Bumpy Bus Ride

Well, being as lazy a bum as ever lazed on this planet, I usually end up with the shorter side of the stick when it comes to getting train tickets to my home and hence take to the ever ready, supposedly, hi-tec buses. And the last time was no exception. Promptly, as only I can be, I discovered that I stand in waiting list 140 if I try to reserve a train ticket, just 2 days before the scheduled date of departure, I went and reserved a bus ticket which was to take me on the morrow's evening and deposit me at my home place on the next day's morning - somewhere close to 10 hours of night journey.

Board the bus, take a nap, open your eyes, alight the bus - is the modus operandi, one might suppose and he wouldn't be far from the truth! Step 1 and 4 remain the same, but steps 2 and 3 are the ones that matter and are the ones which alter one's opinion of the buses in general. We do take a nap - but the duration (which a layman might assume to last for hours) usually averages 14.76 minutes with a variance of 3.19 minutes. And statistics also go on to show that on an average number of times one opens his eyes 'to a shock' on a 10 hour bus journey is close to 50. With the local authorities striving to recreate moon's surface on the roads, one gets a swift kick on the butt down from the King of Hades every few minutes, sending you flying few feet into the air before hitting the ceiling of the bus.

And don't think that there ends the matter. The real party starts when it starts to rain. The seemingly huge, hitec buses do have a vulnerability against tiny, crude, unsophisticated raindrops. How much ever tightly you close your windows, steady streams of rain water find their way from the sides of windows to your seat, thus giving you a bath to one side of your body. Obviously you need to plant yourself in your neighbour's lap, if you intend to avoid this. And that may not find favorable acceptance with your neighbour, more so if it belongs to the opposite sex!

But I'm not entirely against bus journeys, though. There are few advantages where a bus journey surely scores over train journey. One thing that readily reckons itself is the nature peeing. I especially love relieving myself in the vast fields that adjoin the highways, when the bus stops for refreshment and 'relievement'. Peeing at the sides of the highway is, I feel, necessary in the sense that the nutrients thus delivered to the roadside plants enable them to develop into huge trees lining the road, thus improving the driving experience :-) It also instills in me the feeling of humility - seeing the huge vastness of the empty spaces before me, the same feeling inspired, when I sat on Besant nagar beach on so many nights, facing the sea and listening to the roar of the high tide. It's just an out-of-the-world experience! Coming back to the topic, the same cannot be said about the activity (roadside peeing) in the cities though! It's so disgusting seeing people spit, pee and defecate on the roads as if they are public lavatories, yuck! And as some old bird said - burning yourself through the furnace of sufferings makes you a better and brighter person. And the bus journey is surely one such furnace that the passengers go through, even if the question of whether one requires a bit of polish or not is quite debatable.

At the end of it, a bus journey is an experience one has to budget for, in his/her life's itinery!