How a City in Motion Became My Teacher: Lessons From DTC Buses

Special Mention-English, Writing Contest 2025

By Rana

City: New Delhi

Description: This essay rides through Delhi aboard its most overlooked lifeline, the DTC buses. Far from the polished quiet of the metro, these buses pulse with the city’s chaos, humour, and reality. For the author, a transman, each journey is a lesson in both survival and selfhood. Between moments of gender euphoria and unease, he develops his own playful 'rules' for navigating this ableist, masculinist terrain, like when to board, where to sit, how to blend or stand out. These unspoken codes become an immersive excersice mapping Delhi through experience, not infrastructure. Witty, tender, and deeply observant, the essay turns everyday travel into a story of resilience, identity, and the quiet art of finding one’s rhythm in motion.

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In Delhi, the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus network is an ‘unsung hero’ whose limelight has been hogged by the relatively more expensive Delhi Metro. Unlike the metro which remains aloof from the ground reality of a city, either running in underground tunnels or flying high above with a bird’s-eye view – DTC buses serve as windows into the labyrinths of Delhi often obscured, even uprooted, by the metro and the lives of people who depend on this cheaper mode of transport. Navigating this ableist, masculinist mode of transport as a transman comes with its mixed bag of learning and emotions – of gender euphoria and dysphoria, obsession and exhaustion.

Bus travel was instilled in me by my father out of sheer necessity because we didn’t own a private vehicle and the metro wasn’t as well-connected. As a kid I found bus travel extremely overwhelming and scary, but at the same time I was in awe of the ‘DTC veterans’ – people who could rattle off the names of buses to clueless commuters asking for directions, my father included.

There was something inspiring about knowing one’s city so well so as to know which buses went where, almost like a mental map of the roads and lanes of the city. It was the kind of ‘masculinity’ that I wished to embody on growing up.

This romanticised picture of DTC commute, however, is contrasted by a ruthless reality – overcrowding, rash driving, long waits. Add to this, an irritable staff owing to poor employment conditions– low pay, minimal breaks, job insecurity, and the pressure to meet schedules amidst heavy traffic and fleet shortages. In my quest of becoming a DTC veteran, I created narratives of praise for this mode of transport – as an anthropological site facilitating mathematical memorisation of numbers and names, giving a graphical memory of bus routes and heightened joy of reaching one’s destination when the commute is so challenging, with long sprawling windows that gave a view better than a car – to overlook the toll and anxiety that came along with it. My sworn ‘love’ for buses could only be upheld by gamifying the process, albeit a game that is unforgiving.

So, I have come up with a set of 'rules' to keep in mind while commuting via DTC buses. Rule #1: never skip a bus. One can never be certain of bus frequency and schedules so as to rely on only one bus and skip the alternate buses that greet a stop. Constantly be on the move, taking whichever bus drops you a bit further – even if only by one stop – to your destination. This has led me to discover a plethora of alternate routes to the places I frequent, especially since my reliance on a pass, rather than single-use tickets, allows for multiple bus transfers. For instance, the 'prescribed' route from Lodhi Road to GPO (my frequented stop during post graduation) involves a single bus transfer at Shahjahan Road UPSC, where buses like 47A, 440, 450, 456 and 623 meet buses headed to the Red Fort – 502, 605, 605A. Since one route was never enough, I added buses 503 and 621 to the list which dropped me at a stop which was at walking distance from GPO. Eventually I discovered another backup option – reach Tilak Bridge, and walk to the ITO Aggarwal Chowk bus stop to increase the odds of reaching GPO, since buses coming from Supreme Court headed to Kashmere Gate – 405, 405A, 419, 429, 706 – would merge routes with buses that came from Tilak Bridge – 173, 502, 503, 605, 621 – at this stop. At Tilak Bridge, I’d sometimes ask motorcyclists to drop me 'just a bit ahead'—a trick I picked up from office-going uncles. As a staunch advocate of public transport and carpooling, hitchhiking brought me fleeting bliss—even as I grappled with the shame and terror instilled by familial conditioning around the dangers ‘girls’ and ‘women’ are taught to fear in a megacity. I bargained with practiced confidence—relying on my knowledge of the routes and weighing the (easier said than done) possibility of leaping off a two-wheeler if needed. Hitchhiking made me feel ‘manly’, drawing me into proximity with cismen who, unlike me, slip easily into a comradeship born of a 'manly (cis-) brotherhood’. On this daily commute to GPO, I often found myself rising to a quiet respectability, guiding those trying to reach Delhi Gate or Daryaganj. Months in, I’d reel off bus numbers in Hindi—bearing the DTC swagger of the bus veterans I’d once watched in awe.

