This story was first published in Telegram Magazine, September 2016 issue. To read the story in the original magazine, along with several other wonderful stories and articles, please buy it here.
Bus Route 86
In the Mumbai that is today, there’s any number of ways
to get from Flora Fountain (or Hutatma Chowk as it is officially known) to
Mahim. Expressways have been inaugurated; flyovers constructed and even a
magnificent white elephant of a Sea-link that promises to make it easy and convenient
to get around the city. But in the Bombay that was, back in that summer of ‘95,
when I was the Captain of the cricket team of St. Michaels School, the only
feasible mode of transport was to take the winding route past Metro talkies, Opera
House, Worli and Prabhadevi before finally reaching the last borough of the old
city, for beyond Mahim, as anyone will tell you, Bombay ends and the ‘burbs
begin.
St. Michaels had never had the funding to provide a
school bus to ferry its cricket team to and from matches. So after a crushing
win over Sathe Vidya Mandir on a fast-paced pitch at Azad Maidan, played on a
blistering hot April morning, we the members of the St. Michaels team, with our
coach in tow, were standing at the Fountain bus stop, awaiting the arrival of Bus
#86.
 |
| Flora Fountain / Hutatma Chowk (present day) |
The stock exchange is closed on Saturdays, as are most
banks. The thoroughfare, normally bustling, was rather sparse. Both the
colonial-era fountain and the more recent sculpture honouring those who had
martyred themselves to the cause of separate statehood for Maharashtra glinted
in the hard light of the sun, with no crowds milling about to obstruct the
view. At the Bus stop itself, posters asking for votes were glued on top of the
advertisement for Liril soap. The face of a singularly ugly moustachioed man
glared down at us from the shoulders of the lissom model. A lady in a hijab[1]
and her son were the only other people at the stop apart from the team. Sathe
Vidya Mandir had long since gone home – they, at least, had the funds for a
dedicated bus.
“Good win,” said Vivek, who batted at number 3.
“Early rounds are always like this,” I replied. He had
only made the team this year, I had been on it a year longer and claimed
superior knowledge.
“Is that our bus?” exclaimed the Loomba excitedly. Vishal
‘Loomba’ Udaykar was the team’s wicket-keeper, a position he had earned due to
the fact that no one else wanted it.
“It’s an 84,” said Coach, a man in his mid-twenties who
played the minor leagues on weekends and waited to be called to play Ranji
Trophy for Mumbai. Those of us who had walked half-way down the road, with the
aplomb of a batsman who walks half-way down a pitch to tap it with his bat,
returned to the footpath.
“You just missed the 86,” said the lady in the hijab with the self-satisfied smile of one
who is about to impart unpleasant news. “There won’t be another for twenty
minutes.”
A collective groan followed.
“And what bus are you waiting for?” asked Coach.
“86,” she replied.
“Wait, but why didn’t she catch the one she said we…” I
began, but Coach shushed me with a movement of his eyes, and before I could
wonder any further, a rectangular red bus with the magic number 86 written in
the window at the top rolled up to the stop, missing running over the Loomba by
a matter of inches.
“Lying bi…,” began Coach, biting off the expletive, as he
shepherded us onto it. The conductor and three other commuters were the only
others in it, and all the victorious heroes of St. Michaels found comfortable
places to sit. As was often my lot, whether due to my being Captain of the side
or merely a fault in my stars, I ended up sitting next to Coach. The lady who
had assured us there would be no bus forthcoming seated herself a few rows
ahead of us.
“She wanted to get us to try and take another mode of
transport so that we wouldn’t be occupying all the seats,” muttered Coach.
“These people, I tell you…liars, the lot of them.”
 |
| Metro Talkes, in the good old days |
The bus set off with a lurch, and made its way towards
Metro talkies, the revered movie-hall where Hollywood blockbusters had once
premiered. It was showing signs of neglect already, the art deco exterior
fading, and once-proud ushers hanging around the entrance waiting for patrons
who never came.
A few college students climbed on, and then the bus began
to move again. It snaked languorously through Princess Street and its multitude
of pharmacies, past Chira Bazaar and
towards Gaiwadi, an ancient housing
complex with two huge cow’s heads made of stone on each side of the entrance
archway.
The bus was getting quite full as it left Opera House,
where once an actual Opera theatre had existed, or so my father continues to
assure me. A hub for a trade in diamonds on one side and auto parts onthe other,
it seems impossible to contemplate that it could ever have hosted anything as
genteel as an opera. Sometimes, though, when the light is right, usually after a
light rainfall, the outlines of the buildings seem to wobble a little and ‘Shankar
Mechanic’ dissolves into the stone structure it must once have been where
horse-carriages carrying the memsahibs
and their husbands to the opera would have been stabled for the duration of the
show.
 |
| Opera House |
They did not wobble now, under the bright light of the
afternoon sun, and we rattled on, past the old Babulnath temple, which I have
never seen the inside of, and the relatively new Jaslok Hospital, where years
later I would come to grieve at the bedside of a dying relative.
