Get on the Bus

My fellow American roommate, Laura, and I will likely be in recovery for days from a bus ride that lasted all of ten minutes. The phrase “Packed like sardines” doesn’t cut it. No, words like violated, abused, revolted... those seem to work better.
Now, it’s more than 45 minutes after being expectorated from the bus and I’m still shaking with my stomach in knots.
I once compared my experience in Frankfurt airport to having a pap smear broadcast on national television. “Never, never will I go through that airport again,” I swore, and to this day I’ve avoided it. But this evening that experience seemed luxurious compared to those ten startling minutes on the bus.
“I wish I had videotape of this moment,” said our Irish roommate Selina. “You two look like you’ve been victimized.”
Laura likened the experience to being born, thrust from the mother’s womb and into the bright lights of a hospital room and the starkness of the world.
That’s far too pleasant an image from my perspective. For I see the womb as warm, safe, comfortable. It’s a place from which you wouldn’t wish to be taken, right? Not so with the bus. In fact I’d call her allegory and mine dichotomous. (I really dislike being crude but the event calls for it and no other words come to mind) the bus ride was more like diarrhea exploding from a rectum or a zit being popped. (Again, my apologies.)
I hadn’t much noticed the sheer volume of passengers riding the public transportation buses. In fact I hadn’t really even contemplated riding a bus (for some reason I truly dislike this form of public transit, though I simply adore the elevated trains and subways in New York, San Francisco and Chicago), opting instead to walk or take a cab. (In India my preference was rickshaws.)
Today was cold, though, and after a very long week, which continues tomorrow with yet another installment of classes, so Laura and I hopped the bus to carry us a mile to our abode. We were especially thrilled to learn from a native teacher who directed us there that the rate equated to about 17 cents.
First there is this: the people who disembark at busstops do not simply get out of the way of those embarking. Meanwhile, those dropping off friends and family and the busstop stand straight in front of the bus doors. Finally, those embarking do so with a relish akin to cows at a stampede. But there’s more. (Surely there must be. Why else would I consider this tantamount to such disgusting before-mentioned images?)
The bus is full. Full does not mean people can freely move their purses or briefcases from one arm to the next. It does not mean that people can read the newspaper. It does not mean that there’s one seat empty. It means that the conductor crushes you in by shoving you, shoving you to a point that would be considered assault in the West. She has to shove you because the bus still has enough air in it for people to actually breathe, and in a fifth of a mile more people will embark, but you have to move somewhere because the bus doors will pop open if you don’t stand atop someone else’s feet. Full doesn’t mean an elevator with six Westerns in it. Full means one hundred people on a bus that doesn’t have a capacity danger sticker on it; there is no such thing as capacity in a country with more than a billion people in it. Full means you’re hanging by one finger onto some railing you were crushed against which will surely leave a bruise, and you can smell bad breath of the men surrounding you but you don’t have enough room even to cringe at the fact that they’re sexually molesting you with their eyes– if not their hands.
“Surely they won’t let another person in,” I thought at the bus stop after ours. Surely. I was wrong.
“Where the hell are they gonna put these people” I say to Laura. She, thank gracious, is directly next to me. No, maybe directly isn’t the right way to say it. Directly would indicate some form of pattern. I just know she’s really close to me. She’s close enough to be able to talk into my ear, but then again so are countless others. I say countless because the sapce was so crammed you could not move your head to be able to get even an estimated count of the number of people who were even touching you, let alone, “directly” next to you. Because she’s some five inches shorter than I, I cannot see her. But because I love her this is a time that brings forth what few maternal instincts I posses, and just knowing she’s as close as she is comforts me.
Still her speech, whcih was something like “OhmyGod OhmyGod OhmyGod!” cannot drown out the conductor who continues to push people onto the bus. Surely at this point it’s gonna turn into a mosh pit; for going up and horizontal is clearly the only way more people can fit. As do they embark, the clear fear of not being able to exit the bus comes to mind. This then lead to my loud cursing.
“God damn it stop shoving me. I am not going anywhere! There is no room!” I finally succumbed to my Western fears of not having enough space and is being trampled to death for the inability to escape the bus.
“That’s us,” said Laura, and somehow I knew she was either pointing or leanign her head in the direction of the buildings of our residential development. “Oh my God! That was us...” she said, at the same time I watched our apartment slip past like some long lost opportunity. “Where do we go now? What do we do? Where is this thing taking us?”
There are milliseconds in traumatic moments like this when you see things in slow motion and logic replaces fear. This was not that millisecond.
While I knew we could easily walk from the next busstop, I was not so clear on how the hell we would get out. All I knew was that we had to get out. Yes, I stand by my earlier statement that escaping that bus was like diarrhea being forced from a rectum.
“Let me oooooouuuttttt!” I would have said– had I been less dazed and traumatized by the event. Instead, when the bus finally stopped after hovering seemingly forever in the slow motion phase, all I remember is butting my head into passengers to remove them from my path. I was coming out, whether you liked it or not. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t smooth and solid. It didn’t smell like a rose. But when those doors opened and I shoved my way through, screaming at Laura “Just PUSH!” the sudden stability of terra firma beneath my feet reminded me that soon it would be OK to breathe again.