All I had done was ride in a bus all day.
Yet when the bus began moving, I felt sleep weigh down on me and my fuzzy head
and bleary eyes were all too willing to give in. For an hour or so, I drifted
in and out of a fitful sleep; catching glimpses of strange faces, shanties and
trees – all of them prospective casting for the film soon to unveil in my
sleep. And sleep I did, for a good six hours.
I awoke at 6 AM and the world was still cloaked in the darkness of the night. After an hour, the bus came to a stop. The last time I’d been to Bangalore was by flight. The scene before me looked quite different. I got off the bus, gulping water from my bottle. When I saw what was written on the sign next to the stop, my heart stopped beating. It literally did. The sign said – Gachibowli. I was in Hyderabad.
I felt a daze wash over me as I realised I
was once again in a different place from where I had been headed. I might have
swooned if I hadn’t begun moving. For a long time, I walked in no particular
direction, barely feeling the weight of my rucksack. Eventually, I found a
bench by the roadside and sat down. Hyderabad was 11 or 12 hours away from
Gokarna. I had only been travelling for eight. There was no way I had boarded
the wrong bus this time. Nothing made sense. As if in response, my stomach
rumbled. Oh yes, hunger always makes sense; as primitive as the origin of the
planet. I watched some buses pass by but I was too frightened to get into one
again. Who knew where I might end up? I hailed an auto instead and asked him to
take me to a central area, where I was likely to find cheap food. “Would the
Charminar-Falaknuma Palace area do?” the driver asked. He must know it was his
lucky day – landing an ignorant passenger like me. I nodded. Whatever.
The lane leading up to Charminar was so
thickly lined with hawkers and honking vehicles that it became a real trial to
make my way around. I ducked into a by-lane and walked into the first Udupi
restaurant I saw. It seemed to be popular with its patrons. Within minutes, the
place was full to the point of tables being shared by strangers. My solo streak
of luck had run out. A man of undetermined age plonked himself across me. He
wore a short kurta and khaki pants and his frame was wiry; his face tanned but
not dark and his features lean like his body. He could have been 20, 25 or 30.
I supposed he’d looked this way for the last five years and would continue to
do so for the next five as well. A modern-day Dorian Gray.
“The medu vada here is really good,” he
said in his Hyderabadi Hindi, making the pronouns sound a little funny. So, it
was obvious that I was an outsider. For some reason, that depressed me. “Thanks
but I already ordered.” “Studying here?” Dorian asked. I’ve never liked overly
friendly or inquisitive people. I shook my head and looked away pointedly.
Thereafter, silence reigned supreme.
“Something strange is happening to me,” I burst out suddenly. I don’t know why I’d chosen to say it when the poor fellow was about to leave. His brows crinkled. It was almost as if the words inside were starting to give me a stomach ache. I had to get them out before I fell sick. “I didn’t intend to come here,” I continued. “I boarded a bus to Bangalore from Gokarna last night. But I ended up here this morning. It’s just insane.” I desperately hoped that he wouldn’t ask me the obvious question. He didn’t. “I see,” was all Dorian said. I felt encouraged to say more. “This isn’t the first time. On May 9, I boarded a bus for Nagpur from Mumbai and I ended up in Gokarna. I swear I didn’t take the wrong bus.” Only now did I notice the hints of grey at his temples. But a lot of people had premature greying.
“So you took two different buses
for destinations different from where they actually took you.”
“That’s about it.”
“Hmmm.”
I didn’t know what I’d expected
him to say. But the ache in my stomach had subsided. The dosa might have helped
as well. I decided to voice the fear that had been clawing at me, “What if I never
reach home? What if I keep ending up at the wrong destination?” “The wrong
destination,” he murmured softly. To my surprise and indignation, he burst out
laughing. “I’m sorry but what you’ve just described is what life keeps doing to
us, over and over. We keep boarding buses for our intended destinations and the
route keeps changing mid-way. Look at me. I wanted to be a cultural
revolutionary – working for the preservation of our native arts and languages.
Now I’m just a history professor at a college full of students who have no
desire to learn. I’ve ended up at the wrong destination too and you know what,
I can’t even take a bus back home. That route is closed to me forever. I can
only move ahead.” I was too shocked to respond. He said just one more thing
before he left, “Try taking a train.”
I wandered aimlessly through the
streets of Hyderabad for a while, salivating at the aroma of hot haleem and
mutton biryani even though I was pretty full with my meagre lunch. Humans are
just so greedy about everything – food, money, possessions. Nothing is ever
enough. And if like everything else, this too can be traced to some prehistoric
habits, I wonder when we will leave this legacy of ‘want’ behind. But at that
moment, what I really wanted was a good spot to relax my tired feet. I hailed
another auto and asked him to take me to Golconda Fort.
However, the sight of all those
ruins; so beautiful and resonant of greatness even after all these years, made
me forget about my tired toes. I climbed numerous ramparts and stairs to feast
my eyes on the panorama of alternating greens, browns and whites, each standing
for trees, streets and houses respectively. One doesn’t realise how much
greenery there is in a place until one has a bird’s eye view of it. I sat down on
the railing at one such spot and breathed in the warm mountain air. Maybe,
landing up at Hyderabad wasn’t such a bad thing after all. There wasn’t much to
see in Bangalore, by way of historical tourism. That set me thinking about my
strange bus rides again. Was there a pattern to the places I was ending up at?
Gokarna, Hyderabad. I thought of the verbal ciphers I solved in the newspaper
back at home and spent some time trying to work out a solution that connected
Gokarna and Nagpur, as well as Bangalore and Hyderabad. But no, that didn’t
seem right.
A few tourists invaded my
brainstorming session and I watched them gawk at the view and whisper excitedly
to each other. That was when it struck me – I was simply wasting my time. The
key to this mystery wasn’t revealing itself to me any time soon. So, I might as
well sit back and enjoy the ride. I mean, wasn’t this actually fun? Like
someone else turning the knob on the radio for me. There was no saying what
music I might hear next! Suddenly, adrenaline coursed through me at the
prospect of a trip with surprise destinations.
Thereafter, I kept boarding random buses and ending up at wrong destinations. After spending a night at a budget hotel in Hyderabad (I was starting to stink and needed a shower), I boarded a bus for Pondicherry. I ended up at Kolkata and had a wonderful time exploring its frozen-in-time streets and quaint little cafes and bookstores. I even stumbled on to a literary festival and heard my favourite travel writer William Dalrymple speak about his fascination with Delhi’s history. That made me want to visit Delhi. But of course, the bus took me to Rajgir.
(To be continued. Come back later or follow this blog to read the concluding part)
Missed Part I of this three-part mystery? Read it here
