What’s it like to cycle in India? Part 2

Buses

Riding in the subcontinent leads to unexpected discoveries. Dev, a 17 year old CanLiver who turned up in jeans and a jumper, was my companion between Chandigarh and Varanasi in India. As Dev and I left Delhi at 11am we encountered traffic as thick as the cream that tops a freshly-churned lassi.  For miles cars and buses and lorries were bumper to bumper. In the gaps between cars were motorbikes. In the gaps between motorbikes were cyclists. In the gaps between cyclists were pedestrians. The gaps between pedestrians were filled with noxious fumes.

Dev and I an hour before encountering the cream-thick traffic in Delhi

London in rush-hour is a tight slalom, but here there was no slaloming to be done. Every available inch was spoken for. Instead of choking in the cream, we cheated. We heaved the bike up onto the pavement and wiggled our way slowly along like an earthworm. There were broken slabs hinting at tire-swallowing holes, there were trees in the middle of the path, there were advertising boards at bus stops suggesting we move to Paradise Homes, and there were people meandering across the pavement. My cries of “excuse me, excuse me, EXCUSE ME!” had little effect, but luckily Dev was on hand to give me a lesson. “Shout ‘hup, hup, HUP!’ instead!” It worked. After twenty minutes we came to the end of the jam, and saw its cause.

A green bus had broken down, yet the timing had been awful, because it lay across the three lanes. Cars had to pass it one by one, gingerly driving over the uneven dirt by the side of the road. “That’s a very unfortunate place to break down, I guess buses are quite unreliable here?” I asked to Dev. He looked at me and said quietly, “it hasn’t broken down.” There were quite a few people around, and Dev clearly didn’t want to talk there. A hundred metres further on he told me.

Of all the places to break down…

“The driver’s parked it there.”

“Parked it? Across the road? Why?”

“It’s a protest. He’ll be complaining about the government for some reason. He hasn’t gone, just taken the keys out of the bus – and look, he’s directing the traffic round it.”

I was lost for words. “But… why has he parked his bus?”

“It’s the only way people feel like they can get their voices heard.”

“But it’s not having any effect on the government – it’s just causing a huge traffic jam!”

“I know.” Dev’s unconcerned reply seemed to suggest that the waiting cars would understand the cause, and feel some sort of solidarity with the bus driver.

“What about the police? Aren’t they going to do something?”

“They’re stuck in traffic too. Delhi is a huge city and it will take them a long time to get here”.

No doubt.

Another kilometre further on we passed another set of buses, parked one after each other lengthways along the road, gradually constricting its width until only one car could slowly squeeze through at a time. Here the police had arrived and there was much shouting and gesticulating. There were also protestors and banners here. Dev explained to me further.

“The bus drivers will lie down in front of the bus and tell the police ‘move it over my body’, so of course, nothing happens and the buses remain there for a long time”.

It seemed extraordinary to me. A major highway of a capital city brought to a standstill by a few rogue bus drivers. And the police, seemingly, unable to do anything about it.

Much ado about nothing?

We cycled beyond the prone bus drivers and angry policemen and past further miles of the shiny, stationary, motorised centipede.

The next day Dev told me why the bus drivers had parked their buses.

A ten year old girl had been raped, and the police weren’t prosecuting.

 In the absence of justice, people had protested in the only way they could.