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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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The Lede |
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Around Town |
Back to the Frontest
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| A ride on Bombay’s vanishing double-decker buses |
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Published : 1 January 2012 |
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ARKO DATTA / REUTERS |
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| A double-decker bus speeds past Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
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EMEMBER JACKSON MARUTI? The brand of choice for those who keep tissues in their cars? Well, looking down from the upper deck of a Bombay double-decker bus, you learn something vital: an awful lot of cars carry them. By itself, in a basket, in an ornate faux-silver box; whichever it is, easily three of every four cars around us, on a recent double-decker |
ride, had a box stashed on that package shelf below the rear windscreen.
Consider: could you have divined that magnificent bit of useless trivia from ground level? Naah! That’s why we can all use an occasional upper-deck excursion.
I’m reliving my youth, I am. In the 1960s, my father was GM of Bombay’s Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST), the government organisation that runs the public bus system in the city. When he teased me, I’d snap: “Won’t take you on the double-decker bus!” And we would laugh endlessly over the complaint he got as GM: “When I got myself seated on the left hand last but one seat on right flank of the upper deck, I had to immediately get up with immense pain because a pointed nail was functioning like a dagger.” Who could take that seriously? But would there even be such a complaint today? How many even see upper decks now?
Bombayites of a certain vintage, double-deckers shaped us. Sorrowfully, we’ve watched them disappear from several routes—123 along windy Marine Drive, how could you, BEST?—and drift out of our lives. They’re not yet museum pieces, but it’s a challenge to find and use them.
But challenges must be tackled.
So I’m in what we, as kids, used to call the “frontest” seat: the one right at the front of the upper deck, breeze gusting, bus swaying. I’m on BEST’s Route 122 out of Ballard Pier. I went there because BEST’s 66, Ballard Pier to Sion, used to operate double-deckers. Thought I’d travel this Route 66—get my kicks, you know—not least because when I drove another one some years ago through New Mexico, a double-decker rumbled past.
Alas! At Ballard Pier, a conductor shakes his head: “We stopped using double-deckers months ago.” In fact, he says, BEST no longer runs them on long-haul routes like 66. He suggests 122, to Churchgate, and some other shuttles downtown. Which I take, frontest every time.
It’s been years since I was here, and I have forgotten the vertiginous alarm from looking out and down. The height distorts your judgement of distance, so you imagine the bus will run over anyone, anything, in front. Like the woman pushing a cart with several naked tubelights sticking up. Tubelights! Thoughts of smashed cart and tubelight smithereens turn my stomach. I lean out to yell a warning. Blithely, she saunters on.
Moving like a clumsy caterpillar, just beyond, is another double-decker, decked up as an ad for Stardust magazine—some fetching starlet’s long thighs and ample cleavage all over its side. I run down, cross the street, just catch the Stardust bus and climb up. There, an inordinate number of women—15?—have on white earphones and stare stonily ahead. What’s this, the annual convention of the South Bombay Upper Deck Handsfree Club, Women’s Section?
At the next stop, eight women rise and file downstairs in frosty handsfree silence. I can now reach, yes, my frontest.
The crowd thins as we approach Backbay Depot, the last stop. The conductor sits down across the narrow aisle, and asks in Marathi about my scribbling. “Go to Kurla,” he says. “311 or 313 there, not sure which, is a double-decker. That’s the only other double-decker route in all of Bombay.”
That he says, even while speaking Marathi, “Bombay”—and not “Mumbai”—somehow fits this reliving of nearly sepia-toned bus memories. Nostalgia: it’s in the little things.
Dilip D’Souza is a journalist living in Mumbai and the author of Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America.
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Jayashree
5 March 2012
04:03 AM
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311 and 313 both are double deckers plying between Santacruz East and Kurla West. I hope they don't discontinue them. I love these clumsy red caterpillars.
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Venkataramana Shetty
25 January 2012
10:28 PM
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On my several visits to Mumbai, I have travelled by bus and double-deckers. As a novice to Mumbai
I have enjoyed travelling by double-deckers. Sitting in Mysore, I am nostalgic.
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anurag
12 January 2012
10:45 PM
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Dilip, double decker bus was one of the main attraction for us a teen agers to visit Mumbai. It used to be one of the main tourist attraction.
