Ramachandra GG, custodian of tickets on one of the oldest bus routes in town, is also a composer of couplets, finds Jaideep Sen.
At the Jeevan Bhima Nagar bus depot, Ramachandra GG is one in an infantry of khaki-clad soldiers. A well-worn leather bag slung on one shoulder, a dangling whistle, with wads of tickets of different denominations wedged between his fingers. It would be difficult to tell him from any other bus conductor. At 47, having moved to the city from his village in Sringeri near two decades ago, he’s been riding buses for 17 years, for the most part on route 62B (JB Nagar to Magadi Road).
It’s when you walk into his bus (registration KA 01 F 2024), the one he’s been riding for seven years now, on route 7D, and look around the fairly clean interiors of this 2001-make public transport vehicle, that it may strike you – there are no stickers advertising spiritual cures, no film posters, not even graffiti on the inside. Instead, a series of strips of ruled paper, neatly ripped out from a notebook apparently, all bearing a neat, large, uniformly rounded handwritten script of Kannada passages and translations of quotes by the Buddha, Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw and John Milton, among others, line the interiors.
The 7D bus route, 22kms long (JB Nagar to Banashankari), is one of Bangalore’s oldest – the first regular buses started plying this route in 1975. On the morning shift, Ramachandra’s work day begins at 5am and ends at 2pm (evening shifts last from 2pm to 10pm). On this day, by 9.15am, the bus had already completed a round trip; on average, a shift completes two and a half such trips. At 9.20am, Ramachandra, grabbing a quick plate of idlis and a coffee, spoke of his education and kids. An SSLC (state-grade) graduate, he’s got two sons: Akash, 10, and Rakesh, 15 – both students at an English-medium school in Krishnarajapura. Ramachandra never learnt English, but he does help with the children’s studies.
The lights on the bus ceiling are notably unstained, more importantly intact, and the seats clearly demarcated – painted red for women, and green for men. A “Chandrayaan” sticker above the driver’s seat and a black-and-white sketch of the Lord Shiva titled “Meghdooth TVS” facing the front row of seats shudder as the bus starts up for its next ride, as Ramachander yells out a “riiiight” like it emanated from his belly, and sounds more like an over-emphasised pronunciation of the surname of Hollywood actress Anne Heche. A fetid marketplace odour blows in through the windows. About 30 passengers take their seats, as the bus haltingly picks up more, and the first complete dead halt happens about ten minutes into the ride, at the Chinmaya Mission Hospital junction. The 7.30am trip gets a lot more packed, says Ramachandra, mostly with college students. Raghavendra S, a BSc student who regularly takes this bus to get to college, agreed. On occasion, up to a 100 people pack in – added the conductor – 45 seated, the rest standing.
Raghavendra plugged his headphones in, and settled into an MP3 playlist on his cell-phone of Papa Roach and Disturbed’s Ten Thousand Fists. Around him, heads nod to a random rhythmic sequence, the ones awake mark a customary obeisance as the bus rumbles past edge-of-the-road temples, and a few footboard travellers get the city’s polluted air whooshing over their scalps. The bobbing heads work to a clockwork precision, coming alive a moment before the stop they’re looking to disembark at, and Ramachandra works his routine, handing out tickets, checking passes, jangling his bag of coins, and neatly folding currency notes between his fingers.
At 10am, the bus comes to a standstill outside Ulsoor police station, stuck in a sea of traffic, with the stench of a public urinal wafting in. At 10.30am, at Dairy Circle, the bus nearly empties out as it turns onto Hosur Road, past the hospitals Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences. The conductor loosens up on this final stretch before a turnaround at Banashankari, and tallies his collections – Rs 1,500; a full shift turns in between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000, he said. The query about the pasted slips of paper on the walls finally gets a meek answer.
After his shift, the conductor gets home, has a meal, leafs through the Kannada newspaper Prajavani, and settles down with a book, mostly of Kuvempu’s works. On occasion, he catches a Rajkumar film or an Amitabh Bachchan re-run. And a few minutes before hitting the sack, he pens a diary that he’s maintained for several years. Someday he will put down the story of his life, said Ramachandra. Until then, he will continue to write couplets, like this one: “Illide volleya nisarga/Ide nammage swarga” (“Here’s nature at its most beautiful/This is my paradise”). Until then, he will continue to script translated quotes and paste them on scraps of paper on the walls of his bus.
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
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