Three men got aboard, one clean-shaven and two bearded,
dressed in shirts and trousers, carrying cloth bags over their shoulders. The
conductor approached them, clicking his ticket-punch.
“Get that thing out of my face,” said the clean-shaven
one.
“Where to? Take a ticket,” he said.
“Sena Bhavan,” replied the man. “Three for Sena Bhavan.
Oh hey, is that you, Golya?”
He thrust the ticket fare into the conductor’s hand and
came over to where we sat, placing a hand on Coach’s back. As Coach’s eyes lit
up in recognition, I felt the sense of disorientation that I am sure my readers
will understand is quite natural for anyone who finds that the Cricket Coach he
has hitherto been terrified of, is called Golya outside of School.
“Pakya, how are you?” asked Coach – or Golcoachya, as I
would forever know him after that.
“All good, man. Going to meet the Saheb.”
“Sit down, sit down,” said Golcoachya, gesturing to me to
go elsewhere. I hopped into the seat just in front before anyone else could
come and occupy it. The bus was just pulling in near Lala Lajpat Rai College,
which was then little more than a name to me. I would grow to rather like the
place in later years, when it turned out I had a knack for passing exams when LLR
was assigned as my exam centre. Unlike
other buses, 86 did not go on to Haji Ali, emerging from the other side of the
college and moving on to Nehru Planetarium, the dome-shaped wonder of my – and
lakhs of other kids’ – childhood.
“We’re going to win this election, aren’t we?” said
Golcoachya. I could see his face reflected in the half-closed glass windowpane,
and he seemed to smirk in a self-satisfied manner. He spoke in a colloquial
version of Marathi, but I had no difficulty understanding him all the same.
“Should have it tied up. After the dangal[2]
from two years back…our people want to teach their lot a lesson,” agreed Pakya.
“Yeah, and the blasts. We need a strong hand to deal with
them. And people know who has the danda[3],”
Golcoachya laughed.
“They’re gonna be scared when we take power. Damn government
has been going soft on them for too long, man. Now our boys take no nonsense. We
can screw them in the open once we’re in power.”
 |
| Doordarshan |
“Doordarshan,” yelled the conductor, as half the
travellers made for the exit door in front. The bus slowed to a stop just
before the entrance to the offices and studio of the national broadcaster. It
was no longer the only channel in the country – cable had made its entry a few
years ago – but was still in a position of overwhelming dominance. This was
where the driver and conductor changed their shifts as well, and I settled in
my seat. These changeovers could take a long time if the pair that was to take
over the route was late.
“You’ll come for the speech tomorrow? There’s a rally in
Agar bazaar,” said Pakya.
“Saheb?”
“No, not him. It’s too small for HIM.”
“The son?”
“No, the nephew. He’s brilliant. Doesn’t mince words, not
him.”
“I’ll be there. No school tomorrow, I can come.”
“How’s work, anyway? Convent school must be paying well.”
“Yeah, money’s all right. Bunch of no-talent kids. Half
of them are bloody pav-walas[4].
They say english prayers in the morning, eat meat in their dabbas[5]and
try to convert the half that are not.”
“That happens doesn’t it? I knew it!”
“Yeah man, it’s shameful. All these convent schools are
joined up, you know. They want to spread their rotten religion in India. They
get tons of money from foreign countries and use it to print their conversion
material.”
I thought about Father Roderick and his threadbare coat,
the sparsely-furnished apartments at the back of the school where he lived and
the diligence with which he appealed to the parishioners of Mahim to donate
money to maintain the school building. I had been invited to tea with him when
the team had won the regional Cricket championship earlier that year, and he
had told me that we could have new bats now for playing the national
championship, as the Trustees had approved the funds. The cheque he wrote when
the bats arrived was drawn on his own account, though.
We had won the match today using those new bats. I had
made fifty-three of the finest. I wondered where this ‘tons of money’ was
coming from, and to whom it was going.
The new driver and conductor hopped on the bus, and it
gave another lurch as it started.
“About time too,” grumbled the woman who had boarded with
us at Fountain. “How long you fellows take, eh?”
“What’s it to you, woman?” the conductor shot back,
clicking his ticket-punch.
“My boy is getting late for tuition classes?”
“Tuition classes? Does he even go to school?”
“He can read and write, which is more than your mother
can say for you,” was her response. The conductor made a dismissive gesture and
began to troop to the back of the bus.
