Random Rant: The trials and tribulations of a BMTC commuter

NB: I write this with the collective frustration of not days, not months, but proper integer years. Therefore, pardon me if the satire is a bit too much. I am only human!

Today was one of those days where my journey was excruciatingly painful. I was initially planning on narrating that verbatim,but hey,who wants to hear me whining? Presumably no one, and therefore, I will choose a rather roundabout and hopefully humorous route of getting my point(and my frustration) across.:P

Have you ever travelled by BMTC, Dear Reader? If not,consider this your formal initiation, and at that, by a veteran in the field. Let's get you started on a few basics first!

Heard of Murphy? Back in the times when I was a pessimist, I used to treat his laws as my holy commandments. I suggest that you treat them the same way, at least for the period of your commute.Here we go:

• When you are waiting for a particular bus,you will see every other bus except that one.
• If you decide to travel to a different place one day, you will see the bus you used to wait for everyday go past you a dozen times,gloriously empty; while the one you re currently waiting for never turns up.
• The one time you see the bus you are waiting for empty,the driver will decide to drive off without stopping for you.
• If your bus stop is in the vicinity of a school/college, all students of said college will be let out at precisely the time you come to the stop.
• Everyone at a crowded bus stop is definitely waiting for the same bus you are.
• Once you board a crowded bus, you will undoubtedly see behind you an empty counterpart going to the same place you are.
• When you are standing in a bus, rest assured that any person(s) getting down will be farthest from your present position and that their seats will immediately be filled,never by you.
• The conductor will only ask for to see your pass when you are standing uncomfortably,crushed between a mass of people and without any stable handholds whatsoever.
• Precisely at the moment you reach for your pass and let go of any handholds you may/may not have had, the driver will decide to apply a sudden brake. If at all anyone falls/hurts themselves,it has to be you.
• Traffic will only manifest itself in the very direction and lane you are headed in. If your bus takes the main road,the service road and the opposite lane will seem congestion free while traffic on your lane inches forward slower than an ailing centipede.
• If any bus breaks down on a rainy night,it is bound to be yours.
• If you come standing all the way on your journey, it is guaranteed that everyone will get down one stop before your destination.

I could easily give you a dozen more of these, but you're new and I don't want to frighten you all too much this early in the game. There's still hope left for you, I shall tell you precisely what to do.

Read what follows carefully.

Let's assume that you are standing at the bus stop and you see the bus you're waiting coming from a distance. Tell me,what do you do? If you said stay where you are and wait for the bus to come to a standstill, you are absolutely wrong. This is the crucial step that determines the rest of your journey;you can't afford to be so cavalier and nonchalant about it. Here's what you do: Look at the driver and observe the speed at which he is driving. Also take in the traffic around the bus. If you have really good eyesight/extra sensory perception, you could even try to look at the driver and read his mind. All these are key factors in determining the exact position the bus is going to stop at.Having deduced this position accurately with the permissible error of a few microns,you should now try and stand at that very spot. This is the only way for you to get into the bus and possibly get an empty seat.

That didn't work out all too well,you say? The driver decided to stop a 100m away from the bus stop so that he could entertain himself by watching who could sprint the fastest? And the crowd decided to take him up on that and pushed and stomped on each other in the meantime? How sad!But in all honesty,it is your fault. You should have done as I said and predicted the exact stop position. Never mind. Moving on.

Having gotten in now, you should look for the ideal spot to stand.(Obviously,you did not get a place to sit,I trust Murphy on that.) You should choose a place such that the following conditions are satisfied: The conductor can move in and around the bus without bumping into you or trampling on your feet. People who are getting in and out of the bus are able to pass by without being hindered by you. Your handbag/backpack should not come in the way of aforementioned people. You should also recall everything you've studied in high school physics---all that stuff about Newton's laws of motion and moment of inertia. Having done so, you should apply said laws of physics and analyse where you can stand without being subject to injury every time the brake is applied. Your final decision is formed by calculating the weighted average of all these factors. Why are you looking at me like a deer caught in headlights? Whip out that phone of yours, and start calculating.

You are standing wedged amidst a dozen people? You feel like you're being thrown about between one pole and the other? People around are cursing you and your backpack for being so audacious as to actually occupy space? Your feet are sore from being trampled upon? Sigh. Why can't you just do as I say? One last try. It's this or you're doomed.

Standing where you are now, there's only one thing you can do. Look around you, at all the people who are sitting. Watched/read Sherlock? Remember that thing where he tries to profile his fellow passengers on the local train? You're going to be doing that--time to bring out the Sherlock in you and play detective. Observe and deduce. Everything is a clue.Notice who the people are talking to, what they're wearing, how they fidget around in their places. You cannot afford to miss anything. You should have by now deduced their occupation without a doubt. Having done so, you should correlate that with the geographical location that is the next stop. Where is this person most likely to get down at? Everything you see should be fed in as data to an algorithm based on deep learning. This algorithm will take into account things like the curve of the passenger's eyebrow and infer from that his/her destination.("From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."--ACD)

Scratching your forehead in befuddlement? Well, let me give you a simple use case. A student is very obvious to deduce. They have their ID cards and you know where their school/college is. Even if the person next to you is a blank slate that you can deduce nothing from, there are always obvious signs that they're going to get down. The removal of the earphones in some cases, the smoothing of their hair and clothes in almost all. You should watch out for these signs like a hawk. The moment you notice them, you should pounce silently and swiftly like aforementioned hawk on the prey that is your seat.

You're still standing, I see? You were polite enough to let someone else sit? Or couldn't you figure out the deep learning algo? You're not Sherlock, you say? Everything I've said was impossible to do, unless you were a robot that had a supercomputer for a brain? Or even if it were that, you'd have to be a rude,obnoxious,insufferable and inhuman robot?

Well,kudos to you. That's the answer. None of this is possible, if you're a sane human being. What are you supposed to do,you ask me? What the rest of us do. Live in denial. Plug those earphones in. Play the songs you love best. Lose yourself in an imaginary world. Your journey of a thousand buses begins thus. Happy commuting!:P

Seriously though, if you can survive this, you can survive anything in the world. So consider it your boot camp.:D

                                                  What you expect                                What you get:P

P.S:One of these days, I'm going to lose it.Maybe this will drive me enough over the edge and I'll start using that Driver's License I own as something other than ID proof. :)