18 December 2014

TRANSPORT TO HELL



Everybody has their nightmare. Mine is taking the public transport in Goa. I dread those steps I take towards the already crowded bus preparing to hold my breath for a long time. Goa’s public transport system offers you the unique experience of how sardines feel when they are packed in a tin. It doesn’t help that some of the sardines have gone bad (if you know what I mean).

Hanging on to dear life I watched incredulously as the conductor tried to fit a family of five inside the already full bus. Oh no! He spied a tiny space left for a child to breath and he assured the family they would fit without any complication. Unmindful of the din the other travelers were making he managed to squeeze five of them and himself in the tiny space while the poor child was squashed against the window. Congratulations to the conductor but how the bus managed to move will always remain a mystery to me. To top it off there stood the “11 standing” sign, clear as day as if to mock me. Another thing the conductors are experts at is rounding off! If the bus fare is eight rupees they round it off to ten if it’s eighteen they round it off to twenty and so on. God forbid the person who asks to return the change!

After all this ranting I do not get off such buses. I take it twice a day and I am a silent sufferer to the squeezing, shoving, pushing and suffocation. And why is that you may wonder? Me, like the others have no option but to stick it out as the conditions are the same for most of the other buses. The numerous potholes and the narrow width of the road do not do any wonders for our stability and sometimes our sanity. The authorities seemed to have developed a blind eye towards this blatant flouting of rules and do nothing about this. The entire concept of road safety is a farce here with little or no concern for the rules and regulations. Just having a road safety week celebrated once a year is not really of much help because it is not something to be practiced or publicized for a week.  A solution needs to include both the public authorities and the people themselves.  Widening of roads, imposing strict sanctions against overcrowding of buses, running the buses on schedule etc would go a long way in solving this problem.

Next time, think twice about entering an already overcrowded bus or if you can point it out to the concerned authority and ensure an action is taken. Public transport is supposed to make the lives of people easier not become a death trap travelling to hell.

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