The bus journey on 05-Oct-2017

It rained heavily in the afternoon on 05-Oct-2017 in Bengaluru. The web page www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/bengaluru-battered-and-bruised-by-record-rain/article19807256.ece  describes the effect of the rain on that day. The rain on that evening was 65 m.m., quite a lot for the month of October !

I work at Manyata Tech. Park. I use a Volvo bus service established by the Tech. Park to travel the 20 k.m. to work and back. In the morning, the bus comes at 7:45 a.m. and I usually reach Manyata by 8:40 a.m. The evenings are more of a pain: I usually take the 6 p.m. bus and I enter home at 7:50 p.m., typically. This means that I spend nearly 3 hours in the bus every day. Since I cannot change the location of my home, this is a routine that I am accustomed to, now. I feel dissatisfied sometimes, but by and large, I am OK with my work and the time spent on it. However, on 05-Oct-2017, my patience was tested.

That afternoon, it rained heavily. At 3 p.m., I could see heavy rain streaming and rippling in the wind out of the window in the cubicle behind me, where I sit at work. Visibility had reduced. A couple of colleagues and I spent a few minutes discussing how heavy the rain was. "It is good that it has rained now. When we leave, there will be no rain, hopefully", we discussed among ourselves. If only we knew what was to befall us !

I had a call that ended several minutes past 6 p.m. So, I decided to take the 6:30 p.m. bus. Usually, this meant that I would be home by 8:20 p.m. A few minutes before I left, a friend informed me that her regular bus had not yet arrived, due to the traffic. That was an indication of things to come ! I took my backpack and set off towards the bus stop. It was 6:15 p.m. when I neared the stop. I found a co-passenger of the 6 p.m. bus, who waved and slowed me down. "The 6 p.m. bus has not come", he told me simply. For an instant, I was relieved. This bus took a shorter route to my home, compared to the 6:30 p.m. bus. I might reach earlier, I felt ! Then, the implication of what he had said hit me. "What happened?", I asked. "All the buses are stuck due to the traffic. Even the 5:30 p.m. bus is in the campus somewhere.", he explained.

That made me suspect that I was in for a long wait. "It looks like we will reach only by 9 p.m. !", I remarked to him ! "You are optimistic ! We will not reach home before by 10 p.m.", he replied. Another co-passenger from the 6 p.m. bus also joined us by this time. "I hear that there is a lot of water logging in Veerannapalya", he informed. Another man said : "I was waiting for the 5:30 p.m. bus but could not get it. I wanted to reach home early !". We started talking and I discovered that this gentleman worked in the same company as I.

At 6:35 p.m., all of us boarded our 6:30 p.m. bus, which was one of the few buses that turned up. The transport co-ordinator informed people that no other buses would be coming soon headed towards our location. So, all those who were waiting for the bus, whether it was 5:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. or 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. were exhorted by him to get in to this bus only. As expected, the 40 seater bus was filled up soon. We found people sitting on the gangway.

I tried to call my wife to inform her that I would be late. It appears that due to the number of users in the campus, the network is extremely poor. Despite making five attempts, my call simply would not go through. I sent her an SMS instead. Our bus began to move.

The key word here is : "began". It began, but it would not progress at all ! In 10 minutes, we must have advanced 100m or so. "Going by this speed, even 10 p.m. looks optimistic !", I mused ! The entire campus was full of vehicles headed outwards, mostly. I was to learn that traffic from Manyata had been blocked to enable a free flow from Hebbal and beyond. The rain in the afternoon had caused water-logging which had slowed traffic at Gorugantepalya leading to cascading congestion on the Ring Road. It appears that clearing this had been given top priority. Further, since the Tech. Park has only two major gates, it proved grossly inadequate to handle a massive exodus of people leaving to escape the rain.

At 6:45 p.m., I had effectively moved 100m in 10 minutes. At 6:50 p.m., I had moved 125m. At 7:00 p.m., I had moved 200m, at 7:05 p.m. also, I had moved 200m and at 7:10 p.m. too, I had effectively moved 200m. No, there is no mistake in my typing: the bus (and the motorcycle adjoining the bus and the sedan by its side !) were all stationary. They would remain immobile for more than an hour, additionally !

