O GOD THESE BUSES I TELL U!

“Such interesting buses you have!” That’s what my cousin, living in abroad used to say about the Pakistani public buses. Our colorful and speedy vehicles excite her a lot. Last time when she was here, I took her to the ride of W11 :)

When we were about to leave home to get the bus, she asked for the nearest bus stop. I told her that there is no need to go to a bus stand. We just have to reach the main road, give our hand to the bus and it will stop right there. She was extremely glad to hear that.

We didn’t get to wait too long and in a matter of few minutes, I saw a bus coming. I gave it a hand to stop and as I expected, the bus was fully loaded and people were badly squeezed against each other. Few of the unlucky ones were also sitting on the roof or hanging at the stair of the bus. Men had also occupied the women compartment, as on the rear side no more space was left. My cousin was puzzled to see the crowd in the bus. I knew that the bus would not wait for us more than few more seconds, so I hold her hand and pushed her into the bus. At first when the bus started she lost her grip and fell on a woman sitting at the corner seat. The woman started abusing her in a language, weird for her. With God's grace, one of the women got off the bus and we finally saw a vacant seat. I told her to grab the place as soon as she can, she obeyed.

As she saw people banging the door of the bus vigorously, she asked me the reason. I told her that these are kinds of signals that passengers use to tell the driver, who used to be busy in spinning a roller coaster's wheel, what they want. If you bang the door once that means you want the bus to get stopped. Doing it twice is to tell the driver that you've got into the bus and he can continue the journey. To my surprise, this time she didn’t say anything. As W11 is the fastest moving automobile of Karachi and doesn’t required to follow any signal or traffic law, we reached to our destination in no time.

Now the most difficult part was to get my cousin off the bus. I asked her to follow me and not to stop for saying sorry. We pushed everyone coming on our way to the door. I gave a bang on the door and shouted loud to ask the driver to stop. As you know stopping the bus doesn’t mean that it would actually stop rather it is, that the driver would slow down the speed but the bus would still keep moving. I told my cousin, who till that moment was completely lost, that even after getting out of the bus, she needs to keep moving in forward course or otherwise she’ll fall down. She took a deep breath and followed what I said.

When I came to a stable position, I looked for my poor cousin, who was completely fuddled. We went to a nearby restaurant where I gave her a seat and ordered a glass of water for her. When she got her breath back, I asked her about the ride. She very naively said again “Such interesting buses you have”, but this time her face was telling another story. Till that moment, I had lost all the strength to hold myself and started laughing like a mad-man, God these buses I tell u! :)

Colors

Colors are life to me. God has conceptualized this world and the others probably, in and with colors. Everything that we see around gives us the proof of its presence and uniqueness by its color. Water, grass, moon, sand, sky, and stars everything can be distinguished from the other by the color God has given to it. Even we humans have been categorized by colors and this difference is our most visible distinction.

It has a cultural impact on our lives too. For few people color black is the sign of mourning and bereavement, whereas for others it is a symbol of honor, life and achievement. Similar is the case with white, where in some cultures it is associated with purity and peace, for the others it represents death.

Colors also show our social distinctions. Our color demonstrates that from which ethnic group we belong to. Skin color ranges from whites, browns and its darker tones. In that case skin color also becomes a factor in the definition of race. The preferred skin tone varies by the culture and norm of a particular society.

Color is everything. It signifies life, nature, human behaviors, feelings, actions, reactions. Hence by and large, it plays a vitally important role in the world in which we live!