Culture Shock

The moment I step on an Indian bus, especially one with arms and shoulders bulging out the windows, I know I'm not paying 5 Rupees for a ride to my destination. I'm paying the equivalent of 15 U.S. cents in order to pass through the entire spectrum of human emotion. My first Indian bus ride was naive euphoria: “I'm really sitting here on this contraption of rusted scrap metal held together by grass-green paint that miraculously moves people from Point A to Point B by guzzling government-subsidized gas – cool!” I still like boarding the bus; there's a touch of suspense as to whether you'll successfully out-elbow the thirteen 4'9” women vying for two available seats. I usually lose. Then I settle into the swaying pose of the standing women: right hand above the head holding the bar, feet firmly planted, eyes glazed over but facing forward. When one is unfortunate enough to be pushed towards the middle of the bus, the appearance of cold alertness aimed at the mass of men smashed up behind you is necessary.

The miracle of Indian buses, aside from the fact that they run, is the bus conductor. Somehow one man manages to worm his way through spaces of maximum human density and know which 3 people out of 100 need to pay. The bus is his domain – the men back off and the women change seats at his command, he balances without support in front of the open door, and your exact change bounces out of his leather bag even when the bus hits potholes. But most importantly he governs who gets off, when, and how.

I experienced a new extreme on the spectrum of human emotion last week. Anger. Passionate anger. But I don't want this word to limit the emotion, because it was a reaction to a violation of the social system of justice as I understood it to exist on the Indian bus. My friend Heidi and I were on a familiar route to Nirmala College, where I do research, when the bus stopped two stops from our destination and everyone got off. Why I do still do not know – the driver probably needed a cup of chai tea. We had already ridden buses for two hours that morning, checked into a roach-infested hotel room, and caught this bus in an attempt to arrive on time to my appointment with a testy nun who does not tolerate tardiness. We were already late. I was not feeling chipper as we began walking. Suddenly our bus conductor was running up behind us and shouting. He had flagged down a passing bus and we boarded while he spoke with the new conductor in Tamil. This had happened to me before – he was telling the new guy, “They've already paid.” The bus pulled out. The new conductor turned to me.
“Two rupees.”
I pointed at my old bus conductor still standing in the dust on the side of the road.
“He told you we already paid. No.”
“Two rupees!”
“I saw you talk to the other bus conductor. We've already paid!”
He smirked and shrugged his shoulders. “Two rupees.” He pushed two wadded up tickets into my fist.
Silence and aversion of the eyes. My stop was twenty seconds away.
“Two rupees!”
Thicker silence. All of the women on the bus were now staring at Heidi and me.
The bus slowed. I was going to get off this bus without being ripped off if only as an act of defiance against everything already going wrong.
“Two rupees!” He grabbed the bars on either side of the steps and placed his body in front of the door.
Was he seriously going to physically retain us?
“You know we already paid! Let me off this bus!” I tried pushing past one clenched arm. It reached out and thrust me up the aisle.
You dirty man, you did not just touch me. The leering advances of every drunk on the night bus could not disgust me as much as that one push. The bus rattled to a stop; I attacked. Two blazing eyes of hatred, two hands on his arm and shoulder, one swift push and...I was stumbling backward as his hands on my shoulders shoved me into the console. Assault! In my mind I had already pushed back; he was sailing down the steps and tumbling into the dirt.

Heidi touched my arm. “Let's go.”
O horrors. What was I doing? What was I about to do?

I unzipped my plastic coin purse. I stood through the humiliation of waiting for change. The doorway was clear and I climbed down the steps. No presence of mind, no fire left in me; to all of this loss, I could only say, “You are a liar!” which he couldn't even understand.

We walked away from the bus stop. We walked through the college gates. Heidi was patting my shoulder and telling me how surprised but proud she was that I had stood up to him. My hands were shaking. All I wanted to do was retreat from the angry nun waiting for me and cry.

No one had said anything on the bus – the driver, the men in the back, the wide-eyed women. I was only a girl and it was only two rupees. But more shameful than that was my complete loss of control. Can I honestly blame culture shock? I've been laughing over this story for over a week now, but yesterday when I boarded a bus and discovered that my arch nemesis was collecting my fare, I shrunk inside. He took my change, I took my ticket, and nothing happened.