250 miles of insanity!

I am back! Offer your brains so I can feast on them.

Ok. Fine. Don’t. Selfish people. Want to keep all your brains for yourself! Anyway, let me get on with what I wanted to say. Lots and lots…and lots of things have been happening and like always, it’s a blend of “oh so painful” and “oooh so nice”. And in the middle of all this is me. So then, without further ado, let me begin.

Keeping in sync with my affinity for things unplanned (except for a few situations, of course) I suddenly decided that since Jaipur is not that far off and most people who mattered were either out of Delhi or out of touch, it will be a nice idea to hop on to a bus and go to the Pink City for Diwali. The idea was great but the execution, not quite. To begin with, the buses starting from Bikaner House in Delhi were supposedly “full” and employees there could be seen openly selling tickets in black and making what they called “Diwali profit”. A press card or a police ID proved extremely helpful though, as I later found out. The bus rolled out of Bikaner House at sharp 1.15 in the morning. At least punctuality was a virtue the RTDC still has. Now, I was on the seat in the middle of the last row. Shaky but spacious. At least I could stretch my legs, though it’s a different thing that parts of my body like the neck, would also get stretched but that was inevitable. Then I suddenly saw this woman walk up to me and stand right in front of me, moving her head left and right like she was watching a tennis match! My estimate said she was around 29, unless she used one of those anti aging creams. So then she sat down and handed over her bag asking me if I could shove it under the seat in front of her. I did. Then it happened! Like the Tsunami…like a volcanic eruption…like a hail of bullets from an air raid…like Rajnikanth’s 60 kicks in a second…she started rattling away at a speed so fast that I doubt if even Michael Schumacher could keep up. The topics included things like how the government servants were cheating people out of money and how her uncle, a crime reporter had secured her a comfy seat, among a zillion other things. Finally, after 20 minutes of a monologue, I guess she lost steam. And went on the mute mode. The experience was so intense that I took me a good 40 minutes to get my concentration back to my Sudoku book. But my ordeal wasn’t over. The two guys sitting on my left then started off in a language that I presume was Hebrew or Arabic. All I could make out was that they sounded like they were clearing their throats repeatedly. I even thought of offering them cough drops. No offence meant though. They went on talking and talking like they’d had a crate of Red Bull. And people say I am talkative.

Suddenly the bus halted. Two guys got in. And one of them reached his seat bonking against the lofts on either sides. The guy was visibly and audibly “high”. Stoned off his mind or sloshed beyond repair, I don’t know, though. His friend had a sheepish “I apologise” look on his face. Once on his seat the stoned/sloshed chap started eating. And boy could he eat!! By the time he finished, there were 6 empty packets of chips, 4 chocolate cake packets, 4 empty sandwich packets, all tossed on the floor of the bus. Instinct told me to kick him in the groin and tell him to pick it up. Even better, stuff it in his mouth. But it wasn’t needed. The conductor did the rest. Though, the being a Volvo, the smell lingered on for a while. Then this guy caused a nuclear explosion. Now I know what people in Hiroshima would have felt like. And I am not elucidating the point.

Somewhere in the middle of all this and old Bollywood music, I dozed off. But I was shaken up, literally by the “firing” woman next to me. She woke me up like either the bus had been hijacked or set on fire. I saw the bus entering a food court run by RTDC. She said she had to go…(you know, go for emergency) and if I would look after her bag. It was more a statement than a request and in my zonked state of mind; I must have nodded my approval because she bolted for the door, stepping on my foot in the process. Bored to the edge of my seat, i got off the bus and got myself an apology for a frappe for Rs. 25 at the counter. As the bus began to leave the RTDC Midway, I climbed back on and sat in the bus. Rest of the journey was thankfully uneventful.

On reaching Jaipur, I walked up to the local bus stand out of my sudden desire to travel in a local bus here. It was 7 in the morning and the guy issuing the tickets was smoking beedi after beedi, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the monstrous board right outside the counter that said “Smoking Prohibited. Fine upt o Rs. 200”. So I clicked a nice little picture of him with smoke rolling out of his nostrils and told him and if he didn’t shut that thing off right then, then I would walk up to the nearest police station and get him arrested. He scowled. I scowled back. He grunted, I growled. And after such show of power, he had no choice. I took my ticket and just then it started raining. So I ran under one the tea stalls and drank tea, accompanied by fruit cake from “Rachna Backery”. Decent fruit cake. When I walked back to the terminus, the guy stubbed out his beedi the moment he saw me! I was proud of myself and saw an elderly woman smile gratefully. Nice start to the day it was. The bus came in. And I hopped on for another journey. But that’s for later. That’s quite another story!

Adios.