Personally, I do not have anything against buses, just that I had sworn during my college days that once I start earning I will never let myself submit to those tortures one usually experiences in public transports.
Times change, as always, I finished college - interestingly spending most of the time bunking classes and fairing averagely(well, do not think was a dullard, I used to be the first benchers in high school: wonder why I was made to sit in the first benches – maybe because I was a little shorter than others or the teacher hated me so much that she wanted me in her peripheral vision all the time, .), and yeah started working too.
After many years, I experienced the same 9 o’clock rush-hour hustle-bustle and jostle in one of our
’Simplified’ *airlines. I believe, if my memory serves me right, I was traveling to Delhi, rather inspired by our airlines "discount offer" where one could get a ticket as cheap as 1/-.
Excited that I could fly at so less a rate, tried booking my ticket well in advance, finding only to my dismay that I could get only 1 ticket after long hours of sweating out and making BSNL wealthy: I gave up and took that one ticket and ended up paying some close to 2000/- or so(Beware: All the figures mentioned here do not bear any resemblance to actual ones:-) as already stated my memory is still in a confused state about this whole affair).
I have to mention when my taxi dropped me at my destination, I was glaring suspiciously at the driver wondering if he brought me off to Majestic or Market. For all those non-Bangaloreans, these are some reputed places in Bangalore where you will bless yourself if you find a breath to breathe and thank those swarms of souls for saving your energy and literally pushing you into the river of humanity. No, thank God, I was in the airport - I could see our Kingfisher airhostess with their really long skirts and makeup-less faces and of course a couple of handsome pilots.
Finally after going through all the holy rituals of acquiring a boarding pass, check-in counters, etc., I was standing in queue to get into our economical(hmm. what is the synonym for that? cheap) airline. It shocked me to see all my co-passengers were jostling one another to get into the bus, ah, sorry, kya hain, ya, the plane. With all the calm and resignation I could muster, I got in last only to discover that there is no concept of seat numbers, hence all the commotion. At this point, I should say that our flight attendants were very pleasing and noble indeed trying to sell some water and peanuts to us.
I have this weird habit, other than my tricky memory and of course veering off to unrelated topics, of trying to deduce accents of the flight announcers, especially the oriental ones, but have to say no one can beat our very own’Big Bazaar’ which provides unlimited family entertainment with their puzzling accented announcements of "Deeeeer Caastomers." and queues.
I was yanked back to reality several times during my journey only to frantically count the agonizing seconds and minutes.
Only after several days my sister realized that I could actually ‘hear’ her and that I was really not deaf.
Suddenly, I was brought back to reality by the announcer’s voice looming large: Krupiya Dhyaan Dhe, Air Deccan is sorry to announce the delay of their flight .blah, blah, blah due to technical reasons for another 2 hours and sorry for the inconvenience caused and will surely wake us up if at all the plane gets a landing space after they have paid their landing fees.