DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A HUMOUROUS PIECE, NOT INTENDED TO OFFEND ALL PEOPLE WITH BEARDS, JUST THE ONES WHO ANNOY ME.
A trip on the Pakistani motorway via bus tends to be marred by the Daewoo Company’s unceasing proclivity towards profit maximization by serving sub standard food and charging increasingly higher fares. The month of Ramzan however, does bring with it a welcome departure from convention. Though one cannot eat, drink, smoke or even curse in public till dusk, the good people at Daewoo Bus Co. feel generous enough to feed their customers a stale samosa and a whole sandwich. On a non-Ramzan day, traveling by the Daewoo Bus Co. seems to entail being given a dry piece of bread and being told one can spread mayonnaise on said dry object by using the tiny single-serving packet provided without the use of any utensils.
One’s journey can become arduous and tiresome when one discovers that the passenger seated next to one is keen to talk. Weary of talking to people who like to scratch their privates in public, one can feign sleep or use the I-am-an-important-writer/teacher/researcher-who-cannot-put-down-his-laptop-for-lack-of-time excuse. The former is a classic all time winner that people may just have used during partition to ignore their future neighbours. “Oh dear, is s/he going to be living in the same city as me when I get to Pakistan/India? And this person likes to talk. I shall feign sleep and therefore shall not have to partake in annoying banter. Oh look, I'm already asleep. No wait, I'm awake now and it seems someone stopped the train and killed us all. We're a ghost train now. So I won't have to live in the same city as that bugger anymore. Well that all ended quite splendidly!" While this can work out rather well, the latter is a bit harder to get away with. If the neighbouring passenger has the slightest of social graces, s/he will realize that the person next to him/her is busy and should not be disturbed. However, one often comes across those who feel compelled to ask what one does for a living and how much one earns. It is as if the rules that govern polite society and social discourse are forgotten and done away with. “Hello, I don’t know you but because you seem to be working, I feel compelled to interrupt you ask you how much money you make. After all, if we are sharing a bus together, we must become bosom buddies”.
Unlike Edward Norton’s character Tyler Durden in Fight Club, not everyone is willing to befriend whoever is sitting next to him (even if the friend is a single serving friend on a single serving flight filled with little single serving whiskey bottles and single serving little pats of butter). There are times on the bus when one might want to murder the person sitting next to him in a fit of anger and/or revulsion.
Suppose one does have a genuine deadline to meet and one keeps being distracted by strange sounds of which the source is the strange bearded creature next to him. As the creature tries unsuccessfully to clean its teeth using only its tongue, strange sucking sounds are made with the organ that resonate from from the creature's frontal orifice. One emits a loud dramatic sigh and resigns oneself to life. In this particular case, the creature refused to accept defeat for the better part of an hour. Oral efforts having failed, the creature decided to use its fingernails to pull out the offending piece of cow/spinich from betwixt its teeth which thankfully stopped the offending noise. However, as the first rule of traveling goes, when one is in a public confined space, a baby must start crying. Since throwing a child out of the bus seems a bit excessive and might amount to attempted murder, one refrains from harming little-junior *expletive deleted* and goes on with life trying to pretend that the few sane brain cells he had left before the bus trip are still alive. And just as one makes peace with the fact that he will not go insane on the bus or commit harakiri with a pen, the bearded creature decides to make that horrid sucking-cow-flesh-stuck-in-teeth-noise again. *Expletive deleted*!
A trip on the Pakistani motorway via bus tends to be marred by the Daewoo Company’s unceasing proclivity towards profit maximization by serving sub standard food and charging increasingly higher fares. The month of Ramzan however, does bring with it a welcome departure from convention. Though one cannot eat, drink, smoke or even curse in public till dusk, the good people at Daewoo Bus Co. feel generous enough to feed their customers a stale samosa and a whole sandwich. On a non-Ramzan day, traveling by the Daewoo Bus Co. seems to entail being given a dry piece of bread and being told one can spread mayonnaise on said dry object by using the tiny single-serving packet provided without the use of any utensils.
One’s journey can become arduous and tiresome when one discovers that the passenger seated next to one is keen to talk. Weary of talking to people who like to scratch their privates in public, one can feign sleep or use the I-am-an-important-writer/teacher/researcher-who-cannot-put-down-his-laptop-for-lack-of-time excuse. The former is a classic all time winner that people may just have used during partition to ignore their future neighbours. “Oh dear, is s/he going to be living in the same city as me when I get to Pakistan/India? And this person likes to talk. I shall feign sleep and therefore shall not have to partake in annoying banter. Oh look, I'm already asleep. No wait, I'm awake now and it seems someone stopped the train and killed us all. We're a ghost train now. So I won't have to live in the same city as that bugger anymore. Well that all ended quite splendidly!" While this can work out rather well, the latter is a bit harder to get away with. If the neighbouring passenger has the slightest of social graces, s/he will realize that the person next to him/her is busy and should not be disturbed. However, one often comes across those who feel compelled to ask what one does for a living and how much one earns. It is as if the rules that govern polite society and social discourse are forgotten and done away with. “Hello, I don’t know you but because you seem to be working, I feel compelled to interrupt you ask you how much money you make. After all, if we are sharing a bus together, we must become bosom buddies”.
Unlike Edward Norton’s character Tyler Durden in Fight Club, not everyone is willing to befriend whoever is sitting next to him (even if the friend is a single serving friend on a single serving flight filled with little single serving whiskey bottles and single serving little pats of butter). There are times on the bus when one might want to murder the person sitting next to him in a fit of anger and/or revulsion.
Suppose one does have a genuine deadline to meet and one keeps being distracted by strange sounds of which the source is the strange bearded creature next to him. As the creature tries unsuccessfully to clean its teeth using only its tongue, strange sucking sounds are made with the organ that resonate from from the creature's frontal orifice. One emits a loud dramatic sigh and resigns oneself to life. In this particular case, the creature refused to accept defeat for the better part of an hour. Oral efforts having failed, the creature decided to use its fingernails to pull out the offending piece of cow/spinich from betwixt its teeth which thankfully stopped the offending noise. However, as the first rule of traveling goes, when one is in a public confined space, a baby must start crying. Since throwing a child out of the bus seems a bit excessive and might amount to attempted murder, one refrains from harming little-junior *expletive deleted* and goes on with life trying to pretend that the few sane brain cells he had left before the bus trip are still alive. And just as one makes peace with the fact that he will not go insane on the bus or commit harakiri with a pen, the bearded creature decides to make that horrid sucking-cow-flesh-stuck-in-teeth-noise again. *Expletive deleted*!
