bengaluru when i tell people that i live near the new airport the first thing they want to know after theyre done exclaiming about how far away my house is from the centre of town is how i get around in a city notorious for its long traffic jams and patchy public transport how they ask does one travel a 60 kilometre round trip every day without losing ones mind or spending a fortune lowfloored airconditioned and exorbitantly priced the airport buses are what i zeroed in on after having given up on cabs for being too expensive and realising that cadging a lift with various family members every day wasnt going to work the first time i tried taking the bus i ended up waiting for almost an hour because i was foolish enough to believe the bmtc when it said a bus would come by every 15 minutes after much trial and error i worked out the timing schedule for myself and from then on began my long often tiring relationship with the vajra fleet and its drivers and conductors initially amused the drivers and conductors i encountered soon got used to dropping me off in what they considered to be the middle of nowhere after realising that unlike most of the other passengers i would be a regular feature they started to make conversation asking me everything from whether i had a highpaying job based on the fact that i get on the bus so late and so clearly work long hours and wanting to know if it was worthwhile to live so far out of the way to urging me to pick up kannada and speak it as much as possible as a joke a few of the drivers would even refuse to drop me off at my unofficial stop and say that they would take me all the way to the airport noticing my stricken face as i mentally worked out how to reply to this in kannada the conductor would clarify that his partner was only joking and that i shouldnt worry they too have their own routines such as picking up food from the side of the road for the night i still remember the first time the bus stopped randomly on the side of the road and the conductor jumped off only to come back a few minutes later holding two plastic packets filled with food dinner for him and the driver another time i got onto the bus to find the inside smelling strongly of freshly cooked biryani clearly just consumed by the driver unfortunately about 10 minutes later he hurriedly got off the bus to be violently sick in the bushes the increasingly squeamish looking conductor while being lectured on foodpoisoning by a passenger drove the bus for a few kilometres before flagging down another bus and transferring us onto it as they leave both the city and congestion behind the buses hurtle over flyovers in a truly knightbus like