Bangalore traffic is the biggest woe for most people residing in the City. Driving around the City leads to unnecessary stress and is something most people want to avoid. How then, does one commute to a workplace or college 20 kms away? The local buses have come to the rescue of the people of the City. However, as comfortable as the journey may be, the public transport is also painfully slow. Meera Srinath, a postgraduate student of speech and hearing, commutes four hours a day to get to her college. “My entire day is spent on travelling,” she says.
However, there are some exceptions, who like excessive travelling. Renu, a 27-year-old consultant, says, “My bus rides are the time I unwind, go numb and don’t have a single thought in my head.” Professionals with highly stressful worklife, catch up on some sleep during bus rides. Srinivas, a SAP consultant, claims that it is the best time of his day as he gets his daily dose of music and some much-needed sleep.
“I usually socialise with people in the bus. I take the bus everyday and therefore, meet the same people everyday. So striking up a conversation isn’t that hard when you get a nod and a smile regularly from them,” says Akhila, an aspiring chartered accountant.
Sujay, a performer, has one of the most innovative solutions to offer for a long bus ride. “I look at people and create fictional narratives about them,” he says. An outsider to the City, he says the greenery in Bangalore makes the journey by bus nicer when compared to other cities in India.
“People have strange resemblances to animals. My favourite pastime is to find a ‘walrus-face’ or a ‘frog-face’ in the bus,” said Noel Mark Sequ, a 21-year-old content writer. There are also others, smitten by love, who claim that their best source of entertainment is talking to their loved ones on the bus. “I talk to my girlfriend all the time on the bus so I don't know how time flies,” says an over-enthusiastic 22-year-old Suhas Srinivasan.
“I study for my internals only on the bus as two hours are usually more then enough to ace the papers,” says Nitin Kumar, a final year industrial engineering and management student in MVIT. Looks like a long bus journey is after all, not that big a bore, and people seem to have found innovative ways of entertaining themselves.
