Pune Municipal Transport... The lal dabba

I have adopted a new money saving policy these days.
For my frequent hopping between Talegaon and Pune I have stopped using the rickshaw as a means of transport till the railway station (from where I take the local)
I use Pune’s public transport. I use the PMT buses. It helps me save for that exorbitant movie ticket in Inox on Saturday evenings. The bus ticket is almost 1/10th of how much a rickshaw costs me.
There is one small bus stop near my place where buses of only two destinations come every hourly. One of those goes to the station. I take that.
The bus is ‘supposed’ to come ‘hourly’. And now the PMT people have (surprisingly) also put up a big board stating the bus’s timings. Big mistake. Waste of money. The bus drivers never follow those timings. They come only when they are in a mood to. This stop is the bus’s second last stop. When the bus comes from the station, it goes to the last stop. The bus driver gets down. He has a cutting chai in the one and only chai tapri there. And if and when he feels like coming back, he comes back. Till then us, the passengers are waiting on the bus stop. Looking at the turning down the road from where the bus can emerge any moment and might go away at the speed of 70 if we don’t stand up and flag it down.
So one fine morning I am waiting on this bus stop. It is cold. And I am genuinely unhappy for leaving my warm bed to go anywhere. But I have to. So there I am sitting on a bench some kind son has put up in his late father’s name. An uncle staying nearby comes along for his morning walk. He sees me and is genuinely surprised. “Ah? You are traveling by bus today? He he he”, he says. I manage to put up a smile on my face and answer, “yeah!” Why?? Why can’t I go by bus? Would anyone ask this to anyone waiting on a bus stop in Mumbai?? No. Because almost everyone travels by the public transport there. But traveling by bus in Pune is really a surprising thing for people… Everyone prefers their own vehicles! I am cold and angry…waiting for the bus which is now almost 15 minutes late when the same uncle returns from his morning walk. Now he is not surprised to still see me there.
We are used to it. We are used to buses getting late. We are used to local trains getting late. ‘Buses and locals are meant to get late’.
Uncle goes home. He must’ve finished his morning cup of nice piping hot tea, I think. Still no sign of the bus. Finally I hear that roaring sound down the road and me and my fellow passengers get up to flag down the bus. The bus comes and even before everyone is inside the driver starts the bus. The people hanging in the door make a desperate attempt to hurriedly come inside. This is just the second stop and the bus is almost empty. So they manage. As we proceed, the rush in the bus increases at every stop. And a time comes when the bus is full. The driver waits for 5 seconds at every stop. 5 seconds for 10 people to come in. But they are used to it. No one complains. They somehow manage to cling onto the door of the bus and push the rest of the crowd inside. Finally my stop comes and I get down. Inspite of starting late the bus driver manages to drop me to the station in time for the local (surprisingly the local is NOT late that day!) “Ah!” I think, ”They come late. But they make up for the lost time by stopping the bus for half the time than required on every stop.” Anyway, I’m in time for my local. So I don’t bother. I forget all about it.

2 days later I have to come back home by the same bus.
I walk down from the railway station to the bus stop. Things are pretty calm at that place that day. I take some peanuts from a man to munch on till the bus arrives. I wait there. Munching on the nuts, listening to songs on my iPod. No sign of the bus. No sign of ANY bus. Finally an apple seller nearby tells me. “Madam, aap bus ke liye ruke hai na? Bus stop agle chowk mein shift kiya hai.” Shifted??? The bus stop is shifted?? Without even a board at the site of the previous bus stop indicating the change in venue? How can you shift a bus stop like that?? How the hell am I supposed to know this change in venue if no apple seller was nearby?? I decide to face this coolly. I walk down the road telling myself that I needed this evening walk and that I am at least fortunate enough to have my favourite music ringing in my ears. I walk down the road to the next chowk. No sign of any bus stop. The road there has been dug up for some kind of work since the last 1 year. And the road has been closed, diverted for the last one year. What do us, the citizens say about this? Nothing. We choose to keep mum.
I walk further down. I am in a good mood today. So I enjoy my walk. After walking for about 10 minutes I reach a familiar bus stop. I wait there. 10 minutes. 15. 20. 30. No sign of the bus. By now I have lost my good mood. I have lost my patience. I’m about to call a rickshaw on the other side of the road when I see a red shaky thing coming. It’s the bus to my place. An elderly man aged about 75 has been standing next to me with a heavy bag since the last 30 minutes…reminding me of my own grandfather. He was also waiting for the same bus. The bus makes a screeching noise and goes and waits 5 feet ahead of where it is supposed to wait. We all scurry towards it. 10 people trying to get in an already full bus which is going to halt for 5 seconds. I push the others to make place for the old man to get in. He somehow makes it in. By the time he is on the first step the bus leaves… I can’t get in. I had already reached the height of my patience. I flag down a rikshawala who had been waiting like a hawk to take the people who were either frustrated by having to wait for the bus or the ones like me who could not manage to get in the bus. After wasting 5 minutes walking to the old bus stop, 10 minutes for waiting at the old bus stop, 10 minutes for walking to another bus stop and half an hour for waiting for the bus I finally take a rik. I am angry. But I’m proud of myself to have let the old man climb in… There is still hope, I say!
For most of my journey my rik is immediately following the bus. I observe the traffic. I observe all the two wheelers over-taking this and other buses from the left side. I observe all the rickshaws waiting in the middle of the road taking their fare from their customers while the bus driver patiently waits behind…helpless...the bus doesn’t have a horn to honk! I watch all the cycle walas crossing the road from left to right… exactly from the front of the bus. And I watch the bus driver put the brakes to the bus with all his might to save the cycle wala… and his own job and public ridicule and public beatings if the bus cannot stop and happens to collide with the cycle wala…put the I watch all this. I recall that I avoid driving the car on Lakshmi road in the evenings. Because I cannot manage to drive in such an irate traffic. The bus driver does this… with an overfull bus which does not have a horn, which does not have good brakes, which is too old to have a well maintained gear system, amidst all these two wheelers (I will overtake from whichever side I please) and bikers (we think we are John Abraham, any objection?) and rickshaws (I will go slow till I find a customer and stop in the middle of the road the moment I find one) and cars (I will park wherever I want provided my driver sleeps inside car. you can wake him up and ask him to move the car if you have a problem )… I imagine this bus driver going to that last stop near my place, tired, frustrated and angry. Getting down and relishing that one glass of cutting chai.

