It was like 12B. The crowd, the rush, the push and the seat blocking. Just as same as the Vadapalani-T.Nagar crowd. Travelling from a suburb to the downtown Seattle is becoming an event everyday. With a metro bus full of Indians, it gives me a feel of being in Chennai, except that not many talk Tamil.
The one sitting next to you can say, Kya Yaar/Bagunaara/Inna Mamey, anything of the listed/unlisted Indian language. Sometimes you might have an america-born-asian youth constantly fidling with the tiny electronic gadget which could be the size of a matchbox and might play mp3, kick off the electric heater in your house or sometimes remotely run a few unix shell scripts to index the cramped database at work. Who knows ? Everything is possible with technology, especially here.
You can blabber about deal going with Comcast cable or ask for the best Indian restaurant around with your Indian bus friends. All these details are available after ‘deep’ research of prices and quality. From buying selling cars to broomsticks every single product is analyzed thoroughly. So you can be sure that any advice you get from a desi with regards to price/place/product is a reasonable one. But chances are you might end up sitting with a snob whose face would read a name like Munsaamy or Goindsamy. He would just not even smile at you and would behave like descending directly from St.Peter’s special heaven. As you sit next to him, he would take out his ancient cellphone and talk stuff like gonna, awesome, whasup, gotta go, shoot and what not. The worst part is that you might meet our heaven descendent at an Indian store arguing in local tamil or telugu, bargaining for $2.75 frozen paratha. Fate.
The best thing about Seattle is the commute. The city is well connected with the bus service. For someone like me to have seen nothing but cars in Chicago, this was a surprise. The roads are built on hilly areas which means you will have a roller-coaster ride to the city and with those tall green trees half-covered with the morning fog, it’s a pleasure ride. As the bus crosses the Lake Washington, you find a maze of bridges built below and above to the one you travel. Yeah, you can slip into a dream of singing like Shahrukh on the open car[Pardes].
I am carrying my SONY Digicam with me mostly but with the pace of bus zooming on the express lane, all I could get is a shot of moving objects and not the lake. Will have to get down and click them someday.
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