Of Buses

 So I've joined a new office and it has been three months now. It is about an hour by road from where I live and I normally travel there by bus. This is a small article about my experiences on the buses I travel on. 

I remember my senior in college telling me once that he loves to travel on buses because he gets to see a lot of things, listen to a lot of songs and oftentimes the conductors make cheerful conversation with you as you stand (or sit) in the bus. At the time, I was not a surface traveler and was traversing the underground metro rail network to get from place to place. That in itself was an experience about which I've written a lot and will write again maybe, but let's focus on buses for now as Anjan Dutta croons at me from my Spotify.

So, the experience of traveling on a bus can be summed up in two situations- do you get a seat or don't you? If you get a seat, and it's a window seat you get to watch the world go by you in a slight blur as the bus accelerates or in a slight crawl as the bus slows down. If you get a seat, you also can dive into a book and read a short story which is what I do on the Barasat-Baruipur on my way to work. So far, I've read some O'Henry, some Russian folktales and am now reading a science fiction omnibus which has some interesting stories. I've also found that switching to my father's old Jabra Talk bluetooth device has helped me enjoy music on low volume while travelling and frankly the lack of a wired earphone helps a lot, because wires have a mystical habit of getting tangled or torn in crowded buses. Just this morning, I listened to the Indian Ocean song "Kandisa" on loop while reading Asimov's short story in the omnibus (The C Chute). 

On the other hand, traveling back from the office on a bus is a tactical ball game. The office crowd tends to be large and while the essential travel is cheap, it is because it is cheap that the buses are usually crowded. So, the tactic is- get on, struggle to find a place to stand in peace, keep ten or twelve rupees handy in an easily accessible place, put your bag on the bunker and sway to the rhythm of the bus. This journey may allow for music, but rarely does it allow for reading.

So...a morning spent reading and an evening of swaying back to the homestead is what the general picture is. However, there is a queer sense of belonging in the bus. Making way for people, hurling abuse at an irritating element, interesting conversations with the driver or the conductor (dependin gon where you are in the bus and how crowded it is), and the almost miraculous mathematical algorithm by which you approximate the rate of influx and efflux of people in the bus, and if it's safe to sit down on a vacated seat (if you're fast enough), or when you have to mve out of  a person's way...sometimes physics can be a cruel mistress and leave you gasping for air due to the sheer number of people in the bus, and sometimes the bus is empty in the evenings as well! 

Then of course, we must talk about the regularity of the buses. An S9C from Sector V (my office) leaves the main T junction at 6:40PM and because it was a Saturday yesterday, I managed to get on and had a semi smooth journey home. On the other hand, if I miss the 8AM Barasat-Baruipur, my commute to office becomes a challenge because of the time factor involved. Also let the court note that, I've usually managed to find a seat on the 8AM bus from home. 

And sometimes, I've met people on the bus with whom I've had interesting chats while traveling about myriad topics- the weather (there was a heatwave in Kolkata recently), boyfriends, music and books to name a few topics. 

Indian Ocean bled into The Local Train by the way and now I'm listening to Lucky Ali. So as I wrap up this post, let me just say that it's a mixture of tactics, luck and merriment to ride a bus on my commute to office. Quirky? You bet! 

(Attached below is an Indian music playlist I made on Spotify)

The Bilge Master

"Coz maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me"

I turn another page of the book I am reading and suddenly I am five years old and my first book is in my hand as is a glass of milk that my mother insisted on making me drink. 

Another page and I am lounging in my great grandfather's chair- it's 8AM on a Sunday and that means luchi and alu-r torkari for breakfast, cooked by a maid who has since then left our employ because she fell in love and married for love, got thrown out of her house for her trouble and unlike Bruce Springsteen's brother in law found out the hard way that love is indeed a camouflage for what resembles rage. Perhaps it will take more than fifteen thrashings and the usual drunken babble of how she can't satisfy her husband who wanted a sizeable dowry, to convince her that she was better off working for us, while my mother taught her English, slowly and steadily. Perhaps that would have allowed her to get a job as a receptionist and become independent of the patriarchial society she was an unwilling part of.

Another page and I'm 22 and the world is my oyster. I hate oysters by the way, but I seem to be an expert at falling in love. My latest crush is a girl who studies in a certain college, is as tall as I am and can be seen walking a Labrador in my compound and smoking a cigarette that she palmed from her father's jeans pocket- always Silk Cut, but obviously not Johanna Constantine. 

Another page, and another and another. The spell has taken hold. I feel like Hemingway felt in that cafe in Paris, where he said that all of Paris belonged to him and he belonged to the notebook and pencil in front of him, just as he said that beauty belonged to him and him alone, he had seen beauty's face.

