Hill stations in India are generally small, high-altitude towns that were used by colonists to escape the summer heat. I decided to visit a hill station called Mahabaleshwar during the brief holiday from classes that I had.
We bought tickets for a Friday afternoon, semi-luxury bus to Mahabaleshwar on Wednesday. Not having used the Indian bus system before, I wasn't sure what the categories "semi-luxury" or "regular" meant. I tried to ask the person who was selling the tickets. He didn't seem to know, or possibly to understand what I was asking, and/or just wanted me to get the tickets so that he could serve the person in the line behind me. In the end, I decided to be safe by going with the semi-luxury bus for my first trip. The price difference between the two categories wasn't much. Also, many inner-city Indian buses are standing-room only, so I wanted to make sure that I could sit down if I had to be on a bus for 4-5 hours.
The day that we were planning to leave, we got to the station early, found the bus that had "Mahabaleshwar" written on it (pictured above), asked the driver to confirm that it was the bus to Mahabaleshwar, and then got on. We were the first people to board, and got a seat on a padded bench. Eventually, the bus filled up, and several people were left having to stand. I thought this seemed a little unfair, by American standards, since this was considered a semi-luxury bus.
Shortly after the bus left the station, a man with a ticket-printer came around to sell people tickets and check the prepurchased tickets. After examining the ticket for my group, he told me that we were on the wrong bus, and then said a few things in broken English that I couldn't understand. He didn't seem to have enough of a command of the language to tell me much more than that I had done something wrong. The man sitting next to me, who I didn't know and hadn't spoken to at all, immediately tried to confer with the ticketman on my behalf, talking quickly and in a low voice that I couldn't understand. After a few stunned seconds, I asked in Hindi whether the bus we were on was going to Mahabaleshwar. The man next to me relaxed quite a bit, realizing that I knew the language, and then explained that it was going to Mahabaleshwar, but it wasn't the semi-luxury bus. I explained several times in Hindi that this was okay with us, we just wanted to make sure that we were going to the right place. The man didn't seem to find as much comfort in this fact as I did, and explained in Hindi that they were debating whether I had to pay again, with a tone of voice that implied this would not be acceptable.
Immediately, I realized that accepting the "injustice" of having to pay again in my relief that I was on the right bus was a foolish American thing to do. Arguing over money here is a matter of pride, probably moreso than a matter of frugality. It shows people that you are a person who is aware of the way that transactions should go, and will accept nothing less. If you pay even an extra $ .50 for anything, you will be looked on with scorn from the person who just shamelessly "ripped you off." If you want people to treat you with any respect, you sometimes have to argue over money matters that you don't actually care about.
As the man sitting next to me was explaining the situation, the ticketman at the front of the bus called the station to figure out what to do with us. He came back and stated the obvious fact that we couldn't get on the semi-luxury bus because we had already left the station on the regular bus. I told him this was okay. Then he went to the front of the bus and called the station on his cell phone again. Two people took the opportunity of his absence to explain the situation for me again in both Hindi and English, although I was by now well aware of it.
While the ticketman was waiting for a response from the ticketing counter at the station, a small crowd of people standing at the front of the bus, who overheard the situation, began to argue animatedly with him to the effect that, since we had already paid for tickets for a nicer bus, the least they could do was let us stay on this one. Finally, the verdict was that we didn't have to pay again, and the small crowd of people who had begun to follow the issue seemed content. I thanked the two people who had been reexplaining everything to me, who responded with embarrassment that it was "nothing at all." Then, the small commotion that we had created quieted.
On the way to Mahabaleshwar, we stopped in several colorful small-town bus stations to let people on and off. We also got to enjoy the scenery as the bus wound its way up the mountain. The views from the bus were among the best that I experienced during the trip, and the atmosphere of the bus was fun and interesting. It was clear that many of the people used this bus route to get to and from the city during work, and were acquainted with each other as a result, which gave the ride a nice, familiar atmosphere. Most people seemed not to notice us, and the few that did looked at us with a sort of well-intentioned but undisguised curiosity that's typical here. I fell asleep for parts of the bus ride, and it also reached Mahabaleshwar an hour before the estimated time of arrival. I later learned that the semi-luxury bus actually takes about an hour and a half less than that because it doesn't stop so many places, but I enjoyed the experience of the regular bus ride much more.
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