Life in a PMT bus.

I don’t generally stay back beyond six at office, not that I am a very strict person who believes in the work and personal life balance, but there is something that awaits me at 6 o clock in the evening that peps up my otherwise dull life.

I am no flier in writing, so I kind of make it as succinct as possible for you to read so that you don’t go back to your outlook window, pretending to work on a problem, which if not solved immediately would melt all the ice in Siberia or would cause flash floods in Sahara.


Talking about the excitement I get for leaving at six in the evening, you will be surprised to know that it’s all about a boring red box on four wheels, what we affectionately call as a PMT bus. For my all the more scarce non-Punite readers in the minority of my blog readers, PMT is Pune Municipal Transport. Wait! There should be something more, this is not that exciting, is it? So let’s read on.


The PMT bus that I travel.
I do not know about others, but there is something really enthralling about the PMT bus journey that amuses me, may be the greatness of the PMT bus (do you know that the PMT has the ultimate post modern era's symbol of greatness? Yes it has a Wikipedia entry ) or may be the way these buses are driven. Whatever it may be, the amusement is just there.

So after I marched out of my office panting and gasping for the breath when the unsuspecting security checked my laptop, I directly headed for the PMT bus, hired by our company to make up for the commuting demands of ever increasing employee base. Just as I am about to board the bus, I was greeted by two middle aged men, with all the excitement of a child who is dying to wait before it could wear its new pair of clothes. Well, people call these two the driver and the conductor; I call them the don and his capo régime. Whatsoever, they will be hence forth referred to as the Veeru, the driver and the Jai, the conductor.



That's Veeru (in khakhi) staring inquisitively into camera.


The very moment I entered the bus, my searching eyes landed on a vacant seat beside a lady and even before I could react, the lady returned a venomous look which the ladies reserve for a rogue guy. I am in no mood to fight egos; I am here for a far more exciting experience than sitting beside an attitude filled lady. I instantly excused her and settled in an abandoned seat near a window.

In a little while after I sat in the seat, a whistle went off and there was a sudden jerk. The jerk, a very violent one, would instigate you to believe that the earth has given up on bearing the weight of this malicious world and decided to rest for eternity, but it’s just the beginning of an exciting journey in the PMT bus and the whole scene resembles a formula one race among a few about-to-conk buses.

With in no time, unless you have taken a very boring decision of catching a power nap, you will observe that this otherwise ubiquitous machine has almost overtook a dozen buses as you shake and violently vibrate about your base and thereby intensely strengthening your abdomen; I seriously suspect that all my co-passengers have developed/will develop a sexy six pack or at least a four pack if they are traveling consistently in the said PMT.

My journey back home consists of three parts:

1) Taxiing.

2) Take off

3) Landing.

Taxiing:

I wanted to use the word congested for the three kilometer stretch of road that connects my office to the highway, but that very night I had nightmares of Shakespeare whipping the wits off me and so I realized that congested is a very mild word to be used for this stretch of road where the vehicles move as fast as the earth’s tectonic plates or even worse. So you get how bad the condition is, no?

But ours was a different case. Veeru is a class apart; he is one of those rare species who believes in the movie Speed, and thinks that lifting the feet off the gas pedal would blow the bus off, and his desperation was so extreme that, if he were to die in the bus and has to lift his feet off, he would haunt the bus for the rest of the life or death or whatever it is called. And this makes the taxiing a daunting task for Veeru, only if Jai, the capo regime, were not to be there.

That's Jai trying to lift a bus off that blocked our way.

Jai would remind you of your childhood friend who used to watch you with an engrossed enthusiasm and excitement and used to shout directions on how to maneuver your car in your latest video game. Jai is just that and much more. Apart from giving real time driving directions to Veeru, he acts as confidence booster by making an occasional gesture like waving his hand in the air resembling more of a commander in chief instructing ferociously on the battle field.

If you think that Jai’s driving directions are just the left, right sorts of thing at a confusing road intersection, then you are as mistaken as when you think that MNS has started endorsing Hindi. Jai is more like a solution to a complex space problem, he calculates in real time the space required for the bus to maneuver and shouts and gestures at Veeru so that Veeru just zips across the traffic leaving behind a big tail of traffic, remember that all this should happen with enough care so that the 50 odd passengers are not thrown out of their seats as they are jolting violently while they are riveted to the seat. Of course rules never existed for these two and safety is an eternal issue.

With such an adept crew on board it is little surprise that we will manage to sneak through the hap hazard traffic with ease, just as water seeps through the bed rock. But it is worthwhile to observe the passengers in the bus. Each of the passengers would be as petrified as a cat which suddenly realizes that it has been playing with a muscular Doberman’s tail all this while. All they could manage is to close their eyes and pray harder hoping for the best to happen, and for ardent adventure lovers like me, its just fun to watch the whole drama.

