It often happens that when I miss home food, i go to my cousin’s place to have a sumptuous dinner. Its ten o clock by the time I get back to the bus stop to catch a bus to the nearest metro station.
An elderly woman sits afar, waiting for a sign of a green and red bus to take her safely back to her home. She nervously glances at the cabs that slow down in search for passengers. One can never be sure of them. Despite waiting for almost half an hour the bus fails to come. Even the auto driver refuses to take her on the standard rate that applies for the journey..... She is alone at the bus stop.
For me being a guy, I can get on to the cabs that ply on the bus routes. But after the recent incident of a girl being gang raped and a guy getting beaten up by a rod in a chartered bus stop I am not so sure whether it is safe being a guy in Delhi. I can only imagine how the woman felt waiting all alone at the bus stop. At that time, it got to me and I immediately shot off a letter to the Chairman cum managing director of the DTC, asking him to at least regularize the night services so that people with no means to drive a car or rent an auto can at least ride back home in safety (or till the nearest metro station), thinking that they are in a government vehicle. No response came, and I too conveniently forgot.
It’s a simple solution. All that the public asks is for the regularization of the bus service on certain routes. Often you see bus drivers of the same route going right behind each other, carrying hardly any passengers and screeching through the Delhi roads. Had that girl and her friend seen a 764 DTC bus on the munirka -dwarka road, they would have definitely taken the bus. But they didn't. They were forced to take the white-line bus, which themselves are a reminiscence of the erstwhile notorious blue-line bus service in Delhi.
I feel ashamed i wasn't more vocal. Maybe i should have sent the mail to other more prominent people. I wish that maybe I should have directly sent a letter to our chief minister. I believe she would have listened. I believe she would have understood.
A girl lay with her tattered clothes on the roadside at one in the morning. I shudder. I feel shock and anger at myself.
