The Bus.

To actually find a seat would be a miracle.  Imagine the Green Line during a Sox/Yankees World Series home game.  Then multiply that crowd by ten, but replace the drunken sox fans with Indian people staring directly at you.  Occasionally, some sympathetic soul will pull you onto their lap, to both make room for more people to pile on, and to get your elbow out of their face.  By the third stop, there are usually about 60 people on the bus, with eight men dangling precariously out the back entrance.  All I have to say is thank God the front area is designated for women, considering the amount of physical contact.  There is no such thing as personal space in India.  There really can’t be with a population of a billion people.  I was graced with a seat the other day, on my way to Abids, and immediately had a large woman rest her gut on my shoulder.  Sweat is no longer something to be bothered by.  As the ticket man pushed and squeezes his way past, collecting rupees for tickets, the mass of people sways and lurches back and forth- into me, into each other, into the seats, onto the floor, until your stop finally comes. 

Finding that stop is another challenge, especially when you are pinned up against the wall of the bus with about 30 people between you and the door.  There are no maps or announcements for the stops, and rarely can you actually contort to the awkward angle to see out of the dirty windows to get your bearings.  It’s even harder when you’re with a group of girls and boys.  The boys stand in the back, and the girls in the front- so you have to arrange a series of hand signals or just shout across the bus when you think your stop may possibly be coming up.  Usually the best bet is to find the closest English-speaking Indian and ask them to tell you when you are about to reach your stop.

When the time has come to disembark, and your lungs cannot inhale one more breath of exhaust fumes, and the bus has almost come to a complete stop, and you have signaled the boys at the back of the bus that this might be “go time,” all you have to do is push past those 30 people between you and the door.  I’d imagine it’s something like squeezing your way into the sliding glass doors of Walmart at opening time on Black Friday to get an Xbox 360 or something.  But honestly, for 10 rupees, (~20cents) it’s not so bad.