The BEST bus tales: Poonam Saxena, on 150 years of a Mumbai icon

Stars have been discovered, and love lost and found, on Mumbai’s iconic red buses. Hop on for a road trip.

Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi started his career as a bus conductor in Bombay, in 1942.

As the 25-year-old handed out tickets, he kept passengers entertained with his mimicry and re-enactments of scenes from Hindi films. The actor Balraj Sahni once took the same bus, and saw Kazi in action. Impressed, he advised Kazi to go to actor-director Guru Dutt’s office for an audition.

That is how Johnny Walker was born. He would change his name, hone his skill, and become one

Sunny Deol ropes buses into an action scene in Arjun (1985).

A bus is also a safe haven, Mumbai women have told me. If it is late at night and one can’t find a taxi, any bus will do, they say. The conductor will be gruff, and he will insist you hand him exact change, but conductors and drivers take the safety of women passengers seriously. Raise an alarm, and the troublemaker will apparently find themselves ushered off with the well-practised statement that “no one may be right and no one may be wrong, but this is not the place for machmach (argument)”.

Over the years, the familiar red bus has popped up in films, over and over. (I always love it when public transport plays a role in a love story, on-screen or off.)

In the 1959 film Bus Conductor, a young Prem Nath (who went on to play mainly villain and character roles), plays a bus conductor with a difference. Deepak is a wealthy young man who wants to be a writer, but his stories keep getting rejected because they are not realistic. So he decides to live as a “common man”, and gain some lived experience.

After wandering around the city for a while, he comes across an ad for bus conductors: “Wanted young men in good health. Minimum qualifications – SSC or Matric Pass.” Our hero, with his graduate degree, promptly gets the job. While performing his new duties, a jaunty cap on his head, Deepak meets Asha (Shyama), who absentmindedly leaves a box full of jewellery behind. And so begins their love story.

Meanwhile, bus stops played a pivotal role in Basu Chatterjee’s Chhoti Si Baat (1976). The diffident, middle-class hero Arun (Amol Palekar) languishes at bus shelters, gazing wistfully at the pretty working girl Prabha (Vidya Sinha), whom he cannot muster the courage to approach. In a daydream, however, he frolics with her in a park, to the tune of that joyful ditty, Jaaneman Jaaneman Tere Do Nayan. Then two red buses trundle down the street, and the song continues, with Arun and Prabha waiting at the bus stop before boarding the bus.

Perhaps the BEST-known bus song in cinema is Janu Meri Jaan (Main Tere Qurban) from Ramesh Sippy’s Shaan (1980). Amitabh Bachchan and Parveen Babi are here, as well as Shashi Kapoor and Bindiya Goswami. The girls are cross with their beaus for different reasons, and the men have to cajole them into a good mood.

As the men pursue them, the women clamber to the upper storey of the double-decker. Then the bus stops, everyone alights and the two men emerge dressed as conductor and driver.

The song ends with a hail of bullets fired at the bus, to bring viewers back to the main story, with its action and thrills. The song is but a playful interlude, a few minutes’ reprieve.

Buses have made an appearance in action sequences too, including in the Sunny Deol-starrer Arjun (1985) and the Anil Kapoor-starrer Nayak (2001). Today, films are more likely to feature shared Ubers, the Metro rail, the evergreen airport meet-cute or a scenic long-distance road trip.

Off-screen, the buses continue to trundle along in Mumbai, full of stories of their own. I believe every Mumbaiite has at least one. Do you?

(To reach Poonam Saxena with feedback, email poonamsaxena3555@gmail.com)