road to pertidition

The NH 45 – for those who don’t know it runs from Chennai to Madurai and along this route every day thousands of passenger ply everyday on government and private owned buses –students ,teachers, It professionals the list is long .what comes below is the account of one of nearly tending to infinity journeys by one among the nearly tending to infinity passengers –me .

Now the total travel time from Chennai to Madurai is hypothetically 10 hrs(practically it takes 12 to 14 hrs ) Of this the longest part of the journey is of course getting out of the bus terminal . The passengers will gain 1 to 2 hrs of travel time if they are asked to walk to the terminal entrance and board the buses there .But the boarding point is where it is –inside the terminal which meant that one has to shun aside all negative thoughts and indulge in meditating as the buses crawl at a snails pace to make it to the entrance. And I was expecting for it to happen .

Now another interesting feature of the journey which always happens is the ginormous traffic clog.now the man to be thanked for is someone called Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee ,the 11 th prime minister of India . For suddenly he had a dream about a golden quadrilateral connecting all the major metropolitians in the country and promptly ordered digging up the roads to make way for the project . now that’s not bad but what is bad is that someone somewhere forgot to close the dug up roads which means such ginormous traffic clogs were very common .and I was still waiting for it to happen

And then the bus pulled into a nightstop .And theres something ubiquitous about all these nightstops –for you can hear songs with the most horrible lyrics in these places .Its like they take perfectly good songs and give it to a drunkard to recompose it and then blar it over the speaker .i guess the idea is to make sure the song rudely awakens anyone asleep and force him to scamper out of the bus for dear life.

And then it finally happened –this time with a bang.i don’t kno why it seems like when I was born god gave me a curse which went like – “let every bus you travel in your lifetime shall always come across a punctured tyre so that the bus shall be delayed not less than two hrs”. Anyway it always happens and this time it was no exception –only this time the tyre being tired of getting punctured everytime I travel burst this time for a change .Thats why the bang.

Well the tyre was take caren of and we started again.only now I started realizing it was a big mistake to have booked a sleeper coach .Now a train always travels straight so a sleeper coach is fine but a bus travels anything but straight which means you realize what inertia of direction means whenever the driver takes a right or left turn .They ought to add it to the class 10 text book u kno .something like “If you are lyin on a left hand side sleeper in a bus and the driver takes a left youll get a bump in ur head by banging into the window and when he takes a right you will again get a bump only this time by falling to the floor unless and until you are holding onto something with both hands for dear life.

And finally when I reach Madurai I wish to hug the ground and shed tears of joy for being on solid ground again .