Those were the days when school kids and young people were not seen driving their own two or four wheelers. It was not because affordability was an issue – I guess people back then had no qualms being a part of the crowd. Everyone belonged, and loved being so, to the city, and human to human interaction (actual, not virtual) was the norm. And in those days, an important place to bond over with all was the city bus.
Yes, you heard it right. My earliest memory goes back to the long-nosed green and yellow buses with wooden seats. The handyman, with his Mithun/Amitabh-que hairstyle, hung by the handrail on the front door, one foot hanging in the air and the other placed precariously on the footboard, beckoning passengers to board his bus; the solemn conductor, on the other hand, stood apart with a bundle of currency notes and yellow ticket-pads on his hands. His frowned at defaulters and his innate concentration while counting the change to be rendered to the impatient traveler was omnipresent. It was the period when we, the pre-pubertal lot, were chaperoned by some elder on these journeys. There were no seats reserved for females, the old or for the specially abled passengers. One sat promptly on any vacant seat, and as in musical chair, the game of exclusion and inclusion continued in these buses. The window seat was coveted, with our eager eyes longingly looking out for the roadside milk or orange-ice-cream vendors and jhaal-muri sellers. Our pleading looks for an occasional ambrosia on these buses were usually dealt with by a cruel stare or a long verbal tirade about our reluctance to eat home-cooked food and our craving for unhealthy ‘outside’ food.
Almost everyone knew each other in those days. Once I was travelling with a neighbour’s daughter as her companion to buy petticoats and rubiya-two-by-two blouse piece from Fancy Bazar. I was sitting on the window seat, greedily staring at the ice-cream-on-sticks being sold by an eager vendor by the roadside, when my neighbour’s daughter pinched me hard on my arm. Rubbing my hurt skin, I turned to ask her why she was being so cruel when she signaled me to shut up, making funny gestures with her lips and rotating her eyeballs hysterically. I was scared at her reaction when suddenly she pulled me closer and whispered in my ear, “Look, that is Saikia Aunty’s son with Baruah Uncle’s daughter, sitting together, in the seat in front of us!” As ten-year-olds happened to be insignificant, childish ten-year-olds in those days, I wondered what the issue was all about – I just saw two harmless adults sitting side by side in the city bus and chatting normally. It was a good couple of months later, at the ring-ceremony of Saikia Aunty’s son and Baruah Uncle’s daughter, that my friend’s elder sister told us that the ‘incident’ of ‘catching them in the bus together’ that day by our neighbour’s daughter had ‘opened the eyes’ of the families - I wonder if the two young people were actually dating each other – and they had decided to ‘formalize’ the liaison before tongues started to wag.
Years passed, and fares got converted from paise to rupee, and the city buses changed form. In came the minibuses, which were modern-looking, smaller and faster. The handymen became aggressive, and their calls became loud and robust – shouts of Adabari-bus stand-Maligaon-Pandu, etc. started to cut through the erstwhile quietness of Guwahati life. It was during this time that the image of the angry young handyman, with Rahul-Roy-hair locks and tobacco-stained teeth, became a common face in the city bus scenario. Betel-nut and betel-leaf became a passé, and various tobacco concoctions in fancy sachets became the in-thing for the handymen. By this time, a few privileged young men started plying their two wheelers in the wide city roads. But the majority of us still travelled by bus, with a few lucky, occasional ride on rickshaws and a very rare ride on autos (which I usually avoided as the haggle for fare between the driver and my adult companions, be it my mother, cousin or whosoever, was a matter of major public-shame for me). Nevertheless, it was during this time that I remember seats getting reserved for females in these buses.
On one such ride, before minibuses became canters, there was this unpleasant experience. I had boarded a crowded bus, on the way for my mathematics tuition classes, when the middle-aged man standing behind me started to lean on me, trying to grope me. I was uncomfortable, but ‘me-too’ was unheard of then, and I became teary-eyed. The handyman saw my discomfort, and the good Samaritan held the culprit by his collars and pushed him out of the bus at the Chandmari bus stoppage. A few other passengers also had their ‘angry-young-men’ moment that day.
And then came the canters, which were painted chocolate and a pale yellow. These were swanky avatars of the mini buses. Business had become serious by then, with stiff competition between the buses, and handymen went to the extent of dragging passengers to their buses if they headed towards another bus. They did not merely stop at shouting out the names of the bus stops – they used interesting one liners like, ‘there’s enough space for you all to play football inside my bus’, ‘our bus travels faster than the plane’, etc. The seats had become more comfortable, and fares were higher now. The conductor had difficulty in checking the conduct of the passengers which crowded the bus. Faces became unfamiliar in the increasing melee of the city’s population. Female seat reservation was serious business, and even the geriatric male passenger dared not to sit in those seats – he would rather lean on his cane and clutch the conductor rather than be at the receiving end of an angry woman’s tirade. Though those were not days of the GPS and other tracking means, still our parents did not seem to worry much about our safety and well-being. We usually boarded the correct bus, and the handyman ensured that we got down safely at the designated stoppage.
It was somewhere during the late canter-era that another set of majestic vehicles dotted the city’s landscape – the Rhino buses. The large buses, painted either bright green or subtle blue, looked good and ushered in the phase of travelling in air-conditioned luxury in the city. These beasts on wheels had a heavy presence, plied carefully on the city roads, had higher fares and looked modern. With the foray of trackers and shared three wheelers, the Rhinos slowly faded into oblivion.
And now, when I have the luxury to travel in my four-wheeler, I glance at the city buses. I miss the commotion of the crowd I travelled with, the confusion the day after fare price hikes were announced and the elation of grabbing the window seat. The endless chats in the bus with my constant travel companion Julie on the way to college, running across the railway crossing at Chandmari to grab the tracker or the odd rickshaw as city buses did not ply on that route to our college, and the suddenly planned trips to Fancy Bazar with friends for chapta-chana or the Feeds-roll….All I have for company now, as I head home from work in the solitude of my car, is the comrade called mobile phone which makes me go further away from all that was once familiar. And with city buses, everyday mundane travelling was not just a tour – it was a story, an experience to remember…
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