Route No.461

As i mentioned in my previous post, i having doing a lot of traveling this summer using the a/c bus of Route No.461. A couple of incidents happened while traveling between IITb and my pace in Borivli. Both are in no way related to each other but are certainly very funny.

Incident 1:
4 pm Jogeshwari- Versova Link road . Outside IITB main gate.
I got in a pretty vacant bus and saw a lad sitting in the left corner seat of the last row. I thought there is always peace in the last row so I decided to sit in the right corner of the same row. As i moved towards the rear end of the bus , little had i expected what i was about to see. What i saw raised a million doubts in my mind about how teenagers should behave in public. May i remind you once again that the bus was pretty vacant , hardly 4-5 people were there. So as i moved towards the end of the bus a girl rose from the seat next to his.... with her head bent towards his lap!!! i know, i know she might just be resting her head on his lap and taking a nap, may be she was not well. But these are the confessions of a pervert mind and i am sure all u guys know what i was thinking that time. they both stared at me , but by that time i was too close to the last row to turn around and find another seat , so in sat in the right corner of left row, thus raising a awkward situation for all 3 of us. all throughout the journey they kept cuddling and stuff by the time i called up my gf and updated her about this lolmax incident and we both were rofling.

Incident 2:
12:30 pm Western Express Highway, Thakur Village, Kandivali.

Yet another boring journey from borivli to powai had began and just when i was thinking that nothing interesting could ever happen on this route, the bus suddenly stopped, i peeped out to see what bus stop it was, but it was not a stop neither signal. Two people got in the bus, they were in their early twenties and on them was wearing an helmet. I Thought what a douche bag , wearing a helmet in the bus. what ... did he park his bike at the bus stop and then took the bus ? the bus moved on and i assumed they sat peacefully in the bus. But fun was about to begin. Suddenly i heard some guy getting thrashed in the rear end of the bus. the two guys(helmet wale)) where beating up this other guy , abusing him. After a bit more beating up and abusing we understood that the guy in the bus had spat on the 2 bikers. So the were kinda taking revenge... then they took him off the bus and v carried on with our lives happily ever after.

Joy Ride

I was there at the bus stop waiting for my air conditioned bus, route number 461. I have been taking this bus for the past one week ever since monsoon hit the shores of Mumbai. Though bike is my favorite mode of transport, it’s too much of a risk in the rains specially with all the potholes and slippery roads. A very intelligent rickshaw driver once said, “Sahib these poor bikers are cursed for lives. During the summers they have to face the unbearable heat of the sun and as far as the monsoons go … voh to aap dekh hi rahe hain ”. So getting back to route number 461, I had yet another boring day at Power Anser Labs in IIT Mumbai where I have been working as part time MATLAB coder. It was 6 pm now, as I saw each bus approaching I eagerly sliced through the crowded bus stop onto the road to check which bus it was, only to my disappointment it wasn’t 461. Many busses went by and I had lost hope and reaching back home in time. Just then I saw a bus which seemed like an ac bus, as I eagerly leaned forward, to my relief it was 461, I got in to attention mode as I had to get into this one at cost . As it slowly came to a halt I was yet again let down by the packed bus. The driver didn’t even stop the bus. It just went by not even bothering to ask if we would like get in. I was pretty hungry by then so I headed towards a local restaurant to get a cup of tea and some pav-bhaji. I usually tip well, but the arrogance and incompetence of the staff there made me change my mind(I didn’t even leave the two 50 paise coins he got back with the mouth freshener). I was back on the bus stop by 7pm. I finally gave up on the 461 and got in a XXX (don’t know what number It was). This one dropped me close to my place and I had to take a rickshaw from there. I got a seat whew..!, it was the last vacant seat, I heaved a sigh of relief, just as it was sinking in that I will not have to go home standing, I heard a sweet voice ” excuse me, this is the ladies seat”. So I let her have the seat. Same thing happened again, I sat onto another vacant seat and bang in less than 2 minutes came the “excuse me”. So there I was on my way back home in an extremely crowded bus which was moving at a speed on 20 km/hr, in a weird acrobatic posture; the most striking part was that my groin was pushed against the rod attached to the side of the seats. Hooked on to my mp3 player I was maintaining the posture because there was no space to move even a bit. After about half an hour or so, the bus broke down or at least I thought it did, because it had slowed down too much. So I decided to get off the bus and get a rick back home. This is when the joy ride began …

I got a awesome rickshaw driver, the first thing I asked him “auto kahan ki hai bhaiyya”, he said “shere-e-punjab”. I know that it’s just another locality in Andheri west but still, Sher-e-punjab sounds very inspiring and powerful. I have this habit of chit-chatting with rickshaw-drivers, taxi drivers, mess workers etc. basically the people who keep our daily lives moving, but nobody ever takes time to either appreciate their efforts or speak politely to them. It was while I was sitting in the rickshaw that I realized how much fun it is to see the world around you when it rains. As the cars sped away from our rick it was fun to see how tiny droplets of water were thrown off the road by their wheels, how the bikes sliced through the pools of water as if cutting a cake. Whenever a truck or bus went by, water was splashed onto the rick, it seemed like the rain was desperately trying to get to us in spite of all our efforts to stay dry. My conversation with the driver continued, he enlightened me on how 2 stroke ricks are better than the 4 stroke ones, how the RTO harasses them to get money.

Slowly moving through the traffic I finally reached home. It was not an eventful evening but it was an evening I enjoyed. The painful bus ride, the tiny droplets of water, the 2 smokers at the bus-stop(forgot to mention that ) , the awesome rickshaw driver and a lot of things I have forgotten coz I am dead tired.

P.S.: I hope you could guess who’s the intelligent rickshaw driver.