The gangly teen that had just entered college, yet to even have his first shave in life, crossed the empty road to the other side. Even as he was walking towards the bus stand less than a hundred meters further down the road, he could see that the bus he was supposed to take was just leaving from the bus stop, having collected the few students that had assembled there. He was late by less than a minute, 45 seconds at the most. He took the bag from his shoulder and started waving his hands, perhaps a bit frantically, for the driver to stop. He had established eye contact with the driver. Yet, the driver kept going on. As the rickety bus thundered by, it stung him. Not the driver's pushing on, but the glances from the girls seated in the front. Something changed that day. No, he didn't start arriving earlier. He never plead with the driver again. Ever.
Commuting to college, if Tamil films are to be believed, is more fun or at least as fun as attending an institution itself. In most of these films, made much before air pollution was a lesser evil than today, the hero and the heroine would always take public transport. And the leading lady - right from the days of Aradhana's Ms.Tagore - would always be seated conveniently by the window to get a ringside view of the hero's amorous antics. And would, at some point before the intermission, fall for the hero. Never mind that much of his actions can be called, if you are in a particularly charitable mood, eve teasing.
Into this scheme of things strode Jeppiaar like a colossus. After having already sanitized his group of Alcatraz engineering colleges to such an extent that they started looking more like middle schools, he proceeded to grab the idea of commuting to college as it existed by its horns, turned it upside down, pummeled it with his bare hands, spat on it and spat on it again. Still not done, he then burned it down and then peed all over the ashes for good measure. All the while being cheered on rather boisterously by the parents of his students.
For a sum of Rs. 3,000 per year per student - that financed the many luxury cars that he and his family were seen riding around in and the fancy bungalow that had cropped up along OMR - he offered to scoop up the boys and girls from the bosoms of their parents every morning right into the outstretched arms of the eager faculty, standing in front of thecells classrooms eager to impart engineering knowledge. This he did by running a fleet of buses that crisscrossed the entire city and its far flung suburbs like Manali or Thirunindravur, ferrying sleepy, future engineers to and from the college's campus on OMR.
Now, the idea was not bad. Mind you, it was much easier to take a college bus rather than be at the mercy of public transport especially if you had a monster commute. But as the saying goes, the devil resides in the details. Many good ideas bite the dust because of poor execution. And sadly, this idea was no exception either. First off was the price itself: rather steep. As a marketing professional, I understand value pricing and also the pains that it can inflict in consumers. The second point that irritated me was this: at Rs 3,000, one would expect at a minimum to get a seat on the goddamned bus. This was not exactly the case. Especially for me and the others that boarded at our bus stop. Ours was the last stop on the route and on nine days out of ten, we would end up standing all the way to college or share the seat with friends. And on the return journey in the evening, we would have to race from the labs to the bus and reserve seats with the help of notebooks, textbooks, lab coats and other paraphernalia. This, we could have done on a Pallavan bus for a fraction of the cost. We had spoken to the man himself on a couple of occasions but to no avail. And finally, the separation of the boys and girls. A few seats from behind the driver's seat was the Lakshman Rekha - a length of insulated electrical cord was intimidatingly tied between two metal poles. Although there was no written warning posted, the way the cord was tied around with pliers spoke many threatening words, leaving no doubt that there would be consequences. The girls sat towards the front side and the boys to the rear. At some point in the past, a lady had crossed a forbidden line resulting in an epic. Mercifully, in the four years that I was a student, no such error in judgement happened and we collected our degrees without event.
Time now to give credit where it is due. But for the above points of inconvenience, the bus enterprise was so well run that had he decided to float a private bus business in Chennai, Jeppiaar would have driven Pallavan Transport Corp into bankruptcy in a matter of a few months. There were at least 30 buses that were all maintained really well, excepting, of course, mine - Route 43 servicing T Nagar which somehow resembled a wounded, rabid dog on a wet, rainy day. The drivers must have been ambulance/fire engine drivers in the recent past for once they got behind the wheels, drove like maniacs with the sole aim of reaching the campus by 8:00. To their credit, there were definitely no fatalities nor any serious casualties throughout the time I was there. Partly because all the burning of the rubber happened before the real peak hour started.
Commuting to college, if Tamil films are to be believed, is more fun or at least as fun as attending an institution itself. In most of these films, made much before air pollution was a lesser evil than today, the hero and the heroine would always take public transport. And the leading lady - right from the days of Aradhana's Ms.Tagore - would always be seated conveniently by the window to get a ringside view of the hero's amorous antics. And would, at some point before the intermission, fall for the hero. Never mind that much of his actions can be called, if you are in a particularly charitable mood, eve teasing.
Into this scheme of things strode Jeppiaar like a colossus. After having already sanitized his group of Alcatraz engineering colleges to such an extent that they started looking more like middle schools, he proceeded to grab the idea of commuting to college as it existed by its horns, turned it upside down, pummeled it with his bare hands, spat on it and spat on it again. Still not done, he then burned it down and then peed all over the ashes for good measure. All the while being cheered on rather boisterously by the parents of his students.
For a sum of Rs. 3,000 per year per student - that financed the many luxury cars that he and his family were seen riding around in and the fancy bungalow that had cropped up along OMR - he offered to scoop up the boys and girls from the bosoms of their parents every morning right into the outstretched arms of the eager faculty, standing in front of the
Now, the idea was not bad. Mind you, it was much easier to take a college bus rather than be at the mercy of public transport especially if you had a monster commute. But as the saying goes, the devil resides in the details. Many good ideas bite the dust because of poor execution. And sadly, this idea was no exception either. First off was the price itself: rather steep. As a marketing professional, I understand value pricing and also the pains that it can inflict in consumers. The second point that irritated me was this: at Rs 3,000, one would expect at a minimum to get a seat on the goddamned bus. This was not exactly the case. Especially for me and the others that boarded at our bus stop. Ours was the last stop on the route and on nine days out of ten, we would end up standing all the way to college or share the seat with friends. And on the return journey in the evening, we would have to race from the labs to the bus and reserve seats with the help of notebooks, textbooks, lab coats and other paraphernalia. This, we could have done on a Pallavan bus for a fraction of the cost. We had spoken to the man himself on a couple of occasions but to no avail. And finally, the separation of the boys and girls. A few seats from behind the driver's seat was the Lakshman Rekha - a length of insulated electrical cord was intimidatingly tied between two metal poles. Although there was no written warning posted, the way the cord was tied around with pliers spoke many threatening words, leaving no doubt that there would be consequences. The girls sat towards the front side and the boys to the rear. At some point in the past, a lady had crossed a forbidden line resulting in an epic. Mercifully, in the four years that I was a student, no such error in judgement happened and we collected our degrees without event.
Time now to give credit where it is due. But for the above points of inconvenience, the bus enterprise was so well run that had he decided to float a private bus business in Chennai, Jeppiaar would have driven Pallavan Transport Corp into bankruptcy in a matter of a few months. There were at least 30 buses that were all maintained really well, excepting, of course, mine - Route 43 servicing T Nagar which somehow resembled a wounded, rabid dog on a wet, rainy day. The drivers must have been ambulance/fire engine drivers in the recent past for once they got behind the wheels, drove like maniacs with the sole aim of reaching the campus by 8:00. To their credit, there were definitely no fatalities nor any serious casualties throughout the time I was there. Partly because all the burning of the rubber happened before the real peak hour started.
No comments:
Post a Comment