India (Madurai): How Many Indians Can You Fit in a Bus?

This'll be a quick post because the mosquitoes in this internet cafe are tearing up my feet right now. You know, as I was leaving my room I thought to myself, "maybe I should bring my repellant...naaaaaah." Smart. Really smart.

So back to the story. Upon reaching Ernakulum, I caught a moto over to the bus terminal and purchased a ticket for a seat on the overnight "superfast" bus service to Madurai. I had been warned by Ananda's sister to specifically request a seat on the bus lest I wind up standing for the ride, so I did so, but felt a bit unsure as to the necessity of such a request. Surely, for an overnight busride of 10 hours, everyone's gonna have a seat, right? Indian people couldn't possibly be that hardcore, right?

I get onto the bus and lo and behold, there are actually a number of open seats. Nobody is sitting in the seat next to me so I spread out comfortably between the two seats (a single seat actually being too narrow in the firstplace to accomodate even the width of my shoulders) and wait for the bus to take off at 7:45.

At 7:44 and 59 seconds, a hoarde of additional passengers materialize out of nowhere and crowd onto the bus. The empty seats are quickly filled and a large sweaty man who smells like he's been sweating for a while seats himself next to me. In order for both of us to fit, his legs are part way out in the aisle, I'm sitting with my shoulders hunched inwards. People continue to board and there are now people standing in the aisle.

"You've gotta be kidding me," I think, looking up at the poor souls without seats. The bus rumbles to life and off we go beeping and honking into the chaotic maelstrom of the city traffic. We drive along for about 5 minutes before we stop at an intersection - to allow more passengers to board!!!

"Holy sh--," I mumble to myself as we speed off, the aisle now jammed full of people.

Unbelievably, we continue along for only a few more minutes before we stop yet again to pick up passengers. And then again. And again. The aisle of the bus is now completely filled with men and I am feeling very thankful for my seat indeed. And at the same time, a little bit guilty. I thought Tokyo rush hour was bad, but seeing this, I now realize how comfortable that rush hour is. At least in Tokyo, there is air conditioning, the ride is reasonably smooth (no potholes on the railway) and it only lasts at max an hour or two. This is ten frickin' hours. At this point, I'm thinking to myself Indian people have got to be the most hard-core bad mutha's on the face of the planet. Not a single complaint, not a single groan. Just all these men standing crammed into the aisle of this bus as it races through the night and out into the countryside. All of them sweaty, stinky and stoic.

An hour or so of this later, we reach a stop (where, I know not) and I am relieved to watch a number of the passengers disembark. More get on to replace some, but not all. This unloading and loading of passengers happens again a few times through the night and in the end (after about 3 hours or so) nobody is standing in the aisle.

As we hurtle through the darkness of the night, passing through the outskirts of Ernakulum and then other towns, I see huge homes that in the darkness for some reason remind of large beautiful homes in New England. I can almost smell the crisp autumn air of October in Massachussetts and I find myself longing desperately to be back in the US. I wonder also who lives in these big homes...and what kinds of lives they lead.

Somewhere a bit before 5am, we finally pull into the bus station on the outskirts of Madurai. It is still dark so I decide to wait until the sunrise before making a move. I have slept very little through the night, but to keep me company, I have a swarm of moto drivers around me for the next couple of hours badgering me to let one of them take me into town.