Sajha dreams

Much has been said and written about the relaunch of the Sajha bus service. I don't have anything intelligent to add to the conversation that's not already been said.

The bus service holds memories for some, but for me --someone who never got on one of those and barely saw any-- it's the sense of nostalgia that matters. The nostalgia for a time when I wasn't here but when people were hopeful. It wasn't the bus-service. It's the song that has kept the bus-service alive in memory.

I don't know what year the song is from. My guess is it's somewhere in the mid-to-late early eighties to early nineties.

You can hear it in Haribansha's voice. You can see it in the actors' (who are all mostly terrible in their job) eyes. You can see it in the cinematography. There's so much hope. Bahudal was around the corner. Markets were going to open. The Sajha bus of prosperity was going to take off-- ironically-- through the private sector. Popular multiparty democracy would lead to accountability, development, better services, greater liberalization, more freedom. No one would have to line up for gas or kerosene. Scarcity would be a thing of the past. The leaders-- incompetent as they were-- could not fess that one up. It was so easy.

And then it wasn't. Things happened, and here we are now, two/two-and-half decades later, unsure if we're really better off today than we were then. But the nostalgia of hope has stayed with us. We are  cynical at times, but we want to be hopeful, we want to put our naive trust in institutions that have mostly failed us in the past. We miss those times when we could be hopeful, and we had no solid reasons to be cynical. We knew this was going to happen, that failure was just across the bump, oh yes we knew, but we didn't want to think about it. We wanted to believe that we were wrong, that the sajha-bus future was the good future in store, and things would be just fine.

Sajha bus, the institution, the song, is a consolation. That there were times when we were less distrustful and less cynical. That doesn't mean we have reason to be any less distrustful now, but ...there was a time when we were happy, when we hadn't given up hopes of a better future. We collectively dreamed of peace, prosperity and accountability. We can't dream those dreams anymore. But we can certainly wistfully remember those dreams. Sajha bus, the service and the song, is that memory of the days when  we dared to dream of a better future.