The conversations and comments started in the bus at around this time. "The 5:30 p.m. bus is also in the complex, but it is too crowded.", remarked a man. Some of the commuters were standing. After waiting for several minutes and finding the bus unmoving, one of them looked outside the window and said : "It looks like the other buses are coming ! Let us get into that !" The influx of people into the bus changed into a smaller outflux ! The man sitting next to me called out to his friend and said : "The next bus will leave only an hour later. You stay here !" The friend was torn in two: on one hand, the group that he had come with was leaving the bus to catch the next one. Probably, the group would get seats ! On the other hand, there was his friend telling him that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush ! I He decided to stay back, sitting on the gangway.

The messaging apps on the smartphones became an important means of communication, for those smartphones where the mobile networks were available ! "The 5:30 p.m. bus is still at the gate !", announced one man, looking up from his smartphone screen. "The service road is completely jammed !", remarked another. Another man joked : "We should ask where we are going to stop for dinner !"

As the interminable wait continued, all of us settled in. I opened up the e-Reader app on my smartphone and used the immobile bus to read. Amidst the rising frustration, I saw one man offer his seat to another man, who had been standing. The good part was that both of them got seats after the group of people moved out to catch the later bus. Others tuned into music on their smartphones.

The bus inched forward bit by bit. Finally, at around 8:30 p.m., our bus crossed the gate and entered the service road. There was waiting in the service road also ! Luckily, the progress was relatively faster there. Our bus moved slowly and eventually took the U-turn under the flyover near Thanisandra. Traffic was relatively high, but the bus kept moving. Compared to the waiting (no movement !!), slow movement was better ! We reached Veerannapalya where I looked out for the water logging. I did not find anything extraordinary. As I was to see on a social messaging app on the next day, there indeed had been a lot of water logging at both Veerannapalya and Hebbal, which led to the traffic congestion.

The second extraordinary event that evening was that our bus cleared the Chalukya signal, the K. R. Circle signal, the Corporation signal and the Town Hall signal all in one stretch. I could not believe it when our bus sped through all of these signals ! Somewhere in the heavens, it seemed to me that a merciful God had said : "I can give you pain - and I can give you a pleasant surprise !" I reached home that night close to 10 p.m. - nearly 3.5 hours after I had sat in the bus ! A trip that should have taken 110 minutes typically had taken around 220 minutes, double the usual time.

The next day, the conversations in the bus and at work mostly revolved around the time taken to reach home. The worst of it was a colleague who reached home close to 12 a.m. on the next day ! Everybody spoke of waiting, though the duration ranged from 60 minutes to 120 minutes. It seemed that quite a few people chose to work from home that day, taking their lessons from the experience of the previous day. In my morning commute, I heard at least two people in the bus remark that they had opted for half-days to avoid the traffic rush. Others spoke of how they caught the metro instead of taking their regular routes.

My friend said that he took more than 90 minutes on his motorcycle for a 6 k.m. drive on 05-Oct. He walks 4 k.m. in one hour during his morning walk. If he had known, he could have walked home on 05-Oct ! Come to think of it, I suppose that I could have done so too, though that would have been a severe test of my fitness and stamina ! https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.in/2012/06/end-and-new-beginning.html?m=1 describes an occasion when I had walked 8.8 k.m. on a historic day for me.

The weather was sunny on Friday morning, but in the evening, it rained. All of us dreaded a repeat of the previous evening. The roads and the traffic were bad on Friday, but not as bad as Thursday. The 6 p.m. bus left the Tech. Park by 6:30 p.m. Normally, we would have said that we faced a tremendous delay, but after Thursday's experience, we were all better prepared.

I have these lessons to conclude this blog post: 1.) Go to the loo before leaving your workplace, particularly if you work more than 12 k.m. away ! One can never tell how long the journey will take, given the traffic, the rains and road situation in Bengaluru ! 2.) A crisis helps in fostering relationships ! I am slow to interact with people. The day after the long bus journey, I spoke to the people in the bus, discussing the journey. All of us are slightly more free with each other now. 3.) I mentally salute the man who offered his seat to another man, out of courtesy. My respect for him has increased a lot. He displayed grace under fire. I wish him all the best in his life. 4.) In the many years of travel, I have always stopped either at the Chalukya signal or at K. R. Road or at the signal at the Corporation or at the Town Hall signal. The probability of getting a green signal at all four signals in one stretch must be extremely low. Yet, on the very day that it took me two hours to leave my complex, I did indeed zoom through all of these four signals ! This is an important lesson here : no matter how dark the clouds, do see and cherish the silver lining !