Madras Buses – Yesteryears Travel Reverie

From bed to bus stand, I hum through a flurry of chores like a drone.

I gobble up food like a pelican, get garbed, grab the bag with lunch packed,

a hurried bye to dad and mum, walking and running through the maze

of palm trees to catch 29D at 6.30 from Madhavaram Milk Colony.

I hop into the dark and light green omni-dragon reluctantly,

hoping to reach in time to catch the popular and all-important 29C.

If late, we sprint to latch ourselves like leeches on to the moving bus.

Stretched on a time-rack between stops for ‘tickets’ ‘tickets’ ‘tickets’,

we wait in hope to hear the shrill double whistle or the ‘raiee’ ‘raiee’.

At Perambur, at last, we are belched out and stream into 29C.

The insatiable toad swells head to torso with students at every stop

not an inch to maneuver, we are jammed hams salted and heat-dried.

Male students hang on chivalrously making space for groovy girls

hormones on fire, many a match made on those buses perhaps.

Every student of Loyola, WCC and Stella in town make their presence felt.

The dragon scrambles on, crawls at times, makes a dash or stops abruptly

crushing us like a tightening vice as we lurch forward like projectiles.

The driver steers as though on high seas, his hands and legs in a trance like dance.   

Money, bus passes and tokens are passed by dwarfed hands and constrained necks.

The struggle to reach the door starts well before we reach Sterling Road.

Like telepathic worms we wriggle our way through layers of human flesh.

My shirt button entangles in a girl’s hair (preordained?!) as I tried to slide past.

We spend a good minute untangling with embarrassed contrite smiles.

If you don’t make it to the proximity of the doors in time, the crowd,

which gets down to let you out, will box you in, moksha denied.

Then you are neither in nor out, stuck at an inclined angle

like Hercules supporting the roof of the bus from collapse

and in resigned karmaic silence, you wait for the next stop.

Getting down at Sterling Road we venture into the final lap – catching 49D or 41D.

A journey short and honey sweet, a gush of relief as we spy the college gate.

Were those Ulyssian journeys worth it? – For millions of us who couldn’t afford

a bike, a car or private transport, those city buses were our lifeblood,

our lifeline to a college education and a future in those early 90s.