Red Cindrella on Bengaluru roads

Bengaluru, for me, is about its city buses. They are an inevitable part of our life in the city. Even today, despite many alternatives, lakhs of people use city bus services to criss-cross the city for their needs.

If you are a resident of Bengaluru and have not travelled by its bus, then you have not had a real taste of this all welcoming city.

Once upon a time, circa 1960s, my tavaru mane (maternal home) was Gandhi Bazar, and as children, we were excited to look at these ‘Red Cinderellas’ on road. At that time, they were long-snouted, colloquially called mooti bassugalu, and were coloured bright red. With the passage of time, their snouts were sliced to make them slightly flat-faced, yet more majestic.

The city bus service, back then, was named Bangalore Transport Service, more popularly known in short as BTS. They were present as single-colour roadies, unlike the present lot of designer, more fashionable and flashy, buses in their shop. Now, these flat-faced vehicles had one more trimming, this time their left cheek was cut off. This we called Okkanna, meaning single eyed; even double-decker buses had the same face. Also running with pride on the city roads were the ‘road trains’ streaming along like giant serpents.

As children, we used to travel by city buses to our school. Our student passes was an A-5 sized paper, far from the slick, laminated cards of the day. Even during my working day, I took a bus to Mysore Bank Circle. Now I boarded the bus standing in a ‘Q’. It was annoying to see a few lazy ‘lords’, sending their wards to stand in queue as they took their time to come munching beetle nuts and paan after a leisurely lunch.

We had peak-hour specials (PHS) to help officer goers commute. I remember one driver of a PHS, who was the darling of the commuters for his prowess to navigate the Nanda Talkies Road (RV Road now) -- he could shake the bus as if it was a jet plane! As my work place shifted near MG Road, route number 6, a double decker, used to carry me at 7.30 am from my place in Jayanagar to Shivajinagar Bus station to reach office at 8.30 am.

The bus used to carry, without any special accommodations, a group of children with hearing and speech impairment (we simply called them deaf and dumb) to their school a little beyond Shivajinagar and they too enjoyed the journey in their own way.

I can’t help reminisce of bus travel -- I have travelled dangerously on foot boards, and hopping into a running bus. I still make the most of this public transport. But carefully. No more foot-boards and crowded buses for me.