Bus - seat acquisition via Aufbau principle.

Bus - seat acquisition via Aufbou principle.

Generally when we enter a seemingly vacant bus, we try to fill each seat in the order of one person per seat, and those who enter later on, fill the rest of the seats.

We have all studied in chemistry, that this behaviour is very much evident in electons when trying to fill a vacant shell. An electron fills a completely vacant seat first, and all the electrons that arrive later form pairs as per the Afbau Principle.

It is remarkable how the results seen in electrons are also visible in real life scenarios.

If the bus is completely vacant then the first arriving person takes a considerable amount of time to decide where to sit, this is because he tends to rely on his past experiences and need to sit in a particular seat such as a window seat. Other factors affecting the sitting could be the proximity of the bus tyres to the seat, relative distance from the entry to the bus, etc...

However when almost all seats have been occupied by at least one individual, the oncoming visitors, tend to occupy a seat in a hurry. Because he is concerned about Factors like:

• Destination distance
• Need for comfort
• The apparent demand for the seat
• In case there are lot of people boarding the bus at the same stop

The late arriving passenger does not mind the dimensions (body sizes) of the people occupying the seats which are vacant when he gets in. He tends to temporarily rely on instincts rather than thought process, and often gets denied of better available opportunities.

More-over, a late arriving passenger would have experienced a lot of waiting in the bus-stand and desperately sees the comforts offered by the sitting arrangement in the bus.

Another interesting phenomenon is the kind of orderliness that happens when an interested traveller sees an approaching bus from a busstand. It is as if, someone has ordered everyone to queue up in many situations, all the people waiting in the bus stand suddenly become extremely alert; It can be compared to the the way iron filings behave in the presence of a magnetic field. (^_^)

However this is not true if a lot of people are waiting in the bus stand, because in this situation, people tend to mass up and there is a lot of confusion while boarding the bus apart from the inherent competition.

It is also observed that when a completely filled bus approaches a bus stand, the situation is very different, but we can observe that the environment is usually unpleasant.

Bus Seat Reservation:

For the convenience of woman travelers, the government of Karnataka has enforced reservation of seats for Woman, the old aged people and the handicapped. How ever, despite the contention for these seats, normal seats are also most often reserved much earlier than they are occupied.


Like my friend Naresh points out, It is a common scenario to reserve a seat by marking the spot with your kerchief. This reservation extends to Bags, Lungies, Towels, books, Bags and several other commodities that people happen to carry with them when they travel. Though normal reservations like these are common i many parts of the country, I had once heard that in Bihar, they spit the pan that they chew to reserve the seat, later wipe the seat just before acquiring it. I was shocked and surprised for a very long time after hearing this...


To reserve a seat, the person reserving it has to be alert and ready to strike as soon as the bus arives. He should jump select the appropriate seat for reservation and throw the kