Baldy's Comb: Experience #2 - The Bus Ride

Part 1 – Of Anthropology and Anthropologists

The scene…its 10 in the night…I am dead tired and waiting at the Kishangarh Bus stand for a bus to Ajmer…my salesmen Miyalaram and Hanuman are standing beside me…

Me:’yaar melaraam (that’s what everyone calls him…regardless of what his actual name is)…ye Kishangarh se Ajmer ki busses ke do alag rate kyun hote hain…koi Rs14 main le jaati hai toh koi Rs17 main?’

Miyalaraam:’who sirji jo Ajmer depot ki local gadi hai…jo sirf Ajmer-Kishangarh chalti hai…who 14 leti hai…but jo Jaipur depot ki gadi hai…who Rs.17 leti hai’

At this point you should know that Kishangarh falls on route from Jaipur to Ajmer…you should also know that I didn’t know it then…so I just nodded my head with my special, erudite – ‘Ahhh…I see I see’ look on my face…and Miyalaraam bought it!! Another potential threat to my vanity avoided…haha!!

So a bus arrives…I wave goodbye to my salesmen…with the usual joke about how I will stay up all night devising ways to increase their targets and make their lives miserable (actually…somehow I didn’t think they’d appreciate the joke…so I normally kept this parting joke to myself)…and I stepped onto the bus…

The scene…I walk up into the bus…and like any normal Indian…immediately notice that at the far end of the bus…3 foreigners are seated!! Now going by my amazing track record…I will surely find a seat much before I reach the end…and this trip shall pass without event!! But the Indian mind isn’t this simple minded…esp. the Indian male’s mind. Within fractions of a second I have run a 1000 P&C’s that will lead to an interesting conversation between me and the 3 white people (ohh…am sure you’ve been wondering…so I’ll answer…2 girls and one guy) and how somehow the guy will only turnout to be a brother…or maybe just an extremely white Indian…who knows…

Well…while I was still lost, thinking about that one possible scenario where the hotter of the 2 girls had noticed the HUL sign on my bag and was now excitedly telling me how she knew all about the BLT program (you know…maybe she had a chat friend in India who was in a B-school and he told her about how awesome HUL and its BLT program were…its completely possible!!)…and how she thought that I must be really smart to have gotten into it…back in the real world…I had walked the entire length of the bus realising that no seat was available!

Ok…it is important now to understand how these 3 ‘firangs’ were seated. One girl and the guy were seated at the last seat…the one that is a long continuous seat extending from end to end. The girl was sitting at the window and the guy right beside her…she was asleep. The other girl was sitting at the window seat right in front of this girl.

Now, as luck would have it…there were just 2 seats vacant…one was beside the girl sitting alone…but she had kept her huge backpack there…and the other was bang in the middle of the last long seat…right next to the guy. With absolutely no bias towards either seat…I asked the hot girl sitting alone if I could sit next to her…

Now, as all those guys who have been in similar situations would agree…when you are about to utter the first few words to a hot angrez, you wanna make sure they come out right…that they are the perfect words…being verbose will just expose your desperateness…be too terse and you might stand embarrassed as she’ll have to ask your pardon…giving you one of those ‘what did u say u Indian guy’ looks which you so dread….be too loud and you’ll get that same look…be too low key and she won’t hear you and everyone else around will smirk…add to all this the fact that everyone else in the vicinity is looking at her…and with you making it obvious that you are gonna talk to her…they are now looking at you too…it just makes it really tough to ask whether the seat next to her is empty…

But hey…its not over yet…once you’ve tuned your vocal chords to the right decibel level…the freakin bitch called ‘options’ confronts you! Would saying ‘Can I sit here’ be the politest way to ask…or would it just seem to her as if you are quizzing her about your ability to sit at the seat! If you ask ‘Is the seat next to you empty’ – she might just say yes and turn around…without removing the backpack…what then! Then again..you can just push in and expect her to understand and remove the backpack…but she might be American for all you know…in which case she wouldn’t understand and you shall be caught in an awkward situation!

Well, to put things into perspective, all these calculations happened in just a split second… and I finally asked…’Is it ok if I sit here?’. Well…she turned and responded saying yes…which culled my biggest fear – ‘what if she didn’t know English at all!!’ But then she began her attempt at removing the huge backpack from the seat and I realised that there were atleast 2 dead bodies in it…and disturbing them in their peaceful slumber was not the kind of thing I’d want on my record…so I politely told her it was ok…and I sat down next to the white guy (told you there was no bias). The girl did try and tell me it was ok…that she will manage…but I guess deep down inside I am a true Indian boy…and so there was only so far I was gonna push my luck at saying the right words to a female foreigner in front of a bus full of prying eyes…so I chose to pass!

