I know there are lot of people who don’t like Bus travel , particularly if its a crowded metro bus. At the end of the journey , you end up with sweat all over the body and completly exhausted and you have all reasons to dislike travelling in one such bus.
But I differ. Being brought up in townships like Neyveli ( No points for those who deduce I am from Neyveli) you get deprived of all these city ‘effects’. Like even for the latest Dasavadhaaram movie, ’supposed’ to be so hard to get a ticket , my brother happened to get tickets right out of the counters , for just Rs 35 , in one of the theaters in Neyveli. I mean , there is no fun , camping the ticket counters, which happen in cities like Madras, so naturally, if you get what I mean.
Sorry , deviated a bit. So my point is , I was always fond of foot-boarding a bus. I cant do that in neyveli , because There will hardly be 10-20 people in a NLC bus any time. If I foot-board in such a bus , the conductor is gonna ask me nicely ! So it was not possible to do that in Neyveli.
Now being in Chennai , I got a wonderful chance to foot-board the bus. I was going to meet my uncle in anna nagar from IIT madras . I took 47 and even when I boarded it was crowded. By the time I went to T.Nagar it was fully crowded and I was one of the 5 guys in the last step. The travel was about for one hour and one of my most memorable one’s. Though I didn’t know any one of my fellow foot-boarders , We had a really wonderful time , helping each other to get some space to stand and passing witty-but-no-way-hurting comments at the conductor and driver , who were having a rough time getting things going. At every stop , we had to get down and there will be more passengers added and we will board the bus back.
Well even as I say this , I no means forget the dangers of foot-boarding. Probably this might be my only try.But Come on I am not going to do this when I am 40. I do hate the MTC travels most of the time, but travels like this are kutti kutti fun in our life. Had you G.K Chesterton’s short story on “Running after one’s hat” , you might understand the difference better.
Probably If I had been brought up in Chennai , might not have seen so much fun in this. But as I am not , these aspects of a normal city life are still an excitement to me and brings out joy when I get to experience them. Its something like that ‘money cant buy you’ stuff that comes in ads 