Rule #2: walk towards a bus stop with your eyesight directed far into the direction where the bus will arrive from, so you’ll start running when it is relatively far and increase your odds of catching it. On my walk down the road leading out of my residential area, my eyes would be searching for any hint of a bus in the gap between the trees in the park. Most of the time I was compelled to run, having figured that every bus had a possible route to college. 47A, 47C, 181 and 440 went to Shahjahan Road UPSC. 588, 776 and 794 dropped me off at S J Airport where I’d cross the road to catch 502, 503, 605 or 621. 970 dropped me off at Prithviraj Road so I could directly board these buses coming from S J Airport. 522 almost met them at Prithviraj Crossing, only that I would have to walk/run 250m – oftentimes missing the bus just by a few seconds. By the end of a year, I had begun running after every bus that came to my stop, even when running was not recommended for me due to a knee condition. Eventually, I started setting some boundaries, associating this habit with an ‘anxious attachment’ to buses.

Inside the bus, another set of rules apply. Rule #3: move closer to the exit door as the bus moves from the stop preceding your destination stop. Usually, it is a good practice to announce your stop so you’re given way in a crowded bus. Rule #4 (set by bus drivers): clarify your destination as they may choose to not halt at a stop unless asked, even if someone is frantically running to catch the bus. This led me to create Rule #5: if you see anyone running to catch the bus from your destination stop, try to get down as slowly as possible to lend them some time. A rule I created out of empathy, since I always dreamt of

someone holding a bus for me when I was seconds away from the stop. Changing the perspective bring you to Rule #6: if a bus arrives which you aren’t boarding but is of some runner’s interest, act as though you’re trying to board it, very slowly – adjusting your speed per the distance between the runner and the bus – only to move away as they manage to board. These small acts of solidarity I consider as the duties of a bus veteran – to help fellow commuters. For in the ableist, masculine bus transport system, buses don’t even stop for the elderly or anyone who is “too slow to catch up” – whether one ‘deserves’ a bus is measured by their ability to move at par with it. When everything fails, Rule #7 is my last resort: make a very pitiful expression on your face expressing plight, great urgency, and physical discomfort, and plead for the driver to stop. This has worked wonders for me, albeit accompanied by comments like “it’s not a marathon!” (umm, it is—per Rule #2) or “another bus would’ve arrived” (a blatant lie, most times, and in direct contradiction of Rule #1) when I board the bus, which I have learnt to let slide. Rule #7 can be applied to board buses halted at traffic signals as well – this mostly doesn’t work but is worth a try. I have embodied the ‘damsel in distress’ role to make a case in such scenarios, prioritising Rule#1 over gender dysphoria. Another fallback option was to hope for a generous motorcyclist to show up at the right time and meet the bus at the next stop in victory.

My gamified bus travel has unveiled to me not just the city, but my anxious self, tucked behind fatalistic thoughts of not reaching my destination on time.

I’ve had multiple breakdowns en route, strangers casting strange looks as I bawled by the roadside—the bus failure having unearthed some deep-seated grief within me. I used to daydream about a drone which went in the direction from where my bus was to arrive, locating any upcoming bus well in advance for me to decide my route out of the dozen options I now had so I didn’t have to run. As though the heavens responded to me, the forced installation of One Delhi app by a bus conductor who refused to hand out paper tickets introduced me to the world of my dreams. Not only did the app help me find bus routes and scan tickets without having to be reminded of my gender as perceived by conductors, it also LIVE-TRACKED UPCOMING BUSES! This was a milestone for any bus commuter – so much so that when I shared this news at home, even my dad got interested and installed the app right away. [no this is not a sponsored ad] Earlier, Google Maps gave me some (usually unreliable) ETA to look forward to, in the otherwise uncertain, helpless, long wait at the bus stop. Now, One Delhi’s live-tracking calms my anxieties by feeding me a false sense of purpose, letting me believe I’m making grand calculations and informed route decisions. Of course, no app is to be fully trusted and there are times when a bus arrives even when it wasn’t indicated – so it helps to be pessimistic sometimes and be pleasantly surprised by an unexpected visit. It would serve as a gentle reminder that the neoliberal ideals of conquering every uncertainty through technology and advancement are a futile delusion. I have come to view this anxiety-inducing experience as a practice in patience and humility.

Image Source: Author

Nevertheless, on every ride I evaluate my decision-making and give myself extensive feedback – what was done good, what could’ve been done better, what have we learnt today. My brain becomes a blackhole gorging up all empirical information collected, just like AI improving its knowledge database for better accuracy in future. On good days, life is forgiving as a bus arrives right when I reach the stop. I used to look forward to those moments with great romanticisation. In my initial undergrad days of commuting to DU North Campus, when I hadn’t discovered alternate bus routes, I only knew one infrequent bus which dropped me right in front of my college from the stop at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Marg – 100 Adarsh Nagar. I remember the butterflies in my stomach, my heart skipping a beat each time—after repeatedly deciphering bus numbers like 85, 85Ext, 522, 957, 966, and 989 (coming from the ‘popular’ stop of Shivaji Stadium Terminal) with growing disappointment—my eyes finally caught a faint 100 in the distance. I used to say, “it feels like a long-awaited lover showing up”. Of course, with time my commitment to 100 faded owing to its erratic schedule and low frequency, and I discovered alternatives of taking 957, 966 or 989 headed to Karol Bagh Terminal from where I’d run 800m towards the next stop at Faiz Road, where the route of 100 merged with 212 coming from a different direction, increasing the possibility of reaching college by adding one more bus to my boarding options. The run was a tough decision to make, there were times when I’d start running and see 100 in the distance, which I couldn’t afford to miss. I used to laugh how this route made me eligible to become that old man boasting about how he crossed “rivers and mountains” to get to college – interchange 3-4 buses, run 800m in between, constantly look behind to not miss a prospective bus, ask for a lift if needed and what not.

