Aate jaate khoobsurat...

What is the last thing you would like to do when you are completely absorbed in reading a nice thriller of a novel, where you want to read the next 5 pages in one look? I am sure that is to get disturbed by someone asking to move a little and make a place for him / her. Well this happens to me everyday.

Everymorning i catch a bus at 8:15 in front of my house to reach office and I catch the bus at 6 to come back. . The office bus is generally full by the time it reaches my stop in the morning and by the time I catch it in the evening. I generally like to avoid the usual hustling bustling that happens around by the passengers who dont find their seat and are standing in the space between the two seats. This is the precise reason why I always run towards the last window seat in the bus where i dont have any one to disturb me.

But Before I even start speaking about my experiences in the bus, i would like to give a brief introduction to my company. The average age of employees in my company is around 25 which is constantly decreasing as the company has been recruiting fresh graduates in thousands. Last year 30,000 were recruited and the same number is expected to join this year. So would the probability of having a fresh engineering graduate sitting next to you in the bus comes out to be around 0.60 and i must agree that is too high. The probability of this engineering graduate to have had a crush / love affair or heartbreak in the last 45 days also can be calculated to be around 0.75. Considering that you can have a really interesting person sitting next to you in the bus everyday. Would like to tell you about the 4 categories of the people whom i find sitting in the last row of the bus.

Love Birds

The best among the lot are what one of my college friend used to call “LBs”, the ever increasing clan of lovebirds in the young IT companies. They wait the whole day to meet their loved ones in the bus in the evening. College did not give them a lot of liberties for a lot of reasons that do not exist in the working life. This is a species which visits the last row of the bus most often.

Unfortunately love came in my life a lot before I got recruited here and hence the last row of bus has never been romantic at least for me. There has been a proper trend of changing behavior in these LBs over the last 2 years.

From talks about “codes and defects” they have moved to topics of greater importance like “Himesh Reshammiah’s songs and the salsa night at discs in the town”.

From clothes that were “formal” on a Monday to some sleeveless revealing tops for girls and some jazzy shoes for boys. Not that I am complaining :).

From smiles that might turn to words one day to looks that might turn to a date very soon.

From “Kal lunch pe milenge” to “Aaj shaam ko tere ghar pe movie dekhe kya”. It is definitely interesting.

The earlier generation seems to have graduated from the last rows to the first ones. The last rows are a lot more hot and happening these days.

Generally when a couple now comes and gets seated in the last row these days I stop reading because I like complete concentration in what I do. And reading does not allow me to do just that. A normal LB trip that I have come across would go something like this :

The girl keeps the bags in her lap and the boy makes himself comfortable in the last seat sitting straight. No sooner the bus starts the girl feels a lot tired by the days work and suddenly puts her head gently on the boy’s shoulders. Well the eyes meet and the look in the eyes these days seem to be a lot different from what I used to see in my times. Well by the time they starts getting cozy and are comforting each others by their touches and advances that they make, thinking that they have boarded a bus of blinds, my stop comes. And it always embarrasses me and gives me a feeling of guilt to disturb these love birds to say “Behanji zara jagah karenge? I need to get down”.

Sleepers

Well apart from love birds then there are loners, the lazy and self-contained set of people for whom the only 2 things in life are office and sleep, the latter being more important. I really hate people drooping over my shoulders while I am busy with something. And the occasional snores make you wonder about the comfort that a torn seat in an old bus bumping on bad Pune road could be giving. Slowly he loses the center of gravity that had been maintained by his continuous swinging and might either end up in your lap or will get wide awake looking at you with some kind of confused smile and getting back to the initial zero position to start oscillating all over again.

Bakars

Thirdly are that kind of loners who don’t like to be alone and others would not like to get into a discussion with them. They are the ones whom I call “Bakars” and are the most dangerous of all. They might just make you feel to shout on their face “Shut up” and all you can do would be smile and take the real “bakar” that is thrown at you.

Well have had many such with me but the most interesting one was on a day when I was absolutely immersed with Dostoevsky’s “crime and punishment” when she came across to me like the pawn breaker in the story.

She was a girl who had just come to pune from Delhi and the only concern that she had was the “crowd” in pune which she felt was not as good as Delhi. I felt as if she was telling me that all you guyz in pune look Sick. But I still kept on listening her talks about PVR priya, DU, JNU and what not. I did not have the courage to tell her that I have been there for 2 years, because saying that might have included me in her best friend list. Well in the 15 min she told me everything about her “aunt” who had been staying in Mumbai while her “uncle” was in Army, about her cousin who had a recent heartbreak, about the bad chapattis that she make. The only fear that I had in the whole story was that “would she be coming by the same bus everyday?” That was too scary for me to even think of.

From the day after that I have been taking care that I sit on a seat where the next seat does not remain empty, else I might just face her in the bus.

Audience

And then there is a fourth clan of people in the bus who like me are observers. the boring and the silent most part of the bus which is better less discussed. I would not like to talk about them because if you fall in this category you know about them already and if you don’t I would rather keep it a secret and let them observe.

But one thing that I have learned through these journeys in the last rows of the buses is to keep eyes and ears open. It is one of the best sources of entertainment that you might ever find.

Advice : Travel through bus in place of personal vehicle and reduce the pollution levels in the cities.