Avik's Story

  London is a collage - patched and stitched with pallets of colours, shreds of cultures and bits of languages. And a typical London double decker bus is the mirror of it. Following Taniya's transfer, I skipped driving to the office. This was mainly to save money from exorbitant parking fees and partly to save myself from city traffic. But if you always fancy for a closer-to-heart reason, then it is just because I get two hours to read - solid, without any distraction. But sometimes you can’t help cheating with reason and listen to heart, you can’t help but listen, watch and feel all the people - the passengers - they embark the bus, search for their seats, and find ways to kill the journey time. Tell you what, it is something I always cherish for, just like the thousands of moments formed and dissipated while I used to travel in Delhi Metro, and how some of those moments were powerful enough to be fossilised! The tiny bus stop of Beulah Spa reminds me of me. Mostly. It remains ...

I take metro for three stations and then walk 250 busy meters on a crowded road to reach to the bus stop full of all kind of vehicles; then take a bus, which takes approximate 10 minutes to reach my destination – my office. Not far, comparing to my previous one, but much dramatic. I go through three most used conveyance modes in Delhi every morning, and then every evening. Metro, bus and foot. Not a single day is passed without an interesting drama, participated by people, mostly strangers. Metro dramas are little sophisticated, upper-middle-class-wise. I have watched them and experienced them for whole two years, so I am quite used to those. A sarcastic comment wrapped with English words, or short lasted heated argument, which starts with a full fighting potential and ends with a fart, or a getting down moment, where someone is pissed off by a push or something. That doesn’t interest me at all.   On the contrary, my walking on the densely crowded section of roa...