The Hindu : 'Hitech City' has no time for schoolgirls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 16, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

'Hitech City' has no time for schoolgirls

By Harichandan A.A.

BANGALORE Dec. 15. This is about a little incident on Coles Road, on a typical weekend morning. BMTC buses are always packed and overflowing, with the younger, more bravado inclined, hanging by two fingers and a toe during peak hours, especially in the morning. As one of these buses swerved onto Coles Road from Mosque Road, a bag came flying out of the front door of the bus.

A closer look showed that it was a heavily loaded school bag; that it was heavily loaded was the reason that it landed in the middle of the road. Now, the bag instantly became another obstacle to be avoided, like potholes, and cow dung.

First an autorickshaw driver avoided the bag with his customary élan, blinding a two-wheeler rider; the rear footrest of the motorcycle missed the bag by a whisker.

A second bus swerved onto the road and took the bag right between its two wheels, and so after passing over the bag, didn't hurt it. A passing cow was undecided on its choice of a good spot in the middle of the traffic to relieve itself, dropped the dung close to the bag. All the while, a group of people having breakfast at a restaurant was enjoying the little diversion from their every-morning drudgery of idlis.

The footboard travellers on the bus that threw out the bag could still see the bag; somehow it never occurred to them that the bus should be stopped so that the owner of the bag could retrieve it. Nor did the thought occur to the autorickshaw driver or the motorcycle rider behind him or all those people tucking into their breakfasts at the restaurant.

By a piece of good fortune, about 100 yards or so, the bus had a stop. Now all the people, who were thinking of the fate of the bag with the same intensity as they would the fate of the protagonist in their favourite soap, saw something that should have shamed them into action, but didn't: a little girl in blue school uniform jumped out of the bus, with tears streaming down her face, running towards her bag, unmindful of the deadly traffic.

But maybe there is hope, for, after all those people who could have picked up the bag and stopped the bus, came a smart young girl almost zipping by on a scooter. She, saw the bag, managed to decelerate, and picked up the bag and returned it to its little owner before worse happened. We don't know if the bus waited for the little girl, but the teenager had a grin on her face as she rubbed her biceps, which had got some exercise from the heavy school bag.

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