Multi-facted bus journey

June 2, 2010

I rode a local bus (the ‘a’ is emphasized for a reason to be clear soon).  Doesn’t seem like such a big event, but it was if only in the sense that it saved me money.  My local theatre friend invited me to join him in a town called Hosur, on the border of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, to perform in a play we first did together a year ago.  Hosur, by bus, is about 6 or so hours from Chennai.  Okay, no problem.  I take an overnight air-conditioned sleeper, snooze the evening away and I’ll be in Hosur in a jiffy, I thought.  Finding a bus, however, was a task that I found out was a little daunting—this is a land traversed by buses and trains of all sorts.  Which to trust?  Where to board it? Of course, I quickly got help (this IS India, after all) and bought a ticket.  On his recommendation, I booked on a trusted busline.

Ah, but then followed the task of finding the right bus station at night.  Hop a rickshaw, since they would know the bus station for this busline.  And, to be safe, board at the busline’s office, rather than the large bus station at Koyembadu.  Okay, sounded fine.  No problem.  But my good friend Gajen instead suggested that a friend of his take me to the bus office to make sure everything would work out alright.  And good thing he did.  The ‘office’ is a tiny room on top of a dark building accessed through a very thin set of steps–in purple—that are topped by the bus company’s name is a kind of script that is hard to read from the road.  And then the bus was late.  And then the bus wasn’t coming.  And then a mini-bus was coming to take us to the real bus at—guess where?—Koyembadu.

Now note that I paid for an AC Semi-sleeper in order to stay cool (please read my previous blog about HOT) and sleep the 6-7 hour evening away.  As I sat in the stifling office, with one other passenger, they argued about AC.  Was the bus not going to be AC, I wondered.  The other passenger even referenced me (‘foreigner’) in his fight for ACC (I presumed).

Well, 45 minutes late the mini-bus arrived and held up to its name.  And it was not AC, so we took a short ride to the real bus which, thank goodness for me, was an AC Semi-sleeper.  Semi-sleeper, you ask?  A bus with seats that recline.  In I went, stuff myself and my bag in my seat area (too big for the overhead) and made myself as comfortable as could be.  Three hours later, when I was mostly asleep like the other passengers, a man walked up and down the aisle waking us all and telling us to get off the bus.  Another bus sat in front of us and their passengers were shooed off as well.  At the side of the road, in the middle of the night, we were switching buses.  No one had any idea why.  The seats were numbered differently in the ‘new’ bus so there was some confusion about who sat where, but eventually we got back into our sleeping modes and headed off.

Thirty minutes later the bus jolted suddenly.  People shot awake, screamed and half the passengers scrambled to the front to see what had happened.  Apparently—and I am still sketchy about this one—we ran into the back of another bus.  The front of our bus was crinkled, but the other bus looked mostly untouched.  After a short while it drove off, while the attendants on our bus braved the night traffic to clean the road of debris.  We were shooed off of this bus, as one attendant made phone calls.  After about 10 or so minutes, another bus stopped and about half of us got onto an AC sleeper bus (this one was actual bunks).  I have no idea what happened to the other half, but was glad that in the darkness of the vehicle, a gentleman waved for me to sit in an open front seat.  Off we went.

Three hours later we stopped at the side of a trash strewn, open ditch road and I heard someone say ‘Hosur.’ Now I thought I was going to a bus station.  Do I depart here?  I asked the attendant.  He just looked at me quizzically.  My previous seatmate said I should get off, as the passenger who originally argued for the AC bus came forward and argued with the attendant to apparently take me to the true bus station.  No luck.  I got off and called my local friend, Velu.  His friend was waiting for me at the bus station.

Eventually, Velu’s friend found me (someone who I had met a year earlier) and we wandered about looking for a local bus to go join Velu.

My fifth bus ride of the evening took about twenty minutes to get to a remote school where Velu was helping conduct a summer program for orphans.  My journey to Hosur ended with Velu, Sathiyar (his friend) and I performing a Tamil folktale for the children.  In just a few hours time I became a great friend to the children and ended up presenting the closing gifts to the students.

That night I boarded a bus for Pondicherry. Seven hours in a local, non-AC bus with a horn strong enough for an ocean liner.  Let your imagination conjure up that bus ride.