A Korean Bus Ride
I was waiting for the bus to arrive. It was a pleasant Friday morning and Pohang’s small bus terminal
registered sparse crowd at that early hour. The bus I was waiting for would take me to the nearest KTX,
railway station, the fastest train network Korea boasts. The 6 A.M bus I was waiting for could comfortably reach the station in forty minutes, wedging a lavish twenty minutes cushion for the train to Seoul.
The nocturnal routine I have nurtured has always brought me harm including that morning’s late alarm
followed by last minute mad rush to the bus station. After a mere four hours sleep the previous night, I
had to forcibly stretch my eyelids open to stay awake. I thought of washing the sleep out with caffeine
and fumbled for coins standing near the vending machine. The vending machine delivers Korea’s best
coffee at less than 10% the price of other Korean Coffee shops. Trust me, Korean coffee shops charge
you gold’s worth for cappuccino that tastes like mud. Seconds before I pressed the button, I withdrew.
Well, I had solid four hours of journey ahead and why waste it by staying awake. I chuckled at my acumen with a small sense of pride “Smart boy, that’s well thought”, I patted myself and proceeded to the
platform.
Despite the early hour, the bus was reasonably full and I took a seat in the middle. I politely smiled at
the passenger in the seat behind before settling down. He enthusiastically smiled back, “Hello, Good
morning”, Koreans love to share their little English with people roaming around holding an alien card. I
greeted back with a complimentary smile.
“Indo Saram?”, he asked.
Two years in the land of Kimchi prepares you to identify Indian as Indosaram and I enthusiastically replied, “Nei, Indosaram”(Yes, I’m Indian). He knew no more English and neither did I know more Korean. That set our boundary safe and I was ready to offer my prayers to the goddess of sleep.
Click I heard a sound from the rear seat, followed by a continuous chewing sound. I did not know the
exact source, but my friendly neighbour was eating something, or chewing something. It was not a gum
or any other standard toffee we may think of chewing at 6’o clock in a bus, but a noisy substance which
was cracking continuously.
I tried to ignore and sleep. But the noise was so irritable and it sounded exactly like what you hear when
your dentist works on bridging a decayed tooth. I flinched when I thought about the root-canal and
dental bridge I had last summer. Oh! that was a free tour to hell except the good looking dentist who
might have been mistakenly included in the tour package. Argh. That annoying click again. This time
my tooth long forgotten under the bridge ached. Slowly the frequency of the clicks increased. Was he
doing it in purpose to irritate me? Whatever the hell he was chewing, he seemed to enjoy and went on
non-stop.