In the crowd of hundreds and in the traffic of thousands, he is running to catch a bus to his home, i guess, at around 10 pm of the day. He finally reaches the bus and what I can see is he never tries to get in but instead is looking at different people and asking them something like psss, hsss…I can’t hear him. There comes the other bus numbered 512, he leaves it and his increased desperation is quite apparent in his increased decibels in voice…but probably the driver impelled by his duty or deafen by engine noise, cant sense his urgency and presses his feet harder on accelerator.
And a wait for another bus starts. My wait for bus also overlaps his and I see that this guy leaves about 2 more 512s before catching the last 512. But before that he gets something from a passenger alighting from the bus. I catch mine just after this and left with a ‘why’ - why this guy was not taking the earlier bus.
On my way back, one of my friends tell me that the some people ask for the daily pass from others at the end of our tour and travel on that to there destination for free. I suddenly realize the meaning of that pss,fss...its the daily pass, he was asking for and feel pity that the poor common man in city can’t even afford a bus ticket by himself to reach home after a day’s hard work .I seat brooding over the situation and think what I, or say we, put up with daily.
If we go over the city we find that each and every commodity here is costlier right from the Car to a tooth brush not to leave aside the daily necessities like food, fuel clothing, shelter and property. The much of the credit goes to the local retailers for example if we go to a grocery store for a half liter milk, we get it for a rupee costlier than MRP getting an excuse of cooling charge. We go to a petrol pump and they try each and every stunt to do us away with anything less than what we pay for. Try hiring a auto-rickshaw and they ask for a astronomical total after thinking over a lot as if they were going thru calculation of the sum thru some complex formula.
Footwear and cloths store will quote a price atleast 20% higher than there counterparts at Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Bangalore police guys have property of crores as per newspapers and still they stop people in middle of the roads to fill their pockets. The average cost of a decent meal is no where less than Rs. 50 as compared to Rs. 30 in any other Indian metropolitan.
No wonder the credit should be shared even by we the people who with no complaints allow this to continue and Bangalore remains the costliest city. And if at all we ever wake up to this we have the never ending debate on outsiders vs. Insiders .The Former being blamed by later for diluting the south Indian culture and later by former for their lackadaisical ways. And at last we have govt to blame as if it’s like holy ablutions at Ganges to wash away our non-concerns.
Rather than blaming govt if we make some effort on our side we can actually control this unfair play which we face daily and consciously choose to ignore. Till then there will be some old man standing at the bus stop waiting for the daily pass.
1 comment:
Good Observation!
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