As a child, everyone has dreamed of taking up professions as varied as the items on the menu of Hotel Ram Ashray... fireman, astronaut, policeman, rock-star, teacher, painter, pani-puri wallah... A particular fantasy of mine has been to be a bus conductor.
Today, Life, draped in all its glorious quirkiness, allowed me to spend ninety minutes as a pseudo-bus-conductor. In the sense that I only travelled two continuous journeys in the same bus, back and forth. Now I'm not exactly thrilled with the whole concept as today's experiences made me realize how drearily boring it is to ride the same bus even twice back to back, leave aside every hour of the day…
The circumstances were when I left home for college rather reluctantly, after having realized that last night, when we were all floating away to Dreamland, honourable Mr. Raj Thackeray was made to float away to prison. Now, no Mumbaikar is a stranger to the fact that this spells trouble for him/her.
After several frantic phone calls to what seemed like nearly half my classmates, I'd decided to put such petty (phrwbf) nonsense behind me and get my backside in college in time for the much-hyped Math class test and EEE viva. Hell, I can't even decide which subject I hate more… Math and I have been enemies since times immemorial and EEE… A friend once observed that the more E's in the abbreviation of a subject, the worse it turns out for the students. Small wonder then that all our subjects are christened Engineering Chemistry, Engineering Mechanics, Engineering something, just to make sure there's an E in it. A smaller wonder that this nightmare of a subject is called EEE (Triple E), even though the name of the subject happens to be Electrical Machines (Yes, fellow Mechies, I'm willing to bet on that!).
So there's your noble Buscador, dangling off the last step of the footboard of a TMT bus to Thane station, fighting to get in, when Parkinson steps in. The cell-phone rings frantically. Fat bit of luck that I managed to extricate it from the pocket of my (too-tight) jeans. Hallelujah! An SMS that talks are on to get lectures and vivas cancelled. By now, unfortunately, I'd fought my way into the bus. If I now made an attempt to push and pull and try to get off after having done the exact same things about a second ago to get on, my fellow passengers would club my head off. So I was forced to wait it out till the end of the journey. Then after having duly toppled out of the bus, I ran a ways to catch the very same bus AGAIN a few yards down to get back home. And thus I ended up travelling in the same bus on the same route back in a span of ninety minutes, giving company to the conductor masterji.
El Buscador is now armed with the experience of how it feels to be a bus-conductor. The round trip was so supremely boring and sapping that I now swear that I do not EVER want to become a bus conductor. Hehehe.
Incidentally, all this trouble… I wonder if young Mr. Santino Corleone of Aamchi Mumbai is aware of the experiences that people on the streets of Mumbai have faced thanks to his selectiveness in choosing supporters. It's true that young politicians need a flame within themselves to be able to bring about change. In Santino's case, the flame to prove himself as the true heir threatens to engulf the very mass it aims to protect… a farce in politics is what I'd call it.
One can rant no end about how much inconvenience has been doled out to Mumbaikars following this surreptitious arrest. However, I must admit, carrying out such a sensitive operation so late that it's almost morning, shows a display of the bureaucracy's concern for causing minimal inconvenience to the average Mumbaikar (arising out of surprise and unpreparedness).
Putting behind all the farcical nonsense that happened today, one is led to contemplate the remedies for such blight. El Buscador is on a quest again.
As always, it is apparent that there is but one way to lift off the shroud of despair from Mumbai's landscape. It is the one cure for all maladies. One size fits all, it's true.
One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them.
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
(just thought that'd sound good here)
The one ring is the talisman of Education. Not learning. Education. Not a BTech or PhD. The simple scientific way to live life, with your brain turned on and not lying to rot in your knees. In the words of Gregory David Roberts, the way that facilitates the world to move towards its ultimate goal. In the words of a dear professor, the way to minimize entropy content in the Universe. In Paulo Coelho's words, the way to the Soul of the Universe.
Stop living ignorant lives. You may be about as qualified as a doorknob, but you may be more educated than Salman Rushdie (just a metaphor, don't try this at home without my supervision).
Presenting the key to an ordered world. Education. It's time we EDUCATE oursleves.