Suddenly, I want to write what I'm feeling right now. Suddenly I am in the grasp of a story, gliding along on a river in a canoe, steered by a native in a rainforest. It is very exciting because I have never been down river before or in a canoe for that matter, and this native man is taking me to his headman, a sort of shaman who knows the cure for cancer.

Another page. This world feels familiar. I recall Ian McKellen in this world. I recall a sword and a name. The Flame of Anor burns bright and strikes down a Balrog. I am nine years old.

Another page. Where have the years gone? I was fat, I am losing weight. The Barasat Baruipur I am on is stuck at Patuli, while I am chuckling at a quote about how someone wants to tell a gold digger to go to the Devil but doesn't because he happens to be in love with her. I pull out my grayish black smartphone and type that into my WhatsApp status.

Another page, this time on a screen. A girl who reminds me of a dear friend drives downtown to a medicine man and asks a favor of him. There is a need to examine her cousin and some game is afoot in the house, but this is somewhere that Sherlock Holmes cannot interfere. 

Before turning the next page, I want to hear Isaac Slade and so I drop the volume of the laptop to 30% and turn on How to Save a Life. We are now in the present, with the future beckoning, tea gone cold, book looking at me askance and Slade singing stuff about praying to God.

Never in my life have I felt more alive than I feel right now, in this moment, with cold dregs of tea in a green cup on the floor, a book to finish, a faint glow outside my window, not yet dawn, and seeing as it's a day off tomorrow, a good breakfast of an omelette  made with Cheddar cheese to make for my father.

I realize that somewhere in these sentences is a story of a life that's entering it's 29th year, laid in front of your eyes. Among these lines is a world I have made and inhabit, sometimes only in my head and in that head of mine I am slow dancing with someone, as all around me buildings blow up. I look in my partner's eyes and whisper softly "You met me at a very strange time in my life".

You see, ever since I was a child, I always had one constant addiction. The written word. I loved writing letters. I loved stories. I loved to hear people sing. When my mother passed away, I cremated her with a copy of the book she held dear on her chest, so that when she reached her final resting place, she would carry what she held sacred with her there. After all, perhaps God would demand some form of tribute from her.

In short, I am a reader. What's your superpower? 

The Bilge Master

My Mother and To Kill a Mockingbird

 I remember my mother had a battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird which was in three pieces due to it's age. I remember that she used to keep it in the almirah and not on a bookshelf, such was the protectiveness she had about the book. I also remember that she bought me a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and wrote in it thus, "Gutu, this is perhaps the best thing I am giving you". 

I remember the first quote that stuck in my mind when I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time and it is a quote that a lot of us have quoted and tweeted and blogged about; "Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing". I was going through a massive O'Henry phase at the time so this tied in very neatly with some of O'Henry's axioms such as the line from The Pendulum where it is said of Katie that "She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed- necessary but scarcely noticed". So it was for me and reading and I am one of those people who carries a book in their bag to read or if I am not carrying a bag, I have books on my phone (thank you Moon+ Reader!) for emergencies.

Now, my mother bought a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for herself one day from Starmark and she wrote in it this dedication: " To Banu, for I tried to teach" just above the title of the book and she kept it with her, by her side. 

By this time, I 'm sure you've understood two things about me and my mother. One is that we are fanatical readers and the other is that To Kill a Mockingbird is a very special tome for us, just as Exupery's The Little Prince is the Bible for my father.

Unfortunately, the edition that my mother purchased got lost and so my mother got another copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for herself that she just kept on a bookshelf. I doubt she read the book even, it was just there. As Terry Pratchett said in Soul Music, "Sometimes all you can do for someone is be there". I believe firmly that more than people, my mother preferred books. This is a trait I have inherited. I too would love to read and read and cancel meetings with friends to read. I am one of those people, sue me.

So when I lost my mother in 2021, you can well imagine that the lost and grieving child in me turned to To Kill a Mockingbird for succor. I remember that somehow the entire meaning of the book had suddenly changed for me. Bereavement has a habit of doing that to you. 

What strikes me the most about To Kill a Mockingbird, (and this comes from multiple re reads of the book) is if you can manage to see the significance of Jean Louise (Scout) Finch from the perspective of Arthur (Boo) Radley. I think this is a really interesting way to present a character, where he is a here today, gone tomorrow type of character- more legend and less man in flesh and bone, and that it was the fact that the huge number of atrocities that his family were making him suffer through was why Scout became so important to him. Although a child, Scout did for Boo what no adult had ever done- she was there in his life. Boo took that immense strength from Scout and he survived the atrocities. 

And perhaps that right there is what my mother meant when she wrote that this book was the greatest thing she was giving me.

The new copy of To Kill a Mockingbird is now mine and in it I have written: "To Ashesh, for Lopa lives on in him". 

I just hope I can carry her name forward as I go on living this life of mine.

The Bilge Master