“Bloody arrogant woman. Look how brave they have become,”
I heard Pakya’s voice.
“Pampering, I tell you. Fifty years of pampering. Give
them everything because they’re a minority. They’ve become bloated on it,” said
Golcoachya.
“That’s how it goes. Anyway, they’ll be put in their
place come May. I broke enough bones in the dangal
to earn a promotion. Good times are ahead for us, Golya.”
“Hey, I broke more skulls than you!”
Prabhadevi dawned, with the lofty Siddhivinayak Temple’s
gold-plated dome looming in the foreground. Pakya and Golcoachya stopped
talking to bow their heads reverentially. Then came Agar bazaar, soon to be the
site of a rally addressed by Saheb’s nephew, as I had now learned. Sena Bhavan
would be next, shortly followed by Mahim.
“How’s your sister?” asked Golcoachya, his voice changed
– softer, somehow.
“You keep your eyes off Chinki,” growled Pakya.
“Just asking,” this in a low, apologetic tone.
“Don’t!”
 |
| Ranade Road, on any given day |
The bus ploughed into the sea of shopping-crazy humanity
at Ranade Road, named for a great lawyer and reformer, now famous for saree
shops and jewellery. The going was slow now, the wheels moving slower than the
old men with walking sticks walking in parallel to us. Behind me, there was
awkward silence. It ended when the bus finally emerged around Plaza theatre,
still shut down with the burned façade, a victim of the serial bomb blasts two
years before.
 |
| Plaza Cinema, back then |
“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” said Golcoachya.
“Yeah, meet you at the bus stop,” said Pakya. “You’ll
like his speech. Tells it like it is, man. Chala,
bye!”
As he stepped into the aisle, I felt a tap on my
shoulder. Golcoachya gestured to me to come back to the seat next to him, and I
did so, having no reason to do otherwise.
“Old friend of mine. Same colony,” he said, patting my
shoulder. I shrank from his touch.
Bus #86 took the left turn into Lady Jamshedji Road. It
would be ten minutes more to reach Mahim and the sanctuary of the school.
“You all right?” he asked. “Sleepy, huh?”
“Yes, sleepy. Hard match,” I said, agreeing with him, and
closed my eyes.
And though I did, I could still see through my shut
eyelids. I could see Metro Talkies turned into a multiplex, its charm gone and
its screens reduced to showing prancing poppets. I could see Gaiwadi remain
much the same, but the cows on its arches were to take on a different shape,
bigger, more menacing, and become the weapons with which the Pakya’s and
Golcoachya’s of the world attacked their fellow men. I could see Opera House
suffer a fire and re-invent itself as a hub for selling computer parts,
powering the march of a new, IT-enabled India. I could see the ideals of Nehru,
and the spirit of scientific enquiry his Planetarium embodied lost in grandiose
claims of ancient knowledge. I could see Doordarshan being mismanaged, sinking
into obscurity, deluged by shouting news anchors and wailing soap operas, leaving
only a memory of better days.
I saw all this and more. And at the back of it all, I
could see my Bombay become Mumbai, a place where decency would die of a cancer,
just as my uncle would, where Azad Maidan would see desecration of the symbols
of freedom, where two cousins would fight over a poisonous political legacy and
drive themselves into oblivion, where Temples would grow ever larger and
libraries ever smaller, where bridges between places and hearts would be
replaced by flyovers, allowing the privileged to ignore those left below.
But what I could not see was any glimmer of hope. Not for
Bombay, and not for Golcoachya’s hopeless love for Pakya’s sister, which would
end in a three-inch column buried on Page five of the Time of India, about a
fight between two friends, Prakash Joshi and Aditya Golekar, ending in the maiming
of the former and the death of the latter.
#
Bus Route 86 is real. Broadly speaking, it does follow the route described above. Also real were the events and implications of the period from December 1992 to March 1993.
Any person interested in perusing more about the riots that ripped apart the fabric of Mumbai in 1992-93 may peruse the text of the Justice Srikrishna report, the outcome of a judicial enquiry committee that was not accepted by the Shiv Sena - BJP government, which was in power then the report was released.
Any person interested in perusing more about the riots that ripped apart the fabric of Mumbai in 1992-93 may peruse the text of the Justice Srikrishna report, the outcome of a judicial enquiry committee that was not accepted by the Shiv Sena - BJP government, which was in power then the report was released.
It is available here:
Part 1
Part 2
[1]
Headscarf covering the hair and neck but leaving the face exposed.
[2]Riot
[3]Cudgel / Stick
[4]Literally, ‘bread-eaters’, a
pejorative term for Christians common in Mumbai
[5]Tiffin-boxes
