Buses and the Private Eye - Part I

Belgaum:

In Belgaum, after a year of going to school in a crowded shchool-auto, my parents decided to allow me to go to school by Bus.

Belgaum was my first proper public-bus experience. Me and my sister used to go and stand at the bus-stop just outside the colony waiting for the bus to come. Waiting along with us were a lot many other people, mostly Dombari women who lived across the main road. Dombaris were traditionally travelling performers of folk acrobatics (walking on the rope, somersaults etc). Now they lived in a semi-slum and earned a livelyhood from this job and that - domestic service, agricultural labour, stealing. They were a pretty unclean lot and smelt a lot. But we were very young ( 6th or 7th standard) and somehow didnt mind being squeezed in a bus with them. By a tacit understanding the Dombaris generally occupied the back of the bus and everyone else was in the front, which helped matters a lot.

After the Dombaris, the next big chunk of the bus populace were the farmers of nearby villages. For the bus to the city came from villages far and near.

The closest village was Bennali. Any bus starting there was usually uncrowded, but buses coming from other villages were pretty packed and we had to squeeze in with difficulty.

But there was no telling which bus was coming when or if there were any buses coming at all. So we looked anxiously down the road, right to the point where it took a bend and disappeared, and waited to catch a glimpse of Bus. The speed of the bus as it took that bend would easily tell us how crowed it was. Sometimes one heard the bus come in the distance before one actually saw it. As soon as the bus was heard or seen the dombari women would let out a cry of 'Estee Aaali' ( Estee was ST, State Transport) to alert their sisters. Within minutes the population of would-be travellers doubled as more women (and some of their men) trickled in from the hutments across the street.

Sometimes two buses came one after the other, the second one totally empty, which warmed hearts all around.