The local bus!!

The local bus!!

It was the occasion of MahaShivratri Celebration in Bhojpur. Today we were not able too arrange the bikes for the trip, so we thought to take the city bus, we were 7 in total. Eventually the fair of bus was raised from seven rupees to 20 rupees, with an additional feature to drop you one kilometer away from the main temple.
Still, we agreed to go for it, and landed on the near bus stand, waited for 15 minutes and caught a local bus to bhojpur. Had the trip completed in three hours and returned back.
The local bus was having a capacity of 62 passenger( I know this because, I got the last seat in the bus…). But the festival made a magic in the bus, the total number of passenger in the bus were minimum 95 or even can be more. The scene was very clear from the last seat… in a last row of five, we seven adjusted ourselves. In the front of mine seat, was a lady with her husband and two girls, sitting in a seat of two( thank god, the had a small baby…). And the rest of the seats are hardly visible due to the rush in the bus.
Moving rightwards, may be two or three were sharing the seats, I cant see them, because couples of big sized butts were in the way. The space in between the two side rows of seat was no more a space, it turned into a queue of more then twenty five of passenger in line. Boys, girls, ladies, gents, kids, oldies etc , everyone was pressing each other. Touching ankles, arms, thighs, chest and god knows what. It was a complete fuddled situation.
Needless to tell that, the weight of bus was over the limit, but it rarely bothered the driver. Obviously, the passenger were paying double the charges, complaining least, gathered in large numbers- what more a bus owner want on festival day. The feast of money on a holy day…but is that humane?
For instance, if the bus had imbalanced, it could have cased havoc, a death of at least hundreds of us. Thank god it didn’t happen, but even in hell, if that bad dream become truth for even any one of us, then?
In India, I think in every year we hear half a dozen of news of road accidents of pilgrims. For sure it does not stop the sacred people to go, or the pilgrims to stop climbing thousands of feet’s to get a glimpses of the rock, we worship as our God. But this kind of local bus, can make us very very close to the lord, I mean very close…
Every big city has there local way of public transport, Delhi, Mumbai, Indore, Bhopal, Kolkata etc – city bus serves the most of them…it’s the local public as well as the bus owner and also the government, that someday a small mistake can take away many life in a flash…it’s a very unsure world, risk is in every part, but why to make things bitter…local bus is not a place to kill people, and nor should we make it one.
Reaching a destination half hour late is very profitable the never reaching there. Misfortune can turn in our path any time, thing before rushing you and overloading the local bus…you never know- when u can get crushed!