Where is the bus going?

What I love about traveling is the journey itself. If I was one of the those who assigns more value to the destination, I would have confessed that the destinations of most of my journeys have disappointed me.
But I don't, and hence, I cherish all the journeys I have ever taken.

Including the one, I took to an altogether unfamiliar city, around 1600 km away, in my first year of college. It was supposed to be a romantic gesture, to impress a girl (who didn't even talk to me that day). When I returned, all my friends were very sympathetic, sad and supportive for their failed-in-love friend. They all had helped me plan, so I had to feign being heart-broken. But secretly, I was triumphant: I had proved to myself that I could travel alone, go anywhere without my parents being none the wiser and that I could buy an adult magazine from a railway platform's bookstall. I didn't try even once to talk to the girl again.

6 years have gone by since that incident. I am not saying I am the host of Man vs Wild, but whenever my budget and time allows, I have attempted to satiate the nomadic spirit inside me. Road-bike trips were a big reason I bought a cruiser-type bike and not a regular one. But even now, the poetic charm of just sitting in the window seat of a bus or train, relax and sit back while watching hills, fields, rivers, towns, villages, and cities go by still inspires me to travel in public transport every now and then.


One thing I always wonder, when I am on a bus (or a train), is where my fellow passengers are going. Of course, they are going to wherever the bus/train is going, but where are they really going?
Are they just tourists like me? Or are they returning home from some vacation of their own? Maybe some of them are career-oriented hard-working students from the next town, returning from their college in the big city. Some of them might be people visiting their relatives for some family occasion like marriage. There is always some mother with a small kid; maybe her child is sick (his appearance is like so), and she is returning from seeing a doctor. Few would be coming back or going to their jobs. There are two ladies wearing white; seems someone they were related to and/or loved passed away, and they are going to the mourn with the family. There is also a young couple sitting in the corner of the last seat, ceaselessly giggling at every sentence of their secret conversation.


Isn't our world a lot like that bus? Aren't we all like the passengers of that bus? Many of us are just going through everyday customs, our jobs and following formalities of society; few of us are enjoying like we're on a holiday, exploring new places; most of us care for someone we love. Some of us are making new relationships, while some are mourning the loss of some loved one. Some are mothers taking their sons to the school for the first time; some are daughters accompanied by their father, going to the daughter's college convocation.

Isn't the life of everyone among us represented in some way by the people on that bus? Isn't each traveler of that bus some version of us at different times in our lives, just placed in a different context? Someday, I was the son who went to school for the first time. Then, I was a student who went to another city for his studies. Someday, I will be the father on that bus.

Are our aspirations and desires and problems and worries really different than those of the next person? Or are they different just at this moment? How close to reality is the hypothesis that at a fundamental level, the emotions, the struggles, the ecstasies, the role or the phase of life our fellow passenger is in right now, is almost the same that we have gone through or will go through at some point in our lives?

If at some level, everyone is in someone else's shoes sometime or the other, what is the point of being intolerant/judgemental/jealous of fellow beings? Or feeling superior? It may be your holiday today, but every dog will have its day.

Theodore Tilton wrote a poem in 1867, about a king who got the following words engraved on his ring, and read it on all important moments in his life: 'Even this shall pass away'.
How the hell does an inscription that long be engraved on a ring, and still be legible? Foolish poet.

So, where is your bus going today? ;)

P.S: For the first time on a train from Jammu to Jalandhar, I asked a fellow Sardar Ji, "Uncle, Jalandhar kitni der mein aayega?"
His reply: "Beta, Jalandhar to wahin rahega jahaan hai, yeh train wahaan paanch ghante mein pahunchegi."