been replaced by a smaller family and few nylon gunny bags, I am not sure if there had been any expulsions out of the bus. Before even I could think about the law of conservation of mass, the bus accelerated and the small family and gunny bags were again got replaced by the family of eight; I breathed.

Meanwhile, the gentleman sitting beside me, after hitting my shoulder with his head a few times, found a comfortable position on my shoulder to take a power nap, which of course I disturbed almost immediately. I don’t like oil patches on my T-shirt. However, I could not stop him from collapsing into my lap, which acted as a blessing in disguise s he woke up and found a resting shoulder on the glass window.

                The deep orange light that lit the horizons a while ago was then replaced by twinkles of stars. The greenery was then replaced by an occasional hut. After a few more stops of ‘non-stop’ bus, it became almost empty. I could see my parents again. The cycle was complete, we alighted the bus.

…… to be continued.