Busing with Ganesha

We should have read the signs earlier on the Jaipur-Nawalgarh [India] bus run: how the driver, as he pulls the bus into the frenzy of Jaipaur’s main street, sits sideways, chatting with the folks behind him, his gesturing hand searching by the bye for the steering wheel and gear shift. Or how he enjoys his horn, a rising four-note LET ME THROUGH number set on Loud Repeat. 

It's only later - careening through a needle eye between two on-coming TATA trucks (the ones with the glowering grills), forcing motorcyclists into the sandy margin and pedestrians into the next state - that I notice a clock over the driver's seat, main hands stopped at 7:23. Is that a.m. or p.m.? The start of the day or the end? Odd where the mind takes you when terror reaches down your throat.

A swaying bus, top heavy like us, fills our windshield. We swerve sharply, people tumbling into one another, hands grabbing whatever feel closest, Sorry, Sorry, as boxes and bags skither along the aisle. A cart driver and mule flash past ... a thud and CHLUNK sound somewhere beneath us. 'You idiot! Are you trying to kill someone!?' B. yells. The driver glances into his mirror and smiles. Several passengers look towards B., nodding in agreement, but silent. The driver's buddies, youths now settled around the windshield, have a laugh, their faces full of admiration. This guy's the real thing!

It's about now that every charred skeleton of every bus and lorry I've ever seen, from Java to Guatemala to Zambia, begins to appear, bottom up, along the roadside.

My eyes return to the clock, and it’s now that I notice a smoky image of Ganesha - that chubby smiling little Hindu elephant found at entrances and exits, god of learning, good fortune, slayer of obstacles . . . and always, always hanging in some guise around bus drivers everywhere.

Sure, I have a few questions for the fat little cross-legged guy - and would like quick answers too, just in case there's still time to jump. Which is it Ganesha: are you one of us, an anxious passenger, or another of the driver's joking, adoring groupies? And just what kinds of obstacles have you set out to clear today – that cement-filled lorry in our windshield, the cart driver, the forces of weight and speed and gravity that (naturally enough) want to catapult us into the ether beyond that cliff edge?

And that god of learning role of yours. Sure, fine, I’m open-minded about learning - usually. I would even agree, usually, that the best learning is full of risks. But here and now in this deathcrate on 14 wheels, I’d be happy to forgo lessons in the joys of ‘High Speed Swerves And Overtakes’ if only I could hear a lot more about the admittedly boring subject of 'I'd Like To Live Another Day'.

And that clock. Whose time is it anyway, Mr Ganesha?