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Travelling in Cochin city buses have always been a challenging task, and I was the victim last evening, when I had to reach Tripunithura ( a market town in Cochin). The distance from my work place to the destination (Tripunithura) is only 6km and a bus fare of mere 5 rupees, but, thanks to the heavy traffic congestion and unexpected showers  your short journey gets stretched. The 5 rupees then gives you the pleasure of a jam-packed bus trip that runs into hours – a full Cochin sightseeing tour.

Well last day it was my chance to experience this bitter reality of the city transport service, while our bus driver was somehow making way amidst the traffic block, daily travelers were keeping themselves busy by chit-chats and other talks. The topic of discussion was the sensational tamil flick Enthiran (Robot), few college-goers were discussing how stars in the movie did justice to their roles and what the movie lacked. After few minutes I realised the bus again started moving, I was relieved and checked the wrist watch which was ticking past 6:20, which meant in the past 20 mins our bus moved only 2kms!!!

Even though our politicians may call our city great names at the end of the day things remain the same and local people have to bear the brunt of the administrative apathy.

Meanwhile, the chat regarding the movie continued and was getting more expressive with those college students enacting few stunts and facial expressions of the movie. Though I haven’t watched this much-awaited flick of Rajinikanth, ‘Enthiran’  in the past 10mins I was lucky enough to get a good visualized review of the movie. Watch was ticking past 6:30 and now another 3km was left to finally reach my destination.

The bus stopped in between at different bus stops with many passengers getting down and more getting in. Amidst all this chaos, the person who remained ‘as cool as cucumber’ was the conductor who was not even managing the crowd inside the bus, but was also making sure he was giving tickets to all passengers. Kudos to him to collect the money from everyone even when there was hardly any space to move freely.

After all the hardships I made it to Tripunithura and finally was out in the fresh air and took a deep breath and saluted those thousands of daily commuters who face this hardship daily after their daily grind.