A Tale Of Two Journeys
This is a tale of two bus journeys I made recently.
The first journey took me from the sweltering mining town of Neyveli, in Tamil Nadu to Bangalore. When I asked my cousin to book my bus ticket back to Bangalore after attending a family get-together, he asked me if I would be okay with travelling back on a 'Periyar' service. The name of the bus-service should have given me a vital clue, but I grossly miscalculated. I assumed that a bus transport named after the champion of the so-called down-trodden, whose name the dravidian parties invoke left, right & centre to garner votes, would be quite a decent ride. Only when I entered the bus did I realise how wrong my assumptions were. Not only was the bus itself rickety, but the non-reclining seating of 3 X 2 with a narrow aisle for a journey of close to seven hours literally proved to be a pain in the arse. I regretted having agreed to travel by the Tamil Nadu Road Transport Corporation bus, one that was atleast named deservingly, especially after I saw how comfortable the other private transport buses and KSRTC's Rajahamsa buses looked. The bus was almost full by the time we left Neyveli. To complicate matters, there were quite a lot of people who got in without any reservations, who made themselves at home in the aisle space, lying down with their baggage. I had never before tried to sleep sitting straight up, three persons to a seat that clearly wasn't designed for three healthy adults. Needless to say, my attempt to grab some sleep was a miserable failure. Just as we left Neyveli, it started to rain, forcing everyone to shut the windows and the overcrowded bus got more uncomfortable & stuffy and an hour later, I almost thought I would puke. The tempers were frayed, some passengers trying to get some sleep so as to be able to go to work the next morning had to contend with not just uncomfortable seats and a congested atmosphere but also others who preferred to chat the ride away loudly, not to mention the horn-happy driver who hardly took his hands off the horn. When the bus did reach Madiwala, in Bangalore, at an unearthly hour of 4.30 a.m, I was more than glad to get off the bus knowing that I would have to catch-up on my sleep in the daytime.
My second journey was a shorter one, and in a bus much more comfortable. I travelled from Koramangala to the new Bangalore International Airport by the fully air-conditioned Volvo Vayu Vajra service of BMTC. I estimated a travel time of about 2 & a half hours, given the evening traffic and the bad & congested roads. The ticket price of Rs. 150, although costing me more than what my 8-hour journey from Neyveli to Bangalore cost me, was still only a fraction of what a taxi would have charged me for the same ride but there were only two more passengers on the bus other than myself when we left Koramangala. Just a few minutes into the ride, I realised the folly of entrusting such a wonderful piece of machinery to a ruffian of a BMTC driver. The driver almost mowed down half-dozen people even before we had crossed Madiwala. He did manage to hit a few roadblock barricades on the Richmond road flyover though, swore at auto-drivers on Queen's road and almost never ever took his hands off the horn. The distance to Hebbal flyover was covered in a record 1 hour, faster than I ever thought would be humanly possible. The 27 kms past the Hebbal flyover, took us under about 20 minutes thanks to what is probably the best road in Bangalore and the power of the Volvo. Just over an hour & twenty minutes after I left Koramangala I was at the new Bangalore International Airport but I had a feeling of deja vu.