Bus travel was a valuable supplementary experience during my post graduation, revealing how bus interior design reflects neo colonial logics of modernity more than the actual needs and comfort of its users. Many people get trapped in hydraulic doors despite warning signs—because these signs are designed for people trained to follow written instructions.

Commuters note that the new electric buses have higher pickup, often causing passengers to lose balance as they start moving. The grab handles are too high for a city with an average height of 5’5”. There are few seats, and the ramps have gotten jammed from underuse – can the mere addition of ramps and reserved seating really make this ableist mode of transport disabled-friendly? At peak hours on crowded routes, people are pushed into new physical intimacies against their wishes. Experiencing this after a lecture on Fanon highlighted some uncanny similarities. Consider this excerpt from his book – “The colonised's sector, or at least the "native" quarters, ... (is) a world with no space; people are piled one on top of the other”– doesn’t it seem to be describing a DTC bus? Even the megacity of Delhi, projected by the state as inching toward ‘world-class’ status, still echoes the architecture of a colonised sector, despite 75 years of ‘independence’. But the story isn’t one of pity. Once, in a crammed 522 stalled in traffic near Chirag Delhi, an uncle began cracking satirical jokes. Some passengers found unexpected relief in the shared delight of mocking a political leader. The switch to AC buses, without adjusting frequency to reduce overcrowding, has worsened conditions: no ventilation, no room for emergency exits, no vomit bags—naturally, both staff and commuters dread vomit scares. In one bus crawling through Janpath traffic, a passenger suddenly complained of nausea. The conductor, panicked, urged the driver to break protocol and open the rear entry door so they could exit to puke. As they stepped off and casually walked away, it became clear they'd cleverly used the scare to reach a missed bus stop.

On my path to embodying the ‘masculinity’ of a bus veteran, I still encounter conductors struggling to determine my ticket eligibility—I don’t appear womanly enough for a pink pass, nor manly enough for a standard ticket. Their decisions hinge on their own reading of gender roles. Tired of the daily ambiguity, I began requesting a pink pass myself—masking dysphoria with humour, adopting a high-pitched voice to ask for it when dressed in masculine attire. I notice how masculinity is rewarded in this space—with greater mobility and fewer stares—pressuring me to appear rogue and ‘unmoved’ by the jolts of the bus. If not humour, then romanticising realities becomes my recourse: like metaphorising the bodily effort of staying upright through rash driving as skateboarding—requiring a mindful shift of weight from one foot to the other. The subtle observations enabled by bus travel are woven into my life through creative reconstructions to justify my choice of transport to my peers who may see it as unusual.

For at the end of the day, it’s the humbling and quietly instructive experience of bus travel that keeps me coming back. Through buses, I’ve glimpsed the inner workings of an ice factory; the busy nightlife of workers returning from Khan Market cafés to their homes in Sangam Vihar; street vendors paying conductors for their commercial luggage; the bustle of weekly markets; the predictability of traffic snarls; and the familiar spots where buses ‘relieve themselves’ of passengers—often at interconnecting hubs like Andrews Ganj, ITO, Karol Bagh Terminal, Khanpur, Nityanand Marg, Shahjahan Road UPSC, Shivaji Stadium Terminal, and Super Bazar, to name a few. I’ve helplessly witnessed intimate partner violence play out in public—moments the staff could only attempt to quietly subvert—and watched others get harassed by overbearing ticket checkers. My understanding is severely limited by my lifeworld, and the daily happenings in and around a bus remind me of the grave inequalities that shape the city—my privileges, my narratives (even when they take the form of jokes), and my limited reach, my minuscule humanity.

Today, enthusiasm for bus travel has become a defining part of my personality—a source of friction with my mother and amusement for friends who catch me ‘ogling’ at a bus on the road, mentally cataloguing yet another route. I joke that it’s how my asexuality works: I find joy in devouring DTC bus trivia.

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About the Author:

Rana

Rana (he/him) is a trans queer feminist committed to anti-capitalist, Ambedkarite, and queer politics through activism and research. He completed his master’s in Development Studies from Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi and works as a research fellow at the Centre for Social and Global Studies (CSGS), Ashoka University. He has a tendency to romanticise everyday life and geek out on whimsical subjects. A lover of the arts, Rana keeps his creative spirit alive by weaving reading, poetry, dancing, theatre, sketching, and singing into his hectic work schedule.