Keeping the Balance

Halfway from CIT road to Gariahat. This was in the happier and somewhat more congested days before the new flyover was built. Buses stopped for what seemed like eternity at Gariahat and the conductors wouldn't start until they had loaded enough sweaty, smelling, overweight calcuttans to actually violate maximum packing ratios known to solid state physics. In such situations, I sometimes found myself packed between two solid walls of human flesh and slowly having the air squuezed out of me. Sometimes it wasn't this bad. It was just bad enough that I could flex my knees. When I was at that trange extremity of tiredness when all I could think off was getting home, my hand would slip from its grip on the overhead rod and my knees would begin to buckle. At which point some well meaning bloke would prop me up and I would flash him a tired and sleepy smile of thanks. Yes, travelling under those conditions helped me develop pretty good balance.

This time around, I was on a CSTC bus from the Bypass to Garia. CSTC buses, as all Calcuttans know manage the incredible feat of roaring down impossibly crowded roads all the while straining and juddering as if the whole bloody contraption will collapse around its passengers. This gurle got on. I was hanging on for dear life, as the bus was cornering at accelerations more suitable to a Mig 29. She had a bunch of notes and a book on an arm, and a cellphone in the other. Into which, she was gabbing for all she was worth. She elbowed me somewhat unceremoniously in the ribs and made her way inside. I couldn't help thinking that some people have learnt to keep the balance, while I appear to have forgotten it.