Eventful start to the day

Today morning, I decided to leave early since there was a lot of pending work in office. I got up at 8am, lazed around a bit out of habit, wished my mom on her birthday, dragged myself to the bath and finally was ready to leave at 9. Immediately after reaching the bus stop, I climbed into bus 371D. The bus was crowded, but I knew that majority of the people would disembark at the next stop near East end circle. Here is the sequence of events that occurred after that:

Stop 1 (East end circle): As people were getting down, two guys got into a fight. They were arguing in kannadda in the bus and hence I didn’t know the reason for the brawl. But the fight got physical when they got down. One tough looking guy, got down from the bus, slapped the guy who started the fight and sent him on his way. Calmly he climbed back into the bus and shouted “Right Right”, indicating the driver to move on – everything has been taken care of.
Stop 2 (Jayadeva Hospital): By now, since the crowd has decreased I got myself into a slight comfortable standing position. The bus hardly moved a few metres and came to a halt. The driver announced something and everyone started getting down. Someone told me that the gear was stuck and the bus couldn’t move any further. This meant that the entire crowd from my bus now had to somehow re-adjust in the next already crowded bus. I let two buses go by, deciding that I would drown in the sea of people it was now carrying. I finally boarded the 4th bus – 365D since the crowd was relatively less. Atleast I was able to stand comfortably now.
Stop 3 (Sagar Apollo Hospital): Even before reaching the stop, I noticed that there was another brawl in the bus. I thought to myself “What a memorable morning I am having!!!!” Again as expected it got physical. One guy in red shirt was been slapped on the back of the head. He was pushed out of the bus for a reason still unknown to me. The same tough guy who had done the slapping in Stop 1 was involved. Even he had boarded the same bus as me.
Stop 4 (Diary Circle): This is my stop and I decided to start moving back so that I could atleast reach the door by the time the stop comes. As I started to move back, the same tough guy saw me and asked me in Hindi “stop pe uttarna hain kya?” (do you wanna get down?). For some strange reason I replied in kannadda. “Havdu Havdu” is what I said. To my utter surprise, he asked the others to move out of the way and almost smoothly guided me to the door. He even started referring to me as ‘Sir’ asking to take a few steps ahead at my convenience. Finally when the stop came, I got down comfortably. Looked back and said “Thank You”. He waved back to me with a wide smile on his face.

I am not sure what made him so generous to me. It was probably the “havdu” or maybe the fact that I was dressed in proper shirt and trousers as compared to the rest of the people in the bus. Whatever it was, it felt nice. My experience of travelling to different cities had taught me that to really enjoy the city, you need to be with the locals. What happened today totally justified my thought. I am glad I have choosen the BMTC as my preferred mode of transport, over the autos, despite all its drawbacks. Though that tough guy still remains a complete stranger, I still feel I made a new friend today.

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