Hasty evening
Most people are afraid of the dark. I am definitely not talking about the power outages/ load shedding. Ugh. Boring topic! I mean the dark, the time between dusk to late night. Some may find dusk time to be the most beautiful and romantic time of the day, viewing the sunset, loving the color in the sky and all that stuffs. But if you ask me it is the most hectic and hasty timing for me. It is all about persons who are in a rush to get back home from their workplace and don’t own a personal vehicle.
There is always a fear of not getting the bus to the desired destination when the sun goes down and you can never trust public transport here as well. They can put “reserve” sign on the bus and charge you thrice the actual fare amount to take you to the desired destination. Getting passengers packed in every all spaces of the vehicle is not surprising.
Catching a private taxi or cab is not the option either to return home as its fare will leave your pockets empty. There is no timetable or running hours for public transports. It’s up merely to the driver’s mood; whether to allow/disallow student card discount, go early or stay late at one station, pick/ not to pick people going near the final stop etc. And you can’t even bargain with them for that because the night gets dark leaving no option at all in case you miss the bus.
The news surprise us even it is all about the blockades being over. After waiting long for the bus, the arrival of bus will take you to cloud nine. But, you need to get down from your cloud nine soon because there is a struggle to be won to get into that bus. The struggle continues to find a proper seat.
Even though there are government plans made to resolve this issue, like night service buses on some of the routes, they are not enough. Also, no one has the exact knowledge about its timings or frequency. I feel if a little attention is given by the government then it would take no time to resolve this situation. There should be a traffic police or volunteer counter (like we have seen mainly and only during Dashain time) to regulate regular and proper timings of buses. The government should also install a compliant/feedback box so that the general public could easily reach them and explain their difficulties. Let us see the bright side and hope the matter will resolved as soon as possible.