ON RUNNING AFTER ONES HAT
I love G.K.Chesterton. Not that I am an authority on him. Not that I have read all his works. I just love him for the one essay (the above), that gave me a reason, to not have a reason to laugh. Hope you are with me till now. I am sorry if I am scaring you. Because it is not my fault that it is difficult to express my feelings towards G.K.Chesterton. Well coming to the point, this particular essay essays the whole chapter on human emotions….
ON TAKING A BUS RIDE
Before you read on, (hope you do read on) there are a few things you ought to know and digest completely. One, I am an Indian, from TamilNadu to be specific. Two, the following essay is absolutely true. Three, if you are not from India whatever image of the Indian bus you have is completely wrong. Now having established these points I shall now proceed to explain the great Indian bus ride.
Well, it’s like this. I go every where by bus. Not that I am like this eco-friendly bus rider, I can not afford (as a humble student) to travel any other way.. I usually find somebody to take me through a moronic bus ride, but this particular evening was different. Different in that, I had to travel alone and it was anything but moronic.
So with trepidation I got into the bus. Getting into the bus was a process in itself, involving treading on toes, saying sorry every second (sorry, sorry…) and as the bus starts while you are doing this, it also involves hanging on for dear life. At last I was in the bus and thankfully I could get into it (meaning out of the foot board).
Since there was nobody around to keep me occupied, my heightened senses, heightened because of my near death experience, made me take in the whole atmosphere. It was a literal ocean of human bodies. I was bounded in on all sides by a rigid yet moving wall that talked, sneezed, shouted and occasionally even screamed. I do not know why, but at that moment, I felt an enormous compassion for the Indian citizen. You must be an extremely tolerant, polite and awfully nice person to be able to suffer through a bus ride. Ouch!! You nincompoop, nitwit, ******, cant you look where you are going?? Sorry where was I? Ah! Compassion! Well its hard to feel that particular emotion when its your foot under attack. But thankfully I was in Coimbatore and not in Chennai, where instead of the flat male sandal, a high heel might have attacked my poor feet. (In Chennai there is no separate entrance/exit for women).
I slowly got back into the groove of being compassionate. I even struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger to this effect, I said, “Why cant those guys get into the next bus? He replies, “What next bus? There is no such thing.” Suitably enlightened I turned the other way towards an argument on who should be in the cricket team. Every body had something to say on that issue. I put in my two pence. Suddenly there was a scuffle near the exit. A poor guy could not get off and had to miss his stop because of the crowd. He was not very happy....
The atmosphere was literally bristling and a fight could have ensued. Just then a loud mouth speaking on the phone saved the day. “De, I am in the damn bus. The show is only at 6.30 dude”. Some sort of ill tempered shouting at the other end by an equally loud mouthed friend and then, the life saver,” I am coming in the bus, not a flight.” And the whole bus broke out into laughter at this feeble joke. Anything to break the tension I guess.
Fortunately by the collusion of my stars I got down successfully. And then, I was rewarded for my ordeal with an image that I will not forget very soon.-A woman hanging on for dear life in the same bus. Equality of sexes or what?? Way to go India.