My heart races as the bus zips through the traffic as if it never existed, but the best part of the taxiing is to watch the pedestrians cross the road as our bus zooms through the road. An unsuspecting observer would come to a firm conclusion that the bus’s tyre would happily hog upon someone just like a child would burst a balloon.

But Indians are too smart for that, years of experience in crossing the road in the most extreme conditions has made each Indian so expert in road crossing that they can cross the road blind folded, of course even with out a blind fold it hardly matters as they do not care what comes across, they just cross the road. They are however safe unless Salman Khan is a Software Engineer (which is a remote possibility according to Aamir Khan) and he commute to office drunk using his BMW.

That's a lucky pedestrian who crossed our bus successfully
Veeru, of course, is no Salman Khan and remember, we are traveling in a PMT. So the pedestrians are generally safe, though they are at a very high risk of being spray painted with a liter of mud water if it’s a rainy season.

In any which way we will reach the Runway (Highway) in a time much lower than the average time required by any other dashed vehicle on that road.

Take Off:

With in a few minutes of ‘hard drive’ on the runway, you would start wondering if Schumacher is driving the bus for a formula none race. If not for the violent jolting, thanks for the excellent road condition, one would bet a year’s salary and would contend that the bus is flying. ‘Veeru rocks’ is just an understatement.

As all the passengers are closing their eyes tightly and hoping that the bus wouldn’t fly, there was deep hollow scowl; it sounded something like “Aiiiiyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeee”. The scowl has horrifying enough to arrest an unsuspecting heart to eternity. And this made the ‘Venomous look’ clad lady to eject out of her seat with fear. It took a daunting effort for me refrain from giving a high five to Jai, the person who scowled, for frightening the wits off the lady.

But Jai had other ideas when he scowled. Veeru and Jai are very environment conscious, and they did not want to pollute the environment with unnecessary honking, so they promptly removed the horn and Jai took up the responsibility to warn all those people whom Veeru thinks that are dangerously close to our vehicle, Veeru operates in nano dimension terms and Jai’s scowl coupled with the dangerous proximity to the vehicle would provoke anyone’s heart to arrest itself immediately to save time. No doubt the lady was so petrified.

And this excitement will reach its peak when Veeru tries to overtake a vehicle, left or right does not matter. Let’s see how Veeru and Jai perform the overtaking feat.

Let’s say Veeru wants to overtake other vehicles (henceforth called as victims). A cursory check was performed by Jai and he calculates the fastest route to reach a point that is a kilometer ahead, Veeru then increases the speed of the bus to at least double that of the victims’ and if there is another victim in the way, the overtaking is not abandoned, in such a case the accelerator is depressed to abysmal and the headlights are ‘dim dipped’ vigorously, this means the responsibility to avoid an impending collision is completely with the victim and in case, the victim does not oblige, Jai jumps into action and scowls; this scowl, as described above, is good enough to bring the victim to a screeching halt or may be pulling itself into the roadside pastures. And that completes the overtaking task.

By then, most of the passengers in the bus would be hoping to heaven and hell that there will be no more excitement for the evening; the way Kareena does in the movie Jab we met. Their prayers will be answered unless a dog will be too eager to meet its mate on the other side of the road and crosses the road before Veeru could, what happens then is a well known fact or you can refer my blog.

So after a few more overtaking feats we will be ready to land.

Landing:

Just as I tried to recollect my insurance agent’s number for obvious reasons and almost took a firm decision that I will be at least a mile away from a PMT bus next time I drive, I have realized that I have reached my destination and got ready to exit the ‘ride’. I stood up and started walking along the gang way catching hold of little plastic hangings provided. But, only then did I realize that it was stupid of me to conclude that the ride was over and Veeru gave a ‘picture abhi bhaki hain dost’ look as he started breaking the vehicle spasmodically.

This spasmodic breaking would make the passenger who is standing a pendulum and the passenger starts swinging about the point of suspension. So when Veeru gave the final touch to our ride, a co-passenger became a pendulum and crashed into me with his under arm under my nose, I suspect if he were not to use the deo I would have fainted instantly.

For a moment I wondered what if Veeru’s romance with the breaks would make me slip and fall on the ‘Venomous look’ clad lady, before my brain could open its creative gates the bus came to a screeching halt. I alighted the bus, only to find that I was hyper ventilating and my pupils are dilating, man that was one hell of a ride.

The next fifteen minutes were spent in a desperate attempt to cross the road, apart from failing miserably, I looked as if I was rehearsing a primitive kind of tribal dance in a formal dress code, but then I have made up my mind, closed my eyes and started running towards the other end hoping that there are no more PMT buses coming. No doubt that so many dogs die on the highway.

Whatsoever, I felt that I just came out of one of those fun rides in amusement parks and whined at the fact that I will have to wait for another 24 hours to have the ride again.

Now you know, why I die to leave at six, don't you?