LADIES SPECIAL!

After about say twenty five minutes of restless wait for an autorickshaw on my way back home from office today I see a tattered Govt APSRTC bus pulling on to where I was standing with quite an unusual board. The board read ‘LADIES SPECIAL’. I never gave a second thought about the route its gonna take and just boarded what came my way with the rest of the female crowd following the suit. I comfortably seated myself on the first seat available. The lady conductor came in for the tickets. I handed over the change for my destination for which she cut me a ticket. I was glad to be able to find a seat in the bus after a long wait.

Funny!! I thought, that Hyderabad offered such special buses which ran only for women. I knew there were exhibition specials, studio specials, company specials but never knew of one Ladies Special. The bus pulled at the next stop to scoop in a lot of females the majority of which consisted of the office crowd. The bus then stopped at a crossing and here again twenty-thirty high school girls flurried in with their scrapbooks, long paper rolls and files with colored pens and pencils probably from their field trip accompanied with their teacher. Apparently everybody had to stand in with no seating at all. The bus was packed!

This reminded me of my long waits during my school days where in my home was just two stops away from the school and I would take a long one hour to reach home from the bus stop. Though a good frequency of buses always went my way, I for some weird reason would wait for this number 10 to arrive and then board the same and gladly reach home….strange affinity on cost of my time, inspite of hot summers or rainy seasons.

Lot of cackling and commotion shook me back to my present and I just turned in my head to get a look at my back and I could catch an eye on a mother feeding her baby in that crowd, some two grannies seated beside her, one yawning and the other looking ardently away from the window. I then thought this could happen only in India. So much of female energy in here. A very strong community of only we females except the poor driver. I strangely felt good looking at these women who appeared to me in all sizes, ages, colors and forms. All playing different roles being daughters, daughter in-laws, sisters, wives, mothers, grannies each to their own. It definitely felt good to be one among them. At the end of the day it never mattered from where and what we belonged to or where we came from, the only thing that was obvious was we all were juggling in to reach our destinations in one bus …in one LADIES SPECIAL!

Me

A Bus Is A Vehicle That Runs Twice As Fast When You Are After It As When You Are In It