KARACHI: I had heard a lot about the Peoples Bus Service project initiated by the Sindh government last year. Common folk call it Red Bus. Reports published in newspapers and word of mouth showered praise on the service meant to provide an inexpensive, comfortable commuting facility to the always time-pressed Karachiites. To make the claim sound truthful, they said it had a lot of room for passengers and was air-conditioned.
Recently, I had the opportunity to take a Red Bus from the Karachi Press Club Roundabout to reach Drigh Road from where I was either to walk or catch another mode of transportation to reach Gulistan-i-Jauhar. Here’s my experience: yes, it is spacious and air-conditioned. But…
To begin with, since it was a Saturday and the distance was pretty long, I was expecting a few vacant seats. My expectation was way off the mark. The bus was crammed with people. The bigger latter half of the vehicle was packed with men and boys; and the relatively smaller former half, which has two sections — one for the handicapped and the second, near the driver’s seat, for women — had women and girls standing (and sitting) cheek by jowl. The area I barely found some space to stand in, tightly holding the handrail, was for the person with disabilities. I guess I was in the right spot.
In the two-seater in front of me sat an old man, perhaps a septuagenarian, and next to him was a teenager, barely 15 or 16 years old who was sitting in an angular position in order to protect what looked like pieces of marble tiles underneath his seat. No one felt concerned to ask him why he was in that section, nor was he bothered to give up his seat to a woman or an elderly man.
Perhaps even that’s not a moot point. The thing that I noticed, and it could be because I had expected way too much from my fellow brethren and the authorities concerned, was that the staff was willing to pack the vehicle — which was stopping at stations at the drop of a hat — with as many passengers as possible. There came a point when the conductor, after listening to instructions of the driver to take an old woman to a place in the back where she could stand, the conductor told him he couldn’t because the bus was bursting at the seams.
It all took me back to my college days (read: salad days) when I used to travel by public transport — still do, but not by bus — and have had the experience of getting pushed around, nudged and even sitting peacefully listening to Bollywood songs or audio clips of jokes from Umar Sharif’s plays on W11, 5C, 4K, etc. This time around, with reference to the Red Bus, the situation was no different, except, it’s big and air-conditioned.
Come to think of it, if there’s room for 10 people in a room and suddenly it has 30 in it, the poor air-conditioner at some point will cease being cool. Here ‘cool’ is used in the modern, hip sense of the word.
Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2023
