Traveling through life

I have been commuting by train for the last one year. Although I am practically in favor of running more trains more frequently, for obvious reasons like it takes 1/3rd the time to travel the same distance by trains, like there is no air pollution insulting my respiratory lining, like it is almost as cheaper as it is quicker compared to the bus services; a part of me misses traveling by buses as I'd been doing for about four years after finishing school.
I never thought even once while taking the bus trips up and down every day, six times a week for all that time, that silently the experience was metamorphosizing into memories worth putting down on my blog for the world to see.
Traveling by a bus is an altogether different affair from taking a train for the same purpose. The most significant difference being the speed, obviously. I am awkwardly aware sometimes, when I look out of the train, of the rhythmic horizontal nystagmus my eyes can't avoid. In a bus, I always get the time to focus and shift my gaze voluntarily to scenes outside, even if I have no place to sit. It allows me to capture the world outside.
The world outside a train is constant, its like a painting. The one outside the bus is like a motion picture, the positions of people and vehicles at least, changing every minute, although its the same route everyday. It is different.
Even the world inside a bus is dynamic in every possible unit of time. If I catch a train everyday at around the same time, I get familiarized with most constant faces within a couple of days. Of course, that is applicable to the ladies' first-class cubicle. But recognizing the same unknown faces twice a day is painfully sad! There is no class system in the bus. In fact, there is a certain class of people who take the bus. People who can afford to avoid the over-stuffed trains but cannot afford, under non-emergency circumstances, a cab. No fisher-women or vendors with huge portable stalls take a bus. Students contribute to the narrow yet colorful spectrum of people using the bus during specific hours of the day. The only face one may see too often to not remember and recognize the next time in a bus is that of the conductor. And it is a big advantage if he remembers you, especially during the beginning of the month when you've just received your pocket-money in the form of crisp large rectangles.
To me, the most exciting part used to be looking out of the window, wherever I sat or stood in the bus. Its difficult to do that in the train. Getting a seat in the train is as common as the Indian cricket team winning the finals. And if you turn your head to either side to look out of the window, the aunty sitting next to you keeps on constantly giving you reproachful glances as if you were staring at her or looking into her newspaper! Its so annoying!
I remember, I would usually find a place to sit once I got into a bus after a few stops. And then looking outside the window many times I'd count approximately. I'd count that approximately 90% of the faces are smiling. I repeated that count at regular intervals to make sure that Indians are still the happiest people in the world! Then once I'd concluded that approximately 95% of men in Mumbai don't tuck their shirts inside their pants. And that approximately the same percentage of non-malnourished middle-aged men have protruding bellies. All traffic policemen have a moustache. Our country is severely deprived of good-looking men. Most travelers inside a bus are interested to know the number of the bus theirs just overtook, me being no exception.
I miss those things.
At other times I'd be lost into my own thoughts only to feel I've reached in half the time I usually take. Sometimes I'd be traveling to some other time-zone along with the protagonist of the book in my lap. Its very tiring to read in a moving bus though.
I especially liked the road-trips during the night, the yellow lights showering over the road ahead, reflected on smooth curves of the bodies of cars with tiny yellow-red lights on their backs. If I got later than usual sometimes, the hassle witnessed during the same morning at the same place would seem to have occurred ages ago, the traffic reduced to a quarter, all signals blinking yellow, shutters of most shops down, families off to sleep on the dusty edges of the road... Once I saw this middle-aged woman strolling around a garden that children and couples flank during the lighted hours, in a black dress, tight and revealing ugliness, crass and gaudy make-up on her face, and somehow I was scared a bit to see a prostitute for the first time in real, at work, as my bus carved a semicircular path around the garden. Otherwise, the strong cool wind in my face as the driver took his 'plane' off the unhurdled road in the night always filled me with the adventurous feeling of a lonely traveler, somewhere in the middle of my journey.
Certain odd land-marks had been recognized by me. The journey on a highway is totally different while traveling in the opposite directions. The trip in the mornings had different land-marks than the ones made later in the day, returning. In the train, one usually selects a side and the same scene remains when you travel up and down. I had recognized the stops where students got in or got out of the bus, stops where the bus virtually never stopped, stops where couples would stand with their backs facing us, exposing to our society's shame the disrespect we show for other people's personal life. I would eagerly wait for the ads on the billboards to change, especially the Amul butter ones. I religiously would shift my gaze outside, everytime I passed in front of the few shops on my way which had large glass facades to see my wavy reflection and then correcting my slouched posture immediately. Talking about religion, I never forgot to recognize a temple my parents used to take me to when I was young which came on my way in the morning. Also, on the return journey there was this unremarkable movie theatre that shows dirty Z-grade movies. Ironically, just outside the theatre is a temple. When my bus stopped near this theatre, I would see more faces turned to see the poster of the current movie running in it than the faces turned and bowed to the deity in the temple. I am sure, the former ones must be left with a feeling of guilt and embarrassment when they happened to see the temple.
There were more reasons that made my daily routine of traveling by bus more endearing than the super-boring minutes I now spend in the train. The FM signal in buses is way better. Only occasional voice-raising happens when a man sitting on seats reserved for women is confronted by the fairer sex. Most of such men do what they never do otherwise, pretend to not pay attention to the woman! Some give lame excuses like they sat there on the first stop. They might as well say that Tom Cruise needs valium! Ultimately the dumass vacates the seat for the lady when the conductor interferes. No quarrels between passengers take place apart from that. Also, there is one thing you can do only in a bus. If you happen to encounter a cute face in the bus and some shy, slightly overlapping glances are exchanged between the two of you, you will at least be gifted a moment of intimate connection when your eyes hold each other for a moment, just a moment, when the cute face is dragged by the body its attached to outside the bus and you look down from the window and the final and longest glance lingers in mid-air, the connection breaking as the bus accelerates. Its more of a hi than a good-bye, as would have been appropriate. The train moves too fast and platforms are too crowded and the people too busy.
It never occurs to us how much changes when we change a house, a system of life.