A tire burst, an ethical sardar and a Web Techie – Mumbai-Pune!

Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai-Pune all in less that 48 hours. Yes, made 2 to-n-fro trips in the last 2 days.
Grandmom passed away day before, so I decided to come to Pune to be with mom for some time. Was Thursday evening, didn’t want any trouble en-route, so promptly decided to take the ever-dependable MSRTC Shivneri Volvo! Little did I know, what was in store.

Well, was just reading some stuff on the laptop…un-eventful journey…at least half way!
Was wondering as to what I was going to blog about – since this was such a boring journey….the only eventful thing was the chilling AC!

And then it happened….like a mini earthquake and then a boom followed by a bang!
I thought we’d crashed into someone in the front…but it was a tire which had blown and the bus had crashed into the road divider.

Oh o…..
Well, exciting part was I was going to have something to write up – depressing part apart from getting late was that I was not carrying my camera. The odds of catching me without my camera are less….but had left it at my place for charging the batteries.

There was pandemonium in the middle of the express-way! Only thing was no one stopped there to help…it was just the 30 of us. It took nearly 30 mins to assess the damage and decide on a move. I was part of the core management team out there :-)
Well, a back-up bus would take at least 2-3 hours….the damage supposedly wasn’t too much and we decided to change the tires and see if it would be possible to go ahead.

It really pissed me off when me and another chap were the only ones helping the poor driver change a 100Kg tire! A stern – Can we please have some light here….got me 14 cel screens beaming at the tire.

Changing tires is not a joke, especially if it’s a mega bus! It took around 1 hour to change the tire and another 30 mins to wrap up stuff and hook the burst tire back up under the belly of the Volvo…that’s when we all got back in….the sweet aroma of burning rubber lingered on. The driver brought the engine back to life….and the bus refused to budge. One could actually feel the tension in the bus. 30 chaps…praying to god…egging the bus to move….the engine purred and then roared….3 min 47 seconds after it had been brought back to life….the bus finally decided to roll!
Slowly at first….a little faster after that….but the driver had decided to go easy on the gas.
Slept off soon and woke up after the bus had crossed my place….had to walk back for around 20 mins. Reached home quite exhausted around 1AM

Had to get back to Mumbai the next day. Mom was catching a flight from there and I was to accompany her. Change in travel mode: Indica – AC – Cool Cab!
This was the first time in like a million pune-mumbai trips that I was going to travel in a cool cab….that too in total comfort!
We had a pretty aged Sardar-ji as our driver. My mom poured on the sweetness right from the start. Rather than going straight to the airport, we wanted to go to Parel…pick my sister up from her hospital and then to the airport. Took us some good amount of convincing – till he said it’ll cost extra and that we had to sign a piece of paper too and call the cool cab office and let them know of the diversion! Here he had a chance to make a quick buck, but he just didn’t seem interested. Well mom was impressed by his driving for some reason (I doubt the speed-o-meter went above 85 km/hr during the entire journey) – so she enquired if she could avail of the same cab during her return journey – to which she was greeted with a stern ‘No’. He only queued up at the official Cool Cab line. Nice to such people still exist.
Well nothing else worth mentioning about the journey…except for perhaps a delightful pizza at the food stop.

Saturday evening…time to make another of these trips. This time I just wanted to go to pune n chill. Needed a mental break….was quite a mess in the head.
But! I love adventure of course….so tried out the 3rd mode of commuting. The ever-reliable Deccan Queen (train)!
Office is at colaba – it takes more time getting to vashi from there…than vashi Mumbai! And one actually gets to save some time in the train…or so I thought!

No! no train accidents this time around. Was rather an uneventful journey. Read the 5kg 500 paged Times of India. Subscribing to TOI provides the perfect ROI I feel. One can actually make a profit by selling the raddi. Anyways, the paper kept me busy for around an hour n a half….the remaining was spent talking up to this jobless techie…who was in mumbai searching for his dream job. Pretty smart for a small town chap….knew delicious, flickr, wikipedia, youtube n other web 2.0 stuff!
Time flew, I love talking about my work!

Got off at Shivajinagar stn at 8:10…exactly 3hours from Mumbai. Wow! Will reach home early - I thought. But a certain Mr. Ambedkar was having his jayanti celebrated on the streets and the ensuing traffic jam ensured that I reached my home at 10pm!

Well I love these journeys….a friend asked me today, ‘how can you tolerate so much traveling?’
I guess it’s the only time I get to relax n chill ;-)