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firoza
8 January 2012
09:42 AM
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Some of my happiest memories are of journeys in that very seat from opp. Rajabhai Clock Tower to beyond Dadar as well as the shorter trip each morning from Churchgate station to work at Voltas, Ballard Pier.
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A.J. Folkart
7 January 2012
03:18 AM
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Good, Dilip - I can imagine the sadness of the disappearance of these buses. When I was a child, long, long ago - 1940's - I watched in amazement as the trolley tracks were torn up all over Los Angeles. Even a five-year old knew it was stupid. But I later learned that the Good Year Tire Company, the fuel companies, the bus building companies had all pressured (with money in their hands, I'm sure) the transportation authority to sell the idea that buses were the 'modern' way to go to placate the irate citizens. Those trolleys were electric - quiet, pollution free, and their tracks were mostly on medians and through the back lanes of residential neighborhoods, so they didn't interfer with L.A. already over-abundant traffic.
But your essay struck a chord, played the tune of how things, good things, useful things, amusing things, just fade away. No announcement is made to the public - No More Double Deckers - they are just quietly taken out of service.
Did you ever find out why?
Thanks for the entertaining read - that closing, the the fellow said Bombay instead of Mumbai does really tell the whole story, doesn't it?
Alice
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Mira
6 January 2012
03:26 PM
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I'm quite quite sure Marol depot has double deckers.
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Shubha
6 January 2012
02:05 PM
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Anu loved to take the 123 from Tardeo to R.C.Church and back - with her kids.Almost every time she visited Bombay.She'll have to make do with the single decker now.Dommage !
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Abodh
6 January 2012
11:36 AM
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Hey Dilip! Nice piece. 108 goes to Walkeshwar and is not a double decker unfortunately and never was as far as I can remember.Many of the 138's still are and also the feeders from Churchgate to NP and VT to NP. . My fav will always be 123. I had written this some years back
The Double Decker bus on the BEST bus route no 123
Some years ago when they started converting the BEST double-decker buses into single-deckers, route no 123 was among the first to go. One of the ‘BEST’ routes in Mumbai, the 123 commences at Tardeo, takes the Marine Drive and goes right up to R.C. Church. As kids, we used to sit on the front seat of the upper deck and watch the world go by below us, through the busy Nana Chowk, the laburnum trees at Gamdevi, Wilson college, Chowpatty beach, the blue sea waters, Marine Drive, Bal Bhavan children's garden, the gymkhanas’, Churchgate station, University, Museum, Regal theatre, Colaba Causeway, Sassoon Dock, the green and woody naval area,the heritage Afghan church and R.C. Church. Sitting in the same bus, we used to take the return journey back home. I wish they would convert the single-decker which plies on this route today back to the double-decker.
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Peter
6 January 2012
10:53 AM
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Why are they retiring them, Dilip? With such dense population, if it's just a question of the vehicles aging, why not replace them with new double-deckers?
Other cities around the world are rediscovering the double-deckers as tourist vehicles, where you can pay a handsome sum to get a guided tour through the city from the "frontest" vantage point that used to cost next to nothing.
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Farhin
6 January 2012
09:25 AM
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The 138 from V.T. to Backbay has a scenic route...but now the double decker has been discontinued on this Route too...... I too miss the frontest seat on the double decker...... though enjoyed the doble decker ride on the Trams in Hongkong on my visit there recently.....
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Francis
6 January 2012
05:02 AM
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I miss them too Dilip.
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Dilip D'Souza
5 January 2012
10:56 PM
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Yes about 138, I think it's one of those I took that morning. 1 comes in multifarious variety, some of which do run (1 special, I think it's called) between VT/NCPA.
108 actually goes on all the way to Hanging Gardens, are you sure it is a double-decker still? Most 10x buses go up to Walkeshwar/Hanging Gardens (102, 103, 104, 106, 108 I'm pretty sure, maybe the others too).
332 is a new one for me, perhaps that's the one the conductor meant? Though he did say Kurla. I'll check it out one day.
Thanks!
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crownish
4 January 2012
07:18 PM
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332, I think, from Andheri East to Chakala is a double decker bus, often travel by that!
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Divya
1 January 2012
08:01 PM
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Bus no 108 from VT station to NCPA is still a double decker !
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Sharanya
30 December 2011
02:38 AM
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Isn't the 138 from VT to Backbay depot a double-decker? And bus no 1 from VT to NCPA?
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