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What's it like to live in a country of more than one billion, a country that's one-third the size of Canada, yet has thirty times the population? It's not that bad, really, even if you happen to be the last person on the bus. At least you can stretch your legs, enjoy the view and convince yourself that getting on the bus is much better than getting in the bus. As I visit my native India, I find myself marveling at how people deal with the immense population, which grows by a staggering 15 million a year, so many that if rabbits had a lobbying group, we'd all be using the phrase "breeding like Indians." Nowhere is the population more pronounced than in public transportation. Buses are often crammed with people, beyond their capacity, with some passengers getting seats and many others pressed together in the aisle, close enough to know what each other had for lunch. A few passengers travel on the outside, grabbing onto whatever they can, the frame of the door perhaps. These are the people who know what it means to "catch the bus." When the bus is packed, getting on and off is a major challenge, but so is getting in and out. One method is to drop to your hands and knees and crawl between people's legs, though this doesn't work so well, I've found, when women are wearing saris. Another method is to try to empty the bus, perhaps by pointing to the street and yelling, "Oh my gosh! Salman Khan!" The popular actor can empty just about anything: buses, trains, kegs of beer. What he doesn't empty, though, are movie theaters. Indians are crazy about two things: movies and cricket. (Hence the popularity of the Oscar-nominated "Lagaan," a movie about cricket.) When half the population wants to watch the latest blockbuster, the chances of getting tickets on the day of a screening are similar to the chances of running into Paris Hilton in a public library. Even if a few tickets are available, you'll have to stand in a long line -- and that's to bribe the theater owner. But Indians are used to waiting in line. At the last general election, people stood in line all day to exercise their right to kick the bums out. When you visit a doctor's office, the clerk may be poor at grammar, but he's not incorrect when he asks, "Are you patient?" My wife and I took our daughters to a pediatrician for a vaccination and, despite having an appointment, had to sit in the waiting room until the next day! Yes, we got there at 9:45 p.m. and didn't see the doctor until after midnight. Everyone else in the packed waiting room didn't seem to mind, perhaps because the doctor, in his infinite wisdom, was showing them a movie. Indians encounter crowds almost everywhere: in the courthouse, at the market, even in their own bedrooms. When you're living with your extended family in a two-room dwelling, you have little privacy. But who cares about privacy when there are bigger issues to deal with, such as grandpa's snoring? Or grandma's habit of cutting in line everywhere, especially at the bathroom. That reminds me of the bikini-clad tourist who posted a sign at the beach that said, "Please form a line here," with a hundred Indian men standing in front of it. "What's she giving away?" someone asked one of the men. "She's not giving away anything," he replied. "She just wants us to stare at her in an orderly manner."
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Catch a bus in India and don't let go