Bus ride to simplicity

It was going to be my first bus ride in over seven years. A ride of five hours to a very revered temple in Odisha, starting at 5am from Bhubaneshwar. There was an air of excitement and anticipation as I was yearning to visit the temple for a long time and the journey by bus, added to the mood. Waking up early was never among my choicest ways to start the day, and I pulled my half-asleep body to the bathroom. My dad’s repeated reminders to start early so that I could find a seat in a right bus interjected the gushes of water from the shower. A right bus had 2-by-2 (rows of two seats separated by the aisle) reclining seats, had fewer stoppages and reached on time, or with predictable delay.

My father had packed my bag with few apples, a cookie pack and a water-bottle. I did not bother to pick a book or my brother’s i-pod, and decided to spend the ten hours including the return journey, unencumbered. A short ride in my father’s scooter and I was seated in one of the right buses to my destination. The bus was almost empty and to pick up its cash register, instantly stopped wherever there were group of people standing and looked prospective. Hence, the myth of fewer stoppages was quickly burst. As I observed the people entering the bus from my seat, my day had just begun.

The day was breaking and the dark roads, trees, houses and sky were slowly warming up to the morning light. The breeze through the window glass was fresh and rejuvenating. The bus picked up speed on the highway and so did the morning. The bus kept halting at the planned stops and there was regular inflow and outflow of passengers, each with a different purpose.

My sleep deficient eyes gave in and I woke up an hour later to the noise of peanut vendors, some travelers, rather traders loading their merchandise on to the roof of the bus and music playing from mobile phones from folk to Bollywood. I had to ask the passenger right behind me to actually lower the volume, before music became cacophony among the chatter of a very crowded bus. The manager in the bus, colloquially called the conductor, worked with clinical precision to put more humans per square feet. The blaring music, the chatter and the condensed air between passengers was a suffocating sight to my freshly woken up senses.  As the bus left the halt, I realized that this is a different route than the one I was used to. My mind followed my eyes out of the burgeoning humanity into the new path and the emerging greenery outside.

The road was rain washed and wasn’t busy. There were occasional villages, with the walls painted with some advertisements from cements to biscuits. The bus stopped at a village depot, as some passengers wanted to disembark.  Looking outside the window, I saw a queue of women and few men, standing with large plastic jars and bags outside a shop that hadn’t opened for business. I could read the fading words – “Public Distribution System”, written in Odia, the local dialect. The Public Distribution System or, PDS is government’s food security program for its poor citizens who fall below a numerical income per capita, through a ration card, which these poor women and men were holding. The passenger on my adjacent seat commented that these shops sell rice at Rs. 2 per kilogram (against market price of atleast Rs. 20) and as with any subsidies, the real productivity of rural Odisha is impeded by cheap availability. While I did not fully agree, it resonated with what I had heard elsewhere of falling productivity of rural workforce and less migration to cities and larger towns in Odisha. While large scale migration does saddle urban centers with slums, poor housing and living conditions for these section of the population, a steady addition from villages and smaller towns, helps cities grow by providing workforce at varying wage and skill levels. My mother has been complaining of not finding any housemaids and those that are available demand higher wages.

As the bus left the state highway, it turned to what looked like a village road which had potholes demanding repair and occasional stretch of concrete and tar roads. I was least perturbed by the road condition as I was expecting it. My fellow passenger again informed me that the good roads were part of Government rural roads program, which generated rural employment thru Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) that provides a committed number of days of employment at an agreed wage rate. My well informed fellow passenger worked as a junior employee in a Block Office. He admitted hesitantly that there were noteworthy leakages in the distribution system and only a corrupt or, honest Senior official made a huge difference to the destiny of public funds.   

The greenery in the paddy fields, abundance of tress and the occasional huts had my attention in raptures. The bus halted in front of a senior secondary school, run by the Government and some children in their school uniform jostled to find their space inside the bus. They alighted few villages later, some seven kilometers ahead and another set of school going children entered.  These floating passengers offered a quick and happy return to the conductor’s cash register, for same square feet of commercial space. As I looked at few of these schools from the elevation of my bus seat, I found many children playing in the open and few inside the classrooms. I am unsure if many of them actually had their physical education or sports class at the same time, or it is the infamous low attendance of teachers in our village schools. I hope the quality of available teachers wasn’t as bad as the walls and roofs of some of these schools. 

With the sun struggling to pierce the veil of clouds, my ears started liking the folk music playing from one of the mobile phones and my awkwardness gave way to acceptance. There were men and women with pitch black hair, while their face defied the hair’s youthfulness. The smell of their hair oil was distinct, but not reactive to my nostrils trained to the urban stench in littered garbage and polluted rivers. As I saw these men, women and children, I could not help appreciating their lives for the difficulties pertaining to healthcare, food, amenities and political negligence, or opportunism they endure.

Standing on the crowded aisle, was a neatly dressed village woman holding the seat handle for support in one hand and her infant in the other.  I offered my seat and took my place in the cluttered aisle. Already four and half hours into my journey and another myth about the right bus, burst. With only half hour to reach the destination, I enquired if the bus was on time against the committed five hours.  I was told that it would take at least an hour more!

I alighted the bus an hour and fifteen minutes later, standing on the aisle moving with the incoming and outgoing populace. As I walked towards the temple, I felt lighter and happier about my decision to take the bus. The darshan at the temple uplifted my sagging mind, ruffled by the forces of professional and personal demands. The return journey was through the highway, the road more travelled. There weren’t fewer trees and lesser greenery than I had seen seven years ago or, real estate development usurping the nature’s bounty. The bus halted for lunch and after a quick bite, I was back on my seat with my thoughts uninterrupted. On my way back I saw the setting sun, the sudden rain lashing against the window and the weary travelers with a sense of harmony. With a book or, music in my ears, how much I would have missed being part of.

Few days later I returned to the city, I work in. In the bigger cars, swankier houses, screaming commercials, office work, smelly swamps and urban humdrum, the chatter and folk music from mobile phones, the odor of oily heads, the queues outside the PDS shops, the children and the men and women of India’s countryside look real, resplendent, imperfect and inspirational. Wonder why Gandhi said – “India lives in its villages”!