trip to home:part I The bus ride

With the festival of Diwali coming I decided to make a quick trip to home. Diwali and Holi are two festivals which most people want to celebrate with their families and I was one such person. Diwali is the celebration of Lord Ram coming back home after defeating the demon Ravan and rescuing Sita from him.It's difficult for me to imagine that the whole nation moves on Diwali to celebrate the event which the ASI says 'has no historical proof'. I'm sure even the ASI officials would celebrate this not so real event.
Anyways, so I was one of the many many Indians and decided to go home. At this time it is usually to get a train ticket. I couldn't get a ticket from Hyderabad, but managed to get one from Nagpur which is about 500km from Hyderabad.So my plan was to take a bus from Hyderabad to Nagpur on Sunday evening. I would then reach Nagpur next day morning, and then catch the train to Delhi in the evening and reach Delhi on Tuesday morning.
My bus started at 6 pm from Hyderabad. It was Maharashtra state government vehicle and as expected quite rickety. We were 5 passengers in all, and the conductor was happy to see us. He was happy to see so many people going to Nagpur.It seems the Diwali rush is starting, he said. This is no rush, just 5 passengers I thought. And so we started, each one having the entire three seat room.
The road was nothing great. I've seen better roads in north. Soon one of the rear tires got punctured. They found it to be the inner tire and so thought it's safe to carry on with the journey. After 4 hours of bumpy ride, we reached Nizamabad, where atleast 80-100 people were waiting for this bus, all heading for Nagpur. Just as the bus dared to enter the bus station, all of them attacked it, wanted to get in from any possible entry, the door being only one of the possible entry points. The others were ofcourse the windows (including the driver window). We were all shocked inside, not knowing what had struck us. The driver and conductor abandoned the bus and vanished only to return after 20 min, when every inch of the bus was occupied. There were people everywhere. All seats occupied. The pathway occupied. Some even sat on top of the seat, such that their head would touch the ceiling. In such a crowd, people carry their chappals in hand rather than wearing them. The chappals would not survive the onslaught. The seat next to me was taken by an old couple. I asked why so much of rush today? "Everyone going home for Diwali", she replied.
All these people were labourers who belonged to place called Gondia in the state of M.P in central India. There are two distinct features about labourers when they travel. One, they always travel together in large groups, leaving no one behind. Here it seemed it was the entire village on the move, each passenger seemed related to the other. I could figure this out, as they all seemed to know each other and addressed each other as chacha or tai (uncle or aunt). It must be real fun to go on holiday together with everyone I thought. The other feature being, they carry all their belongings when they move. So I'm not only talking about clothes here, but everything. Few of them carried bicycles (which were placed on top of the bus), there were others carrying buckets. One such requested me if I could carry his bucket on lap,assuring me it was not heavy and he could not fit it into the shelf meant to keep the luggage. I gladly accepted his bucket. In it i could see a kadai and karchi (a bowl and stirrer used for cooking). Seeing all this I couldn't help but smile. It was like a great Indian safari for me. A true picture of how India travels.
As the bus moved, I opened the window and a nice cool breeze hit me. We were passing through the telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, and would enter the Vidarbh region in Maharashtra. These regions have been in news in recent years for their poverty and farmer suicides. The sky was clear and I had a good view of the moon. As the bus moved northward, the road became from bad to worse. And with so many people inside, no one could move an inch. We all had to maintain a statue for next 10 hours. The only space we had was to move out eyelid.
Then suddenly, a suitcase fell from the shelf.It was a big bag and so could not fit in properly. With each bump, it would inch out and then finally fell down. It fell on a man's head who was sitting under that shelf. He was raged. without asking to whom did it belonged, he just opened the window and threw out the suitcase.WHAM!! "HEY WHAT THE @#$%",shouted someone from the back."BUS ROKO,BUS ROKO" (stop the bus). Then followed a series of arguments, others laughing at the situation (I being one of them). The bag was collected and the bus moved again.
As the night progressed it became cold. I was thinking about the flat tire. I was thinking if the bus would last the entire journey. Well it did. We reached Nagpur at 9 am, good 3 hours behind schedule. Everyone had been waiting for this moment. We were all holding onto our various pressures very patiently, and it was a big relief to know we have reached.