So the bus ride began…there was the usual awkward silence around me…where all the Indians sitting within hearing distance of the white people will stay absolutely shut…as if they are all relatives of the national security advisor and anything they utter can be a potential danger to national security…while their ears were completely tuned in to every word that the white people spoke…desperately attempting to gather bits and pieces of their conversation and make a mental map of their lives…how they were related…was she his wife or girlfriend or just friend or sister…were they English or American or from the rest of the white world (those are the only 3 classifications we are capable of making). This continued for 5 mins…until the guy (hereafter referred to as WG)broke the silence and asked –

WG (with a lot of effort to overcome his European accent):’ So you live in Ajmer’

Me:’No actually…I’m just working in Ajmer for a few weeks. So where are you guys from and what are you doing in India’ (there you go Mr. curious little Indian)

WG(heavy accent):’Ohh weee are phrom Belgiuum. We on vacashion in India’

Further probing on my part revealed that he was travelling with the girl next to him and they were not with the girl sitting in front (I know its an obvious conclusion…but she was alone!...and no…I didn’t dare ask how these 2 were related to each other)

WG:’So where do you work…whats your job?’

Me (curbing my instinct to explain about BLT and HUL to him):’I’m into sales…working for Unilever…you may not have heard of it…what about you…what do you do?’

WG:’ Well I’m an anthropologist’

Here we go with the special, erudite ‘ohh I see I see’ look again…twice in less than 15 mins!! Well in my defence…I did have a faint idea that anthropology had something to do with studying humans…but that seemed extremely vague and broad a definition for a specific field. It was only later that I realised that it was actually just that!! Btw, I narrated this incident to 3 more people…and I can bet that atleast 2 of them gave me their own version of the special, erudite ‘ohh I see I see’ look in response…while the 3^rd one just laughed a silly laugh…realised that it was a lame attempt…and asked what it meant.

Anyways, with the knowledge that WG was a researcher …that anthropology was a science that need him to research people…I confidently asked the next question that would cement the authenticity of my special, erudite look.

Me:’So is this an educational, work related trip…or is it a pure vacation’ (haha…nailed it)

WG:’Well…it is vacation…but you really can’t stop mind from looking at it with academic angle. You see people…you try and understand why they do what they do’

That’s all he needed to say…and suddenly…I was aware and conscious of every moving muscle in my body. What are my hands doing…why am I moving my feet…Is this guy making an opinion about Indians with our interaction as his data…am I a guinea pig…a lab rat…why does he have that sly smile on his face…does he know what I am thinkning…

Me:’hmmm…must be interesting…what interests me is why you chose to do research when you have a masters degree…any Indian with that degree would look for a fat paycheck!’

WG:’Well…in Belgium…higher education is very expensive…and unlike India…we don’t have too many jobs….so we go in for research’

WHAT!! Ever heard of PPP…higher education in India aint too cheap either…and whats that about India having lots of jobs…your country has an unemployment rate of 7.5…ours the figure is 10.1. Surely, given our population, the absolute number of jobs would be more…but whatever gave you the idea that per capita we have more opportunity!! I was seriously shocked at his comment!!

Me(extremely tired but still making an attempt to make him understand):’ In india…a guy with masters will look for a job…because in all probability..his folks spent half their live’s earnings…and killed almost all their own desires…to afford his/her education. The only option, thus, is to now earn and bring a larger sum of money, comforts and satisfaction back in his household. It’s not really because we have more jobs… (how could he make it sound so easy for us!!)’

WG(with a look that said ‘I’m no longer interested in your opinion’): Maybe…so what all is there to see in Ajmer’

Well, so much for being an anthropologist…but whatever…as a courteous Indian…I went on to tell him about Ajmer’s attractions. I also gathered that they were on a 5 week long trip, of which 3 days had already been spent in Jaipur…and as usual…I wondered whether I’ll ever take a month off from work and go explore some exotic foreign land. I sometimes try and imagine what feelings a trip to India would have evoked in me…had I been a westerner. There really isn’t any other country in the world that has so many misconceptions about it…so much mysticism surrounding it…so many tales…so many epics...But being Indians we’ll never get to experience that rush of travelling to the land of elephants and snake charmers. Neither will we ever be able to appreciate Indian women as much as we appreciate firangs…but that’s a separate issue.

As I was lost in this deep thought…the bus came to a halt and the sudden commotion made me realise that till now almost everyone in the bus had been extremely silent and were glued in to every word I and WG exchanged…..and they were now giving me a look that was a mixture of 3 looks in varying degree:

1) The guys were giving me the ‘ghani angrezi main chapar chapar kar riya se’ look

2) The females were giving me the ‘dikhta toh Hindustani hai par chokhi angrezi bol lewe hai’ look

3) And the uncles were giving me the’ humari bhi baat karwa do’ look

Suddenly, feeling alienated amongst my own people, I starting saying goodbyes to the WG, and the girl by his side-who had just woken up. As we lugged our stuff and started walking towards the front door…I heard a distinctly American…distinctly female voice call out from behind me..

‘Excuse me…’

I turned around - could it be her??…I had forgotten about her presence completely…

‘Could you tell me when the next bus to Pushkar is’

Ahh Miyalaraam…I finally understand why this bus costs Rs 17 and not 14…

To be continued……..