My Deep Research Into Why Rural Males in Maharashtra wear Gandhi Caps or have Mushroom Haircuts

Public transport buses in Maharashtra are red in colour for good reason. 

I got a seat at the back in one in Amboli once and, after a quick break, it took off at top speed. The roads were in awful shape after the rains and the driver reminded us of this repeatedly, taking great care to go into and out of every pothole with excruciating precision. Every time he did so, the entire crowd in the aisle – almost all male - would be launched vertically upwards and hit the ceiling with a soft thud. Soft, because, you see, the impact was absorbed by their strategically worn Gandhi caps or, in its absence, a robust mushroom haircut with a dense mop on top (such critical insights now-a-days are worthy of higher encomium, but I shun the spotlight).

These buses – all decades old - are held together only by coalition politics, I think, and their windows rattle like a skeleton doing a night trek in the Himalayas in winter. Once in a while, as we approached a village, the driver would discover the brake with surprise and stamp it with a hydraulic press. The aisle passengers would now be propelled forward like a battering ram and they always found their target – a middle-aged fellow who was facing them, who’d get about 440 volts electrical equivalent of impact in a soft spot of the male anatomy that I can only delicately describe in the language of trains as ‘frontier male’.  As nobody had any place to move otherwise, such involuntary movement was taken as a useful opportunity to adjust positions or jostle with a friend or step on people’s new footwear. 

The driver was very patient with people getting in, but the conductor did have a dim view of those who took time to exit, providing me with a rich, wholesome education in local abuse (entirely free of charge, I must add). 

People often leaned out of windows at perilous angles to 
a) wish those on the roads whom they thought they knew, as we shot past or
b) get rid of some paan masala (often, close to those on the roads whom they thought they knew, as we and the paan masala shot past them) 

And then there was an old monk who had eaten something he should not have. And a farmer who had had more Old Monk that he should have (no, not the former’s companion. This Old Monk is a farmer’s companion).   And a little boy who had eaten more than he should have (and was regurgitating some of it into a plastic bag).   At one point, a whole bunch of school kids got onboard with school bags that weighed about two tons each. As the bus swerved and bumped, these kids would giggle as their bags swung towards the seated passengers who (except me) seemed to duck and sway expertly in a skilled contest of brawn and brain. There was some excitement after I got a school bag on my shoulder and much jostling and negotiation amongst them to be next to me. It was all healthy, wholesome fun and, as you can see, left a deep impression (most significantly, on my hip). 

Combine this with charming sugarcane fields and a setting sun and I could not have asked for more. The next time I go on one of these, I will ask for less though.