Next time I’m waiting for the bus and the bus is late, I do not curse the bus driver. Because I have started to respect him now.

My new room :)

My house is going to be renovated. The work will start in a few days and go on for about 6 months.
And that bigger, nicer room I’ve always been wanting is finally going to be mine :) I have LOTS of plans for the new room.. The ideas from a lot of good rooms I have seen, from the lots of ‘Inside Outside’s I have read are finally going to get materialized. All those big open windows, all those flowering plants in the balcony, that bean bag… everything! Additionally I have also appointed a budding architect, my langoti yaar for the project of my dreams… because she can understand my needs well [and also, she will do it for free ;-)]
But as the beginning of this dream project of mine is nearing, I have started realizing that it is not going to be all that easy, that it is going to be a tough job... :-
That’s because, for this, my present day room will have to be, as my grandfather loves to say with a laugh and a chuckle, ‘turned into a toilet’!
So ALL my room has to be emptied. All the room. Completely.
I’ve been staying in the hostel for the last 5 years where I’ve been famous as ‘the girl with the maximum stuff in her room’. So 3/4th of my stuff is in the hostel and 1/4th here in my room. And my hostel stay is going to be over within the next 3 months (aah…I’m going to miss that freedom!) and so I’ll have to get that 3/4th stuff back home too. And all this stuff is going to be somehow accommodated in my parents’ room.
Well, now this 1/4th part that is presently in my room includes a hell lot of things….my favourite (now broken) pencil boxes since std 1, the shells I’d picked up on the sea shore at Ganpatipule in std. 4,all the greeting cards I’ve received since the time I could read and write, my gift wrappers of some of the most memorable gifts, my old toys, my dolls-that I cant bear to part with, my photos, my old clothes, my million cassettes and cds,my zillion cosmetics, my old clothes, my new-never-wore-coz-did-not-like clothes, my paper cuttings of my favourite heroes cut in my adolescent years…
I agree half of this stuff can be directly dumped into the dust bin (as my Dad has been telling me for the last 7 years) But… I cannot get myself to throw away all this that I have so fondly collected and so fiercely guarded from my Dad’s eyes for the last 7 years... So all these things will definitely go into my new room.
I’ve been trying to shift out this stuff to my parents’ room since the last one whole week. Shift it to my parents' room…
Now comes the interesting and the toughest part.
My Aai is one of those people on earth who cannot bear to see a small (invisible to me) crease on the bed sheet. She asks me to straighten out the creases my bum makes when I sit on her bed… And I…. I am one of those people on earth who think that why should you fold away your quilt if you are going to need to unfold it every night??
My Aai tried her very best to teach me a few lessons of cleanliness, of tidiness... but she gave up on me long ago. She had left me to my fate and in my room.
But for the next 6 months…
Ah… can u imagine?
The tussle has already begun… with her giving me much lesser space to store (dump) my stuff in her room than what I need…
But abhi to yeh sirf shurvat hai….aage aage dekho hota hai kya… ;)
I hope I do not loose ‘my cleanliness style’ by the time I shift to that dream room of mine…
Wish me luck!