I usually do some warming-up before I write for work. This is one such, a bit of trip down memory lane.
I don’t know if you have ever travelled in mofussil Tamil Nadu towns. I did a lot as a child. Nagercoil, Tirunelveli, Madurai and several districts were places where my parents would drag us to, to visit relatives and attend weddings or the occasional deaths. I hated it. The trips meant long and nauseating bus rides, noisy crowds, unclean buses, and bus stations and so on. Tamil Nadu was so different from Kerala. In fact, even the air would change once we crossed the foothills of the Western Ghats into Kanyakumari district. Less moisture in the air. Less green. Dusty. Hot. Dry. Mannerisms. Behaviour.
In Kerala, most buses, at that time, were run by the state transport department, possibly a vestige of the series of communist governments and an avowed socialist model of governance by the normal ones. In Tamil Nadu, however, local buses were privately run. Running a bus system for profit means putting oneself at the mercy of market forces and being at the mercy of market forces means you just gotta fill up those seats.
For that, the bus crew had some tricks. Mainly, to cram as many people as possible into a single ride, and to engage men to get people to board the bus. For the latter, there was a well-developed script and a play. The play was that the driver would rev the bus much before the “official” start of the trip and drive it very slowly towards the station exit gates. This would get the stragglers in; why board a bus that is comfortably parked? Listen, this one is just out, buddy, we can save a minute or two if we squeeze in. The bus driver’s assistant – in Malayalam, he was called “kili” or bird, not because he would be perched dangerously at footboard of the passenger door, but because the original name was “cleaner”.
The kili’s job was to use various techniques to get people to board the buss – this included making weird noises that resembled the names of the destination and the important stops on the route, banging the side of the bus, answering yes, yes, yes to every question asked by a passenger about the bus (will this go to so-and-so stop? YES YES YES, even if it wouldn’t) or yelling the destination and bus fare rapidly at every passerby – as if people would drop everything and get in.
When I look back now – long after I have progressed from the mundane, low-income, small-town existence of my parents, the 1980s’ version of the middle classes – the experience of travelling in these districts was multi-sensory. It was not just the noise, but also the olfactory senses that came in – the odour of the diesel fumes mixed with the outdoor cooking of the makeshift street eateries that dotted the bus stations, and the sweat of the crowds within the bus, to the dryness and dust on your skin and the cold texture of the armrests and bus handles that you held on to.
A far cry from the sterile airport concourses and waiting rooms that dominate my traveling time these days. Or the air-conditioned cars or paved roads with a thick glass protecting me from the world. I’ve economically progressed, but do I have a richer experience? I don’t know.
Time to see some Youtube Shorts.
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