Travelling in a CTU Bus

CAUTION: People who are yet to travel in a CTU bus may not relate to it!

Chandigarh is known for being a well organized and planned city. However, it has its own flaws. Major problem faced by its citizens is traffic congestion. To tackle it, Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) has introduced long low floor buses to carry maximum passengers. And I mean this word ‘maximum’ literally. Administrators need to travel in CTU Bus for one day to get a reality check.

         

This is how it looks like

As a regular college-going person, I am well acquainted with the conditions of these buses. While these buses may look beautiful to outsiders, feelings of the travelers are completely different. No matter how good your day has started, you will be annoyed as soon as you find that your bus is late than the scheduled time (Late arrival of bus has now been considered ‘usual’). This thing, sometimes, prove out to be good when you are late and still able to board the same bus.

Then there is another challenge in the face of boarding the bus itself. With the opening of automatic doors of the bus, you find that the bus is already full to its capacity and you automatically utter, “What? Is this the bus I need to go by?” A sense of achievement passes within you when you, miraculously, manage to enter the bus. One can easily avoid taking a ticket (if your moral values allow you to). If you are carrying some bag or luggage with you then the whole problem doubles up. You will have to put constant efforts to keep your bag to yourself otherwise it will be dragged by the people.

Once, a tiff took place between the conductor and a driver regarding whether to allow people enter from first gate or not. And the driver apologized to the annoyed conductor in the typical Haryanvi Accent “Maaf kar do agge se na chadhayunga” (Sorry, I won’t let people enter from first gate onwards)”. Everyone feels irritated due to overcrowding, leave alone driver and the conductor.

To sum up all, let me exemplify this irrelevant incident. My dad, somehow, knows the number of each and every bus with their respective routes. So, whenever any of us asks him to drop us here or there, he would suggest number of the concerned bus. One day he decided to go by bus as his own vehicle was gone for service. After 10 minutes he came back saying “I’ve been standing there for 10 (long) minutes and the bus did not come.” We all ended up laughing. It is a routine struggle in itself to travel in a CTU bus.

While writing it all, this dialogue from the movie ‘Jab We Met’ was striking my mind time and again “Khud bheed ka hissa hain aur problem bhi khud hi ko hai” (We ourselves are the part of this crowd and we are having problem).