Hazards of public transport
My maid, who is a grandmother of four, was recently mauled in the bus for demanding the ladies’ seat.
Highly asthmatic, and with none to help her in her predicament (not even her two grown-up sons), she works as a daytime help in many houses of our colony. Her husband, like many others from her strata, fell to hooch very many years ago, leaving her without an iota of financial security, to bring up her children.
On that particular day, she had had a severe asthmatic attack and was in no shape to stand in the over-crowded bus. So she asked a youngster to get up and give her the seat.
It would have been routine had he looked the other way or simply refused to get up. Of course he did that and then proceeded to get up and push the poor woman away violently, asking her how did she dare to make that demand.
Sadly and quite unfortunately, an entire population travelling in that bus, looked the other way as my maid fell on the floor, got up and started to wheeze. She struggled to get the puff out of her saree and breathe in. She survived but no longer asks for a seat on any bus.
This is being narrated here not to merely reiterate what has been going on noticed and unnoticed for years, but is a desperate attempt to make law-enforcers sensitive to what has been happening on the Capital’s public transport system, a network they have been trying to make popular among car-owners.
Last week, Foray did a cover on how risky it is to take the public transport. Eve-teasers are omnipresent, pick-pockets not only take away your cash but also your life many a times, rowdy youth push everyone around and there is never ever any police to take care of the situation.
Incidentally, when I came to Delhi some two decades ago, my Editor asked me to take a bus ride from all the four corners of Delhi and do a full-page story on my experiences. The article was titled Risky Rides and talked of how bad the city was to bus travellers.
Twenty years hence, the buses are as crowded and I have become a car-owner, but believe me what happens now on these buses is an entire iceberg when compared to the tip of it, it was then.
There was eve-teasing, there were pick-pockets and there was rowdyism. But all this was far lesser in degree. And the bus population did protest then. Pick-pockets would then slip away or, if caught, would try and jump out. Today, they turn on you, beat you up and even kill you as it happened with one of the travellers recently who caught a pickpocket and was slashed by a knife.
If the Delhi Government, which has returned to power for the third time in running, and despite everything bad that the Capital has become, really wants to make public transport viable, it has to first make it safe.
My maid has no option but to take those risky rides. But why would a car-owner step into this mayhem — a mayhem which has already started making its presence felt on the Metro too. Large signs of ‘Beware’ are pasted all over those swank undergrounds and incidents happen everyday.
The argument here would be that cars are equally unsafe, what with commuters like Soumya Vishwanathan being shot for merely being on the road. True, but if stories were to be recounted, such incidents are at least not a daily occurrence.
One hears that the transport department is ready with hundreds of lowline buses and the Bluelines would soon be a thing of the past. One big step into a whole new, more comfortable world of commuting but if you were to be assaulted in these swankies too, the purpose would be defeated.
No use blaming the public either. When you protest on someone’s behalf, there is every possibility of being killed or thrashed. Men in uniform, and sincere ones at that, may come in handy as bus marshalls. One hopes though that they don’t team up with the goons as is the case now.
Highly asthmatic, and with none to help her in her predicament (not even her two grown-up sons), she works as a daytime help in many houses of our colony. Her husband, like many others from her strata, fell to hooch very many years ago, leaving her without an iota of financial security, to bring up her children.
On that particular day, she had had a severe asthmatic attack and was in no shape to stand in the over-crowded bus. So she asked a youngster to get up and give her the seat.
It would have been routine had he looked the other way or simply refused to get up. Of course he did that and then proceeded to get up and push the poor woman away violently, asking her how did she dare to make that demand.
Sadly and quite unfortunately, an entire population travelling in that bus, looked the other way as my maid fell on the floor, got up and started to wheeze. She struggled to get the puff out of her saree and breathe in. She survived but no longer asks for a seat on any bus.
This is being narrated here not to merely reiterate what has been going on noticed and unnoticed for years, but is a desperate attempt to make law-enforcers sensitive to what has been happening on the Capital’s public transport system, a network they have been trying to make popular among car-owners.
Last week, Foray did a cover on how risky it is to take the public transport. Eve-teasers are omnipresent, pick-pockets not only take away your cash but also your life many a times, rowdy youth push everyone around and there is never ever any police to take care of the situation.
Incidentally, when I came to Delhi some two decades ago, my Editor asked me to take a bus ride from all the four corners of Delhi and do a full-page story on my experiences. The article was titled Risky Rides and talked of how bad the city was to bus travellers.
Twenty years hence, the buses are as crowded and I have become a car-owner, but believe me what happens now on these buses is an entire iceberg when compared to the tip of it, it was then.
There was eve-teasing, there were pick-pockets and there was rowdyism. But all this was far lesser in degree. And the bus population did protest then. Pick-pockets would then slip away or, if caught, would try and jump out. Today, they turn on you, beat you up and even kill you as it happened with one of the travellers recently who caught a pickpocket and was slashed by a knife.
If the Delhi Government, which has returned to power for the third time in running, and despite everything bad that the Capital has become, really wants to make public transport viable, it has to first make it safe.
My maid has no option but to take those risky rides. But why would a car-owner step into this mayhem — a mayhem which has already started making its presence felt on the Metro too. Large signs of ‘Beware’ are pasted all over those swank undergrounds and incidents happen everyday.
The argument here would be that cars are equally unsafe, what with commuters like Soumya Vishwanathan being shot for merely being on the road. True, but if stories were to be recounted, such incidents are at least not a daily occurrence.
One hears that the transport department is ready with hundreds of lowline buses and the Bluelines would soon be a thing of the past. One big step into a whole new, more comfortable world of commuting but if you were to be assaulted in these swankies too, the purpose would be defeated.
No use blaming the public either. When you protest on someone’s behalf, there is every possibility of being killed or thrashed. Men in uniform, and sincere ones at that, may come in handy as bus marshalls. One hopes though that they don’t team up with the goons as is the case now.
Published September 6, 2009, Sunday Pioneer
http://dailypioneer.com/200541/Hazards-of-public-transport.html
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