I often wonder what it is with buses in Karnataka. Any inter or intra-city bus you get in, the conductor, like any other in the country, waits till the bus is so comfortably full that you get a free Yoga lesson on how to hold your breath with your stomach quashed. Yeah that’s normal.

But none of them seem to know that a superior technology called the whistle exists. Not the private buses atleast. How then do they inform the driver it’s time to take their hapless passengers through the state roads which “rock”(pun intended) ?

Stand outside the vehicle, hit the body of the bus repeatedly, and yell “rates ratche, rate, rape, race” or something to that effect. I’m still not sure if its a euphemism for saying “right, my friend, its time we moved on,” or if it’s a Kannada word that I’m not aware of. Yours truly and a couple of friends tried yelling “Rape rape rape” in a stationary bus, and the conductor almost did the same to us.

What pains me most is the fact that our Thalaivar Rajnikanth must have done the same thing at some point of time, even though he blows one heck of a whistle in all his movies.