Last week at 9 pm one evening my husband Niranjan and I boarded a AC sleeper night bus in Bangalore to travel to Mangalore. The journey takes roughly ten hours and the bus was to reach Mangalore at 7 am next morning. As we got the bus, we stopped and stared around in amazement. It was not like any bus we had seen earlier. There was a passage along both sides of which there were berths in two tiers. On the right side of the passage, the berths were of the size that we get when we travel in three tier AC compartment of a train-about six feet long and two and a half feet wide. However, it was the size of the berths at the left side of the passage that startled us. There were supposed to be two berths there, but instead we found there a single queen size double bed- about six feet long and four and a half feet wide. It was a typical double bed alright, with a decent foam mattress, one plain bed sheet which had seen better days, two pillows and two blankets folded neatly at the foot. There wasn't even a token partition of a curtain or a pillow or a separation of some kind on the double bed. And yes, since the whole bus was two tiered, so there were some lower double beds and some upper double beds. There were curtains to shield all berths/double beds from prying eyes and to provide them complete privacy.
Niranjan and I sat on our bed wondering what would two strangers do for achieving privacy if all the single berths were booked already and they ever had the misfortune to get one of the left side berths (say-one half of the double bed). In case the person who had window side portion of the double bed needed to get off the bed, he would have to jump over his/her sleeping berth- mate. However, that was not the worst thing that could happen to him as we learnt later in the course of our journey.
Niranjan and I sat on our bed wondering what would two strangers do for achieving privacy if all the single berths were booked already and they ever had the misfortune to get one of the left side berths (say-one half of the double bed). In case the person who had window side portion of the double bed needed to get off the bed, he would have to jump over his/her sleeping berth- mate. However, that was not the worst thing that could happen to him as we learnt later in the course of our journey.
As the bus started, we both lay down on our double bed tried to relax and sleep. I had chosen the window side of berth. The bus reached the highway and it picked up speed. Then the unexpected fun began.
We had to negotiate some ghats(hilly areas) as we drove towards Mangalore. Every time the bus took a sharp right turn, Niranjan rolled and collided with me as I rolled towards the bus wall. The roll in the opposite direction happened every time the bus took a left turn and the only reason we did not fall off the bed in the passage was the metal ladder which was midway along the length of the bed for the use of the upper double bed users and which stopped our free fall. In between all these collisions all the examples that we had studied about the centrifugal force in our high school Physics text books came back to haunt us. After our first giggles at our predicament were over,we began envying the single berth owners who did not have so much rolling space and as a result were being thrown about by much less distances.
Since there was no partition between us, we could not help colliding with each other. I suppose the same thing was happening on all the double beds, more so on the ones on the upper story. As we found it impossible to sleep with all these jerks and collisions, we decided that our best option would be to hold each other tight and try to sleep. That way, there would be two advantages, Firstly, we would be saved from the collisions. Secondly, because of the increased mass of our combined body mass, the inertia would be much more and rolling of the two- body- bundle would be slower and the collision with the bus wall would be less forceful. And I am not even talking about the romantic connotations involved!
All the pieces of luggage stored under the beds and the footwear of all passengers followed the same laws of centrifugal force and were sliding with the turns of the bus on the winding road making us wonder how we would locate and untangle our respective possessions in that haphazard mass. To top it all this inconvenience the driver declared that we would be given just one fifteen minute break in our ten hour ordeal of a journey. He rode roughshod over the protests of the passengers saying that he has to get the passengers to Mangalore early in the morning as some of them have to attend offices that day.
In spite of the incessant tossing and turning we managed to get some broken bits of sleep and reached Mangalore in one piece each in reasonably good state of health. Still, I do not think I would ever dare to undertake another bus journey on this route aboard the sleeper night bus in a hurry. However, I will definitely advise it to couples who are encountering some cooling off in there relationship.....it just might help and rekindle the old passions!
We had to negotiate some ghats(hilly areas) as we drove towards Mangalore. Every time the bus took a sharp right turn, Niranjan rolled and collided with me as I rolled towards the bus wall. The roll in the opposite direction happened every time the bus took a left turn and the only reason we did not fall off the bed in the passage was the metal ladder which was midway along the length of the bed for the use of the upper double bed users and which stopped our free fall. In between all these collisions all the examples that we had studied about the centrifugal force in our high school Physics text books came back to haunt us. After our first giggles at our predicament were over,we began envying the single berth owners who did not have so much rolling space and as a result were being thrown about by much less distances.
Since there was no partition between us, we could not help colliding with each other. I suppose the same thing was happening on all the double beds, more so on the ones on the upper story. As we found it impossible to sleep with all these jerks and collisions, we decided that our best option would be to hold each other tight and try to sleep. That way, there would be two advantages, Firstly, we would be saved from the collisions. Secondly, because of the increased mass of our combined body mass, the inertia would be much more and rolling of the two- body- bundle would be slower and the collision with the bus wall would be less forceful. And I am not even talking about the romantic connotations involved!
All the pieces of luggage stored under the beds and the footwear of all passengers followed the same laws of centrifugal force and were sliding with the turns of the bus on the winding road making us wonder how we would locate and untangle our respective possessions in that haphazard mass. To top it all this inconvenience the driver declared that we would be given just one fifteen minute break in our ten hour ordeal of a journey. He rode roughshod over the protests of the passengers saying that he has to get the passengers to Mangalore early in the morning as some of them have to attend offices that day.
In spite of the incessant tossing and turning we managed to get some broken bits of sleep and reached Mangalore in one piece each in reasonably good state of health. Still, I do not think I would ever dare to undertake another bus journey on this route aboard the sleeper night bus in a hurry. However, I will definitely advise it to couples who are encountering some cooling off in there relationship.....it just might help and rekindle the old passions!
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