Bus to elections

The Metro Bus in Lahore has been discussed at two levels, as a bus aimed towards elections, and its controversial economics. However, it was also a dream. Six years ago, Shahbaz Sharif’s wife and son Suleman were visiting London. He took them out for lunch and shopping. I happened to be there too and was asked to join them. While the family went about their business, we talked about the issues facing Pakistan. Shahbaz was impressed by the public transport in London: the easily available red buses, rapid underground, the taxis and the linkage with the rail system and the affordability of it all. Why can’t we do it in Lahore? Don’t Pakistanis deserve better? Shouldn’t the poor travel with dignity?

I was not invited to the inaugural ride of the Metro Bus. Nor did I try the free ride the following week. My wife and I boarded the bus on a normal day by paying the subsidised fare. The purpose was to see the extent to which the London dream had been realised. We boarded at the Model Town stop. Despite the modern look, the sheen was off at many places. Since the escalator was not functioning, we had to use the stairs, which are already looking like those at the railway station. At the ticketing counter, there was a protesting crowd rather than queues, having waited for an hour for the tokens. Some were contemplating forcing their way through the barrier. “What happened to the tokens,” I asked the man behind the window. “Fewer buses, breakdowns, too many passengers” were offered as excuses. “Come after half an hour” is what I was told. A policeman on duty pestered him to hurry up before the crowd got violent. He started making frantic calls to the man responsible for recovering tokens from the machine, who apparently was moonlighting somewhere and was not taking calls.



We got onto the platform eventually, where men and women have separate entrances. A courteous volunteer offered to let me know in time that my wife had boarded, so I could too. A bus arrived in 15 minutes. No one could get in or get out. One thought there were no passengers for the stop. We discovered later that it is hard to get in and harder to get out. We were able to push into the next bus. I could not get past the automatic door and would have been sandwiched, had I not quickly trampled on the feet of the bystanders. There I was for a few minutes, then pushed and tossed around until I found the back of a seat to lean on. The roof support I noticed had more load than it could take. The woman occupying the seat wanted to leave at the next stop but couldn’t. Sardined for the next 10 minutes, I was unable to breathe and wanted to get out quickly. However, I was too squashed by fellow travellers to be able to reach for my cell to tell my wife to do the same.

Resigned to fate, I closed my eyes. Other than the passengers crammed together, I could not see anything anyway. As visibility improved slightly beyond the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh, I noticed that a number of crossings were still unprotected. From there to Shahdara, the last stop, it felt like any other bus on the road. The exit machine at Shahdara was stuck. Tokens were collected manually and the passengers had to squeeze through an extremely narrow space. My wife had a similar sardine-like experience on the women’s side. Stares and sexist comments from men were in addition. A large crowd was battling to enter the single bus at Shahadara to go towards Gajumata. We, however, took the good old rickshaw to head home.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2013.