Feh

Greetings again. I bring good tiding from the east… or some such thing. Anyway, there I was sitting in my bus at the terminus waiting for the bus to roll out. It came in just as I was coming out of a boutique after having a refreshing caffeinated beverage, so I knew I had about 20 minutes to kill. I hopped onboard, made a beeline for the rear seat and made it my little corner of England. I broke out the ipod, hitckhikersguidetothegalaxy, and an assortment of fried nuts. Thus I settled in my little nook and became completely oblivious to the world around me for better part of a half hour. The in came the conductor, tore me a ticket, and began the ritual. What ritual you say? Why, the age old ritual of summoning the driver. This, my dear reader, is a fascinating phenomenon that predates the internet and even mobile phones, and is widely practiced island wide. If  this is the first time you’re hearing about it, or you’re going (o.O) right now, then you are forgiven, and let me enlighten you. The ritual begins when the conductor has finished tearing the tickets, although some say it starts when the first ticket is torn, there is still some conflict in the definition. In any case, the ball has been set in motion now. He will next pull out from his bottomless pocket a large pouch which contains all the change in coins that they say they do not have when you try to change a 10 rupee note for a 9 rupee ticket. He then proceeds to open the cubbyhole and paw through its contents which may or may not include one or more of the following:

1. several tapes containing very bad “mixes” of popular English songs sung by Singhalese artists in English


2. several tapes containing very bad “mixes” of popular Singhalese songs sung by Singhalese artists in Singhalese


3. several tapes containing very bad “mixes” of popular English song sung by Singhalese artists in Singhalese


4. several tapes containing very bad “mixes” of popular Hindi songs sung by Singhalese artists in Singhalese


5. several tapes containing very bad “mixes” of popular Hindi songs sung Singhalese artists in Hindi


6. and last but not least, several tapes containing very bad “mixes” of popular Hindi songs sung by Singhalese artists in English

Once the “condosthora” has found his tape of choice, he proceeds to phase two, which is attempting to get the tape player working. This often involves fiddling around with a bunch of wires hanging loosely anywhere in the vicinity of the dashboard, but maybe located elsewhere too. Once the tape player is working, he will then adjust the sound levels so that the highs are on par with an opera singer screeching at the top of her lungs and pretty much breaking every wine glass within sonic reach. So now, money jiggling in pocket (still waiting for the 1 rupee change), stereo blaring, the pre-summoning rights have been carried out, and he now moves on to the actually summon the driver. This is the more vocal bit of the ritual, mostly made up of chanting ancient sutras. Note though, that here I use the word chant in a very very generalized form, as it is less of a chant and more of a repetitious yelling in all directions the name of the driver, with curses injected ever few seconds when the driver fails to materialize. After a suitable period of time has gone by, and the driver is still a no-show, the conductor switches to an alternate noise source, i.e. the horn. Dear reader, at this point I will have to pause my chronicle and deviate a little to explain the significance of the horn. The horn is the bane of every traffic cop in probably every country in the world. It used to annoy the fuck out of the person ahead of you. In countries like ours, it is often used for other purposes too, a good example would be for blaring it in a residential section in the early hours of the morning. This I described out of personal experience, but I have now circumvented it through the very simple device of a well aimed rock at the rear windscreen of a Hyundai Sonata circa 2002 HW25xx, light blue in colour. But I digress, so lets back on track. The horn, may only be noisy, infuriating and annoying to us, unless of course we’re behind the steering wheel, where it becomes a god send, but to the bus driver, the noise created by this horn carries a unique signature which is only identifiable by bus drivers and no one else, rather like a whale call. SO, the conductor turns to this means as a final resort to summon the driver, because the attendant type at the terminus is tapping his clipboard with his pen indicating that they were due to leave 10 minutes ago. After some more blaring, in the distance, appears the driver, bathed in sunlight (because it’s early evening) coming at us like the bus driver he is. He pulls himself up the right side of the bus, doesn’t make it the first time, tries again, succeeds and slams the door closed with a resonating slam that rocks the bus and makes me upset my bag of mixed nuts. Then he takes his time adjusting various extremities around himself, details into which I shall not go into, not to protect you but myself. Finally, a fearful noise erupts from somewhere upfront, along with a bone jarring vibration, the engine not so much leaps to life as it does splutter cough and wheeze into a rotary motion, and sets the bus in motion, and takes us into the sunset. And there, my dear (hopefully still lucid reader) is my belated and thoroughly useless blog post for Saturday which took me so long to write since work was a major hindrance on Monday. Peace.