I wrote my last high school exam a few days ago, and will be heading off to college soon. Since the emotions that follow are indescribable, I’d like to direct my focus to a seemingly mundane aspect of my school life – the commute. Grinding wheels, bellowing vehicles, torrents of people, shops that line the crammed streets – these are sights I grew accustomed to the second I started my schooling in India (which was over a decade ago). However, the duration of my commute got longer only recently, when I switched schools. I remember how concerned I was at first – for how would I be able to complete my homework if I was stuck in a school-bus for an hour and a half after school?
And sure enough, that concern shone strong in the first few weeks – but thankfully diminished over time, giving me the mental space to think about what it meant to traverse my city on a daily basis. In retrospect, I believe that the many hours I spent on the bus endowed me with a familiarity with my surroundings. I’ve lived in Bangalore for most of my life, and will be going to the United States for college soon; and I can thank my commute for the close relationship I have with the city streets, signals, directions, and buildings. The people I see through my window always vary, a deluge of brightly-colored clothes and expressions that touch the entire gamut of human emotion. But my city remains the same – granite interspersed with precious greenery, roads you can glide on and roads that can shake a massive vehicle, signs of varying sizes plastered on storefronts… the list is endless.
If you’re busy enough, it can be so easy to get trapped in a bubble – a bubble of work, deadlines, and friends – and to forget what it really means to live in a city as diverse as mine. And more often than not, I would fall prey to the same tendency. But I’m so glad that my last year spent in India was characterized by hour-long sessions of looking out the window, inhaling the vibrant views, watching the movements of people (each with their own lives and dreams and ambitions), taking comfort from the familiar sights, and yet finding excitement in the different ones. There would be the same, sweet-looking lady selling flowers by the roadside almost every day, and the same point would always be choked with vast amounts of traffic. There are billowing plumes of smoke emerging from vehicles (which cause me distress); but at the same time, I see young plants lining the streets and grand trees arched in a canopy. There is beauty mingled with mayhem, creating a bizarre sense of perfection that only a disorderly city can boast of.
And so, I thank my commute for granting me a precious intimacy with a world within a world. Although it would occasionally make me fidget, or tire me to the point that my schoolwork would go unfinished, I thank it. I appreciate the long hours I spent with a city I’ll leave soon, and know that the memories I spent in the bus are far more powerful than any memories I could make at my study desk.