Some drama or other. Almost every day. Guess the best place to have one is in the BEST buses of Mumbai. The other day, I was busy reading about the credit card frauds that are becoming common these days when angry voices made me look up from the newspaper. 3 commuters had boarded from the front entrance of the bus - they looked positively angry. At first, I thought it was directed to either the driver or conductor of this bus. But it soon became evident from their conversation that the driver of the bus that they had recently got down from was responsible for that. Seems that he was driving the bus at snail's pace. I recalled an expression an examiner at the US DMV center, where I gave my first driving test, had used while referring to my driving skills, or lack thereof - you were turtling along! I was puzzled. We have have heard of the BEST drivers and their rash driving all over Mumbai roads. This slow-driving was unheard of, well, until now at least.

The driver and conductor of the bus I was riding in heartily joined the discussion. The sole male from the trio of commuters was most vocal in volunteering the facts - the driver had been doing this since the past 3 days, when they confronted him he said that he was suffering from loose motions (enough of a reason for a commuter to get out of the bus, in my humble opinion!), they were in danger of missing their morning punching time and losing over a thousand rupees or so. The driver and conductor made sympathetic noises but seemed more amused than surprised.

Two hapless ticket checkers happened to be present at two of the bus stop en route. The trio made it a point to complain to them and requesting that the offending driver who happened to be driving the bus somewhere behind us be reprimanded. The ticket checkers said they would look into this. The bus chugged on ahead, the matter was forgotten and I was able to return to my article on credit card fraud.