Story of Asphalt

You know I used to have a problem travelling in buses as a kid as I felt they were too long and boring or maybe I was too autistic for my time and sitting in a place for 4 hours straight was a nightmare. But as I grew up I started to appreciate a form of silence that exists inside buses, a silence of people carrying entire universes inside them. A crying child somewhere in the back, an uncle watching reels at full volume, the conductor screaming the same stop for 7th damn time, someone sleeping with their head violently bouncing against the window (condolences for their neck and spine), all this chaos stitched together so naturally that it somehow became peaceful. And maybe that’s why I keep choosing buses over flights and private cabs (trains I would never choose you for personal grudges). People think it’s about money sometimes. It isn’t. I can spend extra to save all the inconvenience and time. But I don’t think I’m in love with destinations anymore. I think I’ve become a vagabond. 

Pune doesn’t excite me the way it used to. Somewhere between the endless concrete, the glass buildings pretending to be dreams, and the same roads repeating themselves everyday, the city started to feel less like a place and more like an algorithm; efficient, functional and soulless. And maybe that’s unfair to Pune. Every city has stories beneath its skin. But some places whisper them softly while others bury them under traffic and deadlines. I miss hearing stories loudly. That’s why I travel. Not for monuments or tourist spots or Instagram pictures that all look the same after a while but because the roads still feel honest. Because strangers still accidentally reveal pieces of themselves when they think nobody’s really listening.

A few days ago, I met a guy on a bus. He looked ordinary enough,  tired eyes, worn-out shoes, engineering backpack resting on his lap like it had survived multiple wars already (can relate). We started talking because the bus was delayed, and misery is humanity’s greatest conversation starter. Turns out he was doing his B.Tech from MIT (Maharashtra Institute of Technology before you massachusetts glazers jump on me). Smart guy too. And on weekends? He drives an auto. Not because he has to anymore. His father used to drive that same auto before he died. That rusted yellow-and-black machine was the only reason he could afford admission fees in the first place. Every kilometer his father drove became a fraction of a semester paid. Every exhausting summer afternoon became another notebook, another exam form, another chance at escaping poverty. Now the son drives it on weekends. Out of remembrance, out of respect, out of refusal to let his father disappear into old photographs. He told me sometimes passengers ask him why someone studying engineering is driving an auto. And he laughs it off casually, but there was something haunting about the way he touched the handle while talking about it. As if the auto wasn’t a vehicle anymore. As if it had become inheritance. Memory. Grief on three wheels. And I kept thinking,  I would’ve never heard this story sitting in a cab.

Nobody tells you their life story thirty thousand feet above the ground while a flight attendant asks whether you want coffee or tea. In cabs, conversations are transactional. In flights, everyone behaves like temporary ghosts avoiding eye contact. But buses? Buses force humanity upon you. You sit beside lives you would’ve otherwise never discovered. A man returning home after years. A woman carrying sweets for her children. A student terrified about his future. Someone grieving. Someone hopeful. Someone pretending to be okay. Four hours inside a bus somehow gives you more philosophy than four months on social media ever could. And maybe that’s why I don’t mind the discomfort anymore. Because comfort has a strange habit of isolating people from reality. The richer we become, the more separated we become from stories. We stop walking and start booking. Stop listening and start rushing. Stop observing and start optimizing. Everything becomes about efficiency. Fastest route. Fastest meal. Fastest entertainment. Fastest life. But stories were never meant to be fast. Stories happen slowly. In delayed buses, in broken Hindi conversations between people from different states, in the silence after someone says something deeply personal and both of you stare out the window pretending it didn’t affect you. That’s the thing nobody tells you about traveling. Places don’t change you, people do. The mountains are beautiful, sure. Beaches are calming. Cities are exciting. But eventually every landscape becomes another photograph in your gallery. What remains are the people. The auto driver studying engineering because his dead father’s vehicle carried him into a better future, the old man who offered a kid half his samosa because “travelling alone feels less lonely when you share food.”, the conductor who remembered every passenger’s stop despite looking half asleep, the random conversations that lasted only twenty minutes but stayed in my head for years. These are the souvenirs I actually keep. And perhaps that’s why returning to cities feels strange now. Because after hearing so many stories from the road, normal life starts feeling unbearably repetitive. The concrete jungle keeps growing taller, but somehow emptier.

Meanwhile, somewhere on a highway, another bus is carrying entire universes disguised as ordinary people.

And maybe that’s where I belong for now. Not at the destination.

Oh and before I go maybe check out this nice website that explains prisoner's dilemma in an interesting way:

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