TWO JOURNEYS

by

K.

Journey 2.
Or
Further Adventures of a Furious Character

a.k.a.

The Drear Side

I have already mentioned the funnier aspects of a BMTC Bus Journey. That was Journey 1. But, being cursed to travel every single day, and that many times within the course of each single day, I have opportunity to study the sadder, more melancholy aspects too. Indeed, look at all the facets of Journey 1: the drunks, the smells, the fear and the loathing (to borrow but a phrase) and you will see what I mean – they can be a representation of the sadder side too.

If you do not see as yet, go by bus. To someplace, anyplace. Then come back home. Go, and come, by a crowded bus. Believe me, you will then know what authors mean when they say “a bespattered cross-section of the lower strata of humanity” or some such shit. Because that phrase means, roughly translated, “all the people who go by BMTC buses”, in Swahili. Other terms in Swahili meaning roughly the same thing are, “The UnderPrivileged”, “Smelly Cats, Smelly Cats” and “FCUKinkybuggers”.

It is a very depressing thing, going by bus. Very saddening, very maddening. Hey! I can write a poem about it!!! See (if I were to write it), it (would) goes thus:

It is really saddening, maddening,
It’s not the least bit gladdening,
The way you go by bus.
It’s all very depressing, oppressing,
And there’s also a little cross-dressing,
In the way we go by bus…

The travelers are so flagrant, vagrant,
And not too very fragrant,
As they go by bus.
I hope you see my meaning, gleaning
Something from this preening
Of how I go by bus.

And so on.

I am every day enveloped by the collective unconscious (No, not the new Herrera perfume for women, the feelings of the people) as soon as I enter a bus. Any bus. Crowded, uncrowded; stinky, fragrant – it doesn’t matter. There is a…sadness in the air, what’s left of it.

You get the feeling it must be really, really sad for all these people to be condemned to such a fate as to come by such dreary means everyday, and then you realize that you do the same thing yourself and you heartily agree with whatever you just thought now.

Some of the things you see outside the buses always seem to portray something of an idyllic, pastoral charm. Be it the early morning sunlight slanting through the leaves, the sambhrani smoke from earthen houses, the people meeting at the local bakery and having a cuppa chai. Or it is evening and amidst all the people rushing back home, you see someone walking a dog, some children playing, someone walking with a lover in a park.

I can clearly remember the line from Le Carré’s first Smiley,
“Beyond the trees, Smiley thought, cars are passing. Beyond the trees lies a whole world…”

Indeed, beyond the window, life exists. And it is somehow amplified by the fact that you cannot move at all, you cannot take too deep a breath – A metaphor between traveling in a bus and the ultimate oblivion? I don’t know. Maybe Death is an infinite BMTC bus-ride. The Final Bus-ride. Passes Not Allowed – when it is but human to move and breathe, these being the biological indications of life. An organism is said to be a living organism if it eats, excretes, breathes and is able to move from one place to another.

And then there are the drear scenes…

Moving through Kalasipalyam, I see policemen inside a bylane. The bus moves forward, crossing a police vehicle, and in it, dazed, eyes wide, sits an old woman. She seems shell-shocked, unable to move, blink, or close her open mouth. Her hair, and the whole left side of her face is caked with red blood. She just sits there, staring out through the protective grille, as the bus moves on.

We near Hebbal, and it is night. The roadlamps cast a sickly yellow glow over everything. There is a rotting pig’s carcass on the roadside, and some crows are making an evening meal of it. Right next to them, as though accentuating the metaphor of death, a man climbs down from an Ambassador, dressed in white dhoti and anga-vastram, to perform someone’s last rites in Hebbal lake. And then I remember that the Electric Crematorium is just on the other side of the road.

A little further ahead, are some…beings. Hermaphrodites. Eunuchs. Doubling as prostitutes. They sit on the roadside, no expression on their faces, clothes undone to display wares. Selling themselves. Gender-confused daughters of Hermes and Aphrodite selling themselves to the rest of humanity.

Dreary, bleary scenes. Scenes of life, the way it is. No gloss, no glamour. Just blood, and gore and flesh. And death.

Scenes from a moving bus. Life.

And, as usual, a Sabbath song comes to my mind. Also, in passing, I must state that Iommi and Ozzy are some of the GREATEST lyricists ever. Heavy metal rules. The lines I’m thinking of go:

Inclination of direction, walk the turn and twisted grift

With the children of creation futuristic dreams we sift

Clutching violently we whisper with a liquefying cry

Many deadly final answers that are surely doomed to die.

Won’t you help me Mr. Jesus? Won't you tell me if you can?

When you see this world we live in, do you still believe in man?

If my psalms become my freedom, and my freedom turns to gold

Then I'll ask the final question: if the answer could be sold…

The song is appropriately titled, “The Thrill of It All”.