Majestic

At 10:15 pm, after waiting for 30 minutes, I boarded BMTC Route #2 bound for Majestic. The wait in itself offered a variety which I may have seen, but one that I rarely paused and Observed at close quarters - the sobriety of the waiting traffic policeman having wound up the days duty, the garrulousness of three cell phone flaunting college kids talking movies, a family of four who alighted from an auto and barely able to carry the almost-asleep toddlers and the rest - a book salesman, an elderly couple with suitcases ...all waiting for the Route # 2 bound for Majestic.

All through I was having a surreal feeling... A very long time since I had traveled by bus, unaccompanied, and at so late an hour and so suddenly. And I had never been to Majestic before, about which I have not heard too many pleasnt things. The only consolation was that my destination was not Kalasipalayam.

I had a feeling akin to a villager in a big city when I alighted at Majestic. A thousand buses going a hundred directions. People People...all in a hurry. I did not dare ask anybody the way to platform 15, where my APSRTC bus to Tirupati will depart from. I walked around as non-descriptly as possible in quest for PF15. When I did reach it, a board there said that buses to Wilson Garden and Dairy Circle depart from here. That certainly was not what I wanted to see.

There were scores of pedestrian ramps all of which seemed to lead up to a common higher plane. So I took one of them and reached a foot-over-bridge.Going north on it for ten minutes brough me to the Railway Station. Retracing my steps for ten minutes and surveying the scene revealed another bus stand which was filled with inter-state buses. Climbed down another ramp and entered the melee.

I loved the scene with all its chaos and character...and a few dogs. I reached PF15, with 45 minute to spare. Scanned all the food stores and 'fancy' stores. Finally reached a Newspaper Stall. At this unearthly hour for newpapers the stall offered just two English magazines.Between a publication called Caravan and another called Competition Wiz, I chose the former. And I was much deligthed by this choice. It was not 'current affairs'. It had just a handful of essays on politics and culture.

With this prize catch tucked into my hand bag, I waded through the masses back to PF15, just in time to board my bus with a hope that more of these majestic trips are waiting to happen.