Our driver on today’s Jaipur-Nawalgarh public bus run has just been short-listed in the combined KTA (Kill Them All) driver and On-Its-Final-Kilometre-Very-Decrepit-Bus category – a category which, despite its specialized-sounding name, has many entrants from around the world, including our driver’s stiffest competition, an Indonesian from Sumatra. Actually our driver out-scored the Indonesian entry by .000847 points in an earlier round, a fact which, had we know, would have stopped us from ever getting on this bus in the first place.
This also explains why a few Indonesian bus adventures came to mind immediately we hit the streets of Jaipur. Like how the driver sat slightly sideways in his seat, reaching back awkwardly for the steering wheel (as if either seat or steering wheel was an after-thought) while looking over his shoulder to catch the conversation among several passengers. Or how he enjoyed his horn, a rising four-note number set on LOUD REPEAT for the four hour run. Or the classic Indonesian trolling for passengers, in this case until we are some 60 to 70, mostly standing, instead of a comfortably seated 30, and where any promised timetable (vaporous and biodegradable to be sure) has been chucked out the window along with an assortment of water bottles and snack wrappers.
Today, as we careen through a thread’s width between two on-coming trucks and force one car and three motorcyclists into the sandy margin, I notice a large clock over the driver’s seat. Curiously the main hands have stopped at 7:23. Then I start wondering, obsessing actually … Is that a.m. or p.m.? Morning or evening? The start of the day or the end? Are we at the beginning of something or the end?
Then I notice the third hand, ticking forward 15 seconds, then back 15, forward again, then back, each time between the 7 and 23. So, I think, they too are undecided about the time. Or have they somehow become trapped between an unknown hour and indeterminate minute? And will this have any bearing on that truck piled high with bricks that is fast approaching our windshield?
Back and forth, back and forth that third hand paces … when I see a swaying bus filling our windshield. We swerve sharply, fall into one another, boxes and bags skating along the aisle, the bus leaning into the steely corner of another approaching lorry. Out the side window I think I see a cart driver and mule flash past below. We hear a crunching thud behind us. Betty yells “You idiot! Are you trying to kill us!?!” towards the driver. He glances up into his rear view mirror and smiles. Several passengers look towards Betty and nod in agreement, but sit in silence. The driver’s buddies, piled around the engine housing and windshield, exchange laughs over the driver’s latest death swerve. They’re excited, full of admiration. This guy’s the real thing!
The best I could tell, we have left cart, driver and mule overturned in the ditch. I turn back to the clock and its pacing hands. That’s when I spot, sitting in a smoky glass alcove above the windscreen, a Ganesh figure wearing a garland of plastic orange roses. Ganesh, that chubby smiling little elephant – so often found above gateways, shop and house doorways, in front of or above Indian bus drivers – god of learning, the bringer of good fortune, success, prosperity, great clearer of obstacles..
Are you a passenger here, Ganesh, or another of the driver’s admiring buddies? And just what kinds of “obstacles” are you clearing today, right here? This is what I want to ask that fat little cross-legged guy – and get some swift answers too, in case there’s still time to jump bus.
He might be a god of learning, but here and now, on this deathcrate-on-six-wheels, I’d like to know whose learning? The speedswerveovertakeatanyprice joyride kind? Or our more boring “I’d like to see another day” kind? And success, good fortune for whom? Ours, that we get to sleep in Nawalgarh tonight? Or the driver’s, in his damn-all-comers race past everything in sight and on to the top of the KTA pack?
And that clock. Is it morning, Mr Ganesh, or is it night? And whose?
What do you say, you chubby, always smiling, cross-legged, far too contented-looking elephant?
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