The Road to Surat

Dear dedicated reader,

Going to the big city this past weekend, I felt like country mouse visiting the home of city mouse.

On Saturday, for Priya’s actual birthday, we took a trip to Surat, the closest city to our small town of Kadod. The city is nominally one hour away, or at least this is how far I remember it being when I asked at the orientation. This estimate, I have decided, must have been by car, and we, in our infinite wisdom, decided to travel by bus.

The Indian bus I have had the pleasure of experiencing a number of times before. What could be special about the bus, you ask? Well, to begin, it is far more entertaining than almost any American bus. The closest service approaching an Indian bus trip in the US is the Fung Wah, but even this does not adequately mirror the experience. Daybalben and her two daughters accompanied us for this trip and we all convened at the Kadod bus station (a muddy side of the road bus stand) at the pre-appointed hour of 12:30 pm. As luck would have it, we had just missed the bus.

“The next will be along in 10 minutes, no problem,” Daybalben assured us. She herself was from Surat, having been engaged in Standard 8 when she was 15 and married when she was in Standard 9 at 16. Her husband, who is older than her by 6 years, was then working abroad, and so she was able to finish her standard 10 studies and then come to live in Kadod. She had her first child when she was 18, just after standard 12, and then her second child just after her exams in her B.A. English program at a local university. She and her husband have been married for ten years now and for all I can see are obviously and adorably in love. They speak of each other which the most fondness. I asked her if she missed living in Surat. “Oh yeah,” she replied (the only Indian in Kadod I know who says ‘yeah’), “but I see my family.”

The next bus, it turns out, arrived in Kadod at 1:17 pm. We had a few false alarms, including one bus which was so full of people standing in the aisles, sitting on laps, practically falling out of windows that it couldn’t take on anymore passengers, despite the pushing and shoving that was taking place at the door.

When the bus finally did arrive and we confirmed that it could take us, we piled on and Daybalben found seats for us at the very, very last row of the bus. This was unusual for me, because I could clearly see all the woman sitting up in the front of the bus and in Delhi the front of the bus is for women and the back is for men, so to me to sit in the back seemed inappropriate, but I trusted her judgement. After all, who am I to question the woman wearing a burkah about what was inappropriate with regard to these things?

The boys in front of us were playing music loudly from their phone and obligingly kept playing songs from the film ‘Jannat’ which we had just watched from the night before. I sat next to the window, which was open and the wind blew my hair all around until I finally had to put it back to keep it out of my mouth.

Every time we went over a bump, we went flying up into the air. My butt actually left my seat for a noticeable period with each irregularity in the road. We giggled and laughed loudly, causing a commotion and causing the other people who knew us from the school who were on the bus to visibly ignore us.

At Bardoli, the boys with the music got off, which was too bad, since the tape and loose wires of the speakers of the bus, which would usually blast popular Hindi tunes, indicated that they were non-functional. The rest of the ride continued in relative quiet, as we talked amongst ourselves and watched out the window.

To me, just having an opportunity to sit and quietly watch the Indian countryside fly by was incredibly welcome, even from a cramped, hot bus. All along the road, small quotidian portraits seemed to dance past: a group of men laboring to pull an overturned motorcycle out of a ditch, straining their muscles and wiping dripping sweat from their faces as the mud acted as an earthly adhesive; women in brightly colored saris pulled up around their knees crouched in a circle in a field, gossiping; a little boy sitting on the shoulders of a weathered old man slowly walking down the side of the road. One small slice of life after another as we trundled along the road to Surat.

This continued for not one, but two hours. We had stopped at every small village between Kadod and the city and on arriving, I was exhausted despite having done nothing but sit and let the rocking and bumping of the bus lull me into a conscious kind trance.

In Surat we did the usual things: visited Daybalben’s house (lovely), shopping, sweating, making our way through crowds and crowds of people. It was like any Indian city. Soon enough, we were back at the bus station, utterly worn out and ready to go home.

Though, I should mention that despite our enjoyment of the previous bus ride, we made sure to get the express bus home.

Best,
Cat