Home sweet home

Hi all …I am back home (where I am in my elements) and it feels great. It has been just about a month away from here but I started feeling terribly home sick already. So this three day weekend was a godsend for me. Long live Republic day...he he…

The journey home wasn’t a pleasant one and that is what I wish to write about in this post. I was travelling in a SETC bus that was plying from Bangalore to Trichy. The bus arrived late at the pick up point, typical of any government bus. (Though we anticipated such a possibility, we arrived at the spot way before the pick up time).

Everything was on course for the next two hours. After dumping my luggage, mostly consisting of unwashed clothes…, into the luggage compartment and anywhere else where I could I find space, I broke into a random chat with my eternal friend Balaji. Before we knew it, both of us had dozed off. As if this irked Miss Bad Luck (who has the habit of following me everywhere and interfering in whatever I do), I was given rude wake up call. The bus started jumping every second or so and this seemed to be happening only on the rear side of the bus.

The driver brought the bus to a halt and by then a significant number of co passengers had been jolted from their sleep. Balaji, always being the curious one, got down from the bus. Being lazy and unwilling to get out of the comfort zone, I voluntarily suppressed my curiosity and went back to sleep. The next time I woke up, the bus was moving or at least trying to.

The jerk, unfortunately, had not gone away and this time the whole bus was awake and the few who knew what had happened were enlightening the ignorant rest. There had been an accident and the bus driver had not seen the stones used to demarcate the accident site and drove straight into it. Though he managed to evade most of the stones, one stone had got stuck in between the rear tyres.

From then on there was one trick in the book the conductor and the driver failed to attempt. But all their efforts were in vain as the stone refused to budge even an inch. The option of pushing on wasn’t on the cards too as the stone simply went in further and threatened to tear the tyres. What puzzled everyone was why didn’t they try to loosen the tyres. Upon enquiry, we came to know that the bus neither had a lever nor a spare tyre. Hence the reluctance to push on or to loosen the tyres.
After an hour of frantic searching, we finally managed to convince one of the many “24 hour” mechanic shops to help us. The conductor got into action in a flash and started loosening the tyres, with the help of the driver. The fateful stone was finally pried out and we were on the move in a few minutes.

The stone had set us back by more than two hours and it left all of us irritated to say the least. What was rather shocking was why didn’t the bus have a set of levers to tackle such an eventuality and what happened to set of mandatory tyres that were supposed to have been kept somewhere in the bus. I don’t intend to pursue this matter, for the obvious reasons, hope this is first and the last time I have to experience something like this.