The Mission of the Goose: A 21st Century Retake

I set off from Mysore, Karnataka a little over one day ago with a friend, Colin, who currently lives in Jaipur, Rajasthan studying Hindi.  Our departure was, from the start, unsure.  We had no tickets for the bus that departed Mysore 22 December; but a ticket broker suggested I bribe the bus captain, a man Colin and I affectionately nicknamed as 'Swami-ji'.  This is also the nickname of our Hindi teacher, and we temporarily fixed it to the bus captain because the appearance of the captain and our Hindi teacher resemble one another remarkably!  In executing their quite different duties, too, they use effective and efficient means.

We rode on the 'rajahams', or the "Goose King" class of Karnataka State Tourist bus.  Rajahams, though, was a leery king, and required numerous repairs during the routine journey.  Swami-ji called "Halt!" to the Goose King's mission no less than twice for extended periods to service the mechanical innards of the bus, still very pregnant with passengers on board.  Weather-beaten, dented and rusting shells add a surreal, almost comic effect to most Indian buses that otherwise glide along smoothly, safely shuttling a closely quartered community in time-tested metal as black plumes and gooslings straggle after it.  The Goose King, something of an inversion, bore neither dents nor rusting shell; the only thing surreal about this Goose's tale is how ruffled our ride was.

About one hour into the trip, we pulled into a bus depot and many passengers disembarked for a smoke and tea break.   On Swami-ji's order the Goose King advanced to the depot's garage with passengers, caught midway through break, frantically running from behind to jump on board.  Most of them made it as we parked under a large shed over mechanics, who quickly got to work on the underbelly of the bus.  About twenty minutes later, the technicians completed the first servicing and the mission to Cochin resumed.

Colin remarked to me, "The sound of the gears' grinding has gone away."
And I replied in Hindi, "jagad gaya [It's been temporarily fixed].  Just wait a few minutes," as I handed to him a headphone from the iPod.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later the sound of metal grinding on metal would again drowned a mixture of songs compiled on the eve of this great adventure.  As darkness fell and Karnataka State boundary gave way to Kerala, signs indicating "Tiger Crossing.  Drive with extreme caution and refrain from use of horn" showed that we had entered a wildlife preserve in South India.   The winding and narrow road shifted the prime perspective out the bus's front window from Colin's view to mine.  Along this long two-lane, underdeveloped stretch of wilderness, Swami-ji's unflinching gaze upon the negotiations between traffickers provided my only comforts despite a number of close calls and thoughts of sure collision.

The Goose King's mission was proceeding smoothly until a string of uniquely colorful goods carriers obstructed the left lane.  Of course, then, the Goose King, along with the rest of the flock, bore right to continue south and avoid the large, colorful distractions.  But southerners were also heading north, and the ensuing bottleneck on an otherwise apparently desolate road in the middle of a tiger preserve in South India revealed the size of the flock in the form of a traffic jam.  Pitch black forest peppered with "Tiger Crossing" signs and rife with competing calls of cars' back-up songs gave light to unending, motionless traffic in a situation that seemed to be the stuff of a horror film.

Fire suddenly ignited aboard the bus and filled the cabin with smoke.  We drew our handkerchiefs and stuck our heads out the window, whereupon I engaged the man in a neighboring goods carrier in Hindi: "kya huaa? [What happened?]" I asked him.

The man, smiling just a bit too much (maybe from a white man's Hindi?), reported, "aage bahut log mar gaye the [many people died]" in an accident that occurred ahead on the road.  Minutes later, however, he let me know he was joking and told me about a checkpoint forty meters from where the Goose King sat, motionless, filled with smoke; Swami-ji had the on-board extinguisher in hand and was quickly putting an end to the brake fire.

He lit up a beedi smoke and we, his gooslings, knew that everything was going to be O.K.  The brakes had burned, though, and another repair was necessary.  We proceeded slowly to the next depot as the driver kept the extinguisher close at hand to quell the fire as it reignited en route to the garage.

With most passengers on board the bus, our midway twenty-minute break turned into a long repair (read despair).

"kitna samay lagaega? [How much time will it take?]" I asked a man who guided the Goose King up a small ramp.
"Das minute. [Ten minutes]," replied the man, smiling.

And I braced myself for the longest "das minute" (read two and a half hours) repair I've ever sat through.  I pulled out my iPod and reached for photocopies of Panini to spend the time reviewing some grammar under the fluorescent light of the garage.

In the cool breeze of the Goose King's post-repair resumption to the road, due to a now tired brain and body, Colin and I fell peacefully asleep.  That sleep wasn't to be interrupted again until loud sounds of low-gear awoke me to signage reading "Tenth hairpin turn."  I don't know how many hairpin turns preceded, but when the next sign shortly came into view, "Ninth hairpin turn," I braced myself for several minutes of discomfort and prayer.  Now a hairpin turn I have dealt with before in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado; but in a state like Kerala, India public roads' projects are not up to the reassuring safety standards of the Western world.  My window, several rows back in the bus, at times edged over sheer cliffs whose elevation I could only estimate by the impecunious size of house lights and those of other cars in the distant valley below.  The elevation, in my estimation, was precipitous.

After a precipitated roadside repair of the Goose King's brakes the road's precipitousness made me fear for the integrity of my life (Colin's dreaming at this point), and brought to mind several conversations over tater-tots and grilled cheese that I have unwittingly engaged with three- and four-year-olds about the realities of life's end.  The only child this time, though, was my own inside.  Soothing reassurances like being able to be a princess, or to color a picture, did not offer to me the help I required in those moments as they have to the other children in my past.  So I dialed up a stotra on the iPod, and stared to the heavens as opposed to the deep, dark depths that plunged below me and beside the Goose King.  Here in Kerala the heavens are particularly visible, and the Milky Way was shining brightly.

The Goose King safely descended from the path's great heights, and came to rest peacefully in Cochin, Kerala at about 9:30 A.M. 23 December.  Colin and I disembarked the bus only to immediately board another bound for Allepey, Kerala--the Venice of India.