Brush with a bus

On a bright balmy day in early, rain-sullied October, in a sunny mood, I was on an errand to Holta on the Palampur-Baijnath road. The vaahan I was driving was our humble, old little Maruti-800 that a friend of mine calls ‘hamaara chaar pahiyon ka scooter’! About half-way, I noticed a red-yellow bus in my rear view mirror. I knew which private bus it was. All private bus operators are notorious for their might-is-right ways, caring too hoots about traffic rules. Being law unto themselves, overcrowding, over-speeding and blowing off your very brains with pressure horns are typical of their ‘muscular’ approach in general towards driving. The one coming behind me was no better - rather worse - as I knew from old personal experience. It represents an old, well-established transport house of the region with a sizeable fleet and epitomizes all the dirty tricks most transporters generally employ to run their businesses, and their writ runs far and wide on the Kangra roads and beyond.

Alerted, I slowed down taking extra care to keep to my side to the extent possible. For, though an unworthy guy who churns out an occasional, equally unworthy blog forcing it down the reluctant gullets of his friends, yet however, I didn’t want to die an ignominious death under the wheels of a bus! The traffic was heavy but the raging red-robed demon was speeding and in no mood to slow down. After overtaking a few, with pressure horn blaring non-stop, it was now my turn to do whatever to let the screaming bus pass by. Probably it wanted to get past another bus ahead of me to grab the commuters at the next stop. There was no scope at all for me to swerve further left to let the bus pass. But the reckless driver spewing fire just went streaking past me at breakneck speed, the pressure horn still blaring and forcing me to scurry and land my poor Maruti as shaken and scared as its owner, into a side ditch. It was almost a miracle that I survived its fury and am alive today to write this piece! Enraged, I got back to the tarmac and hurried to the next stop, Holta, determined to give a bit of my mind to this ‘maut-ka-saudagar’ driving as if with a license to kill. But unfortunately, the bus did not stop there and went racing away.

Defeated and dejected, after thanking my stars profusely first, when my battered nerves calmed, I mulled various options:

Go after the bus on a long chase. But neither sure of my driving skills nor of my car’s speeding prowess, I squashed the idea. Moreover, I thought, I lack the juicy Punjabi vocabulary, Amir Khan’s biceps as also 56 inch-ka-seena to confront the road-rowdy bus driver.

Second: go to the nearest police station. Although the HP police enjoys a much better reputation than its neighbours,  facing a daroga and lodging a complaint that too with neither the bus number nor any corroborative evidence, and given the clout the transporters in general enjoy in  the corridors  of  Power, I dropped the idea.

Thirdly I thought of phoning the transporter after accessing the contact number on Google, but good reason tweaked my ear against pursuing this course too.

Finally, after completing the chore I had set out for, I returned home with a hung face.

Advice:

When you have per chance a bus or truck on the road either in front or behind

If safely back, offer your deity halwa & cash, and thank God for being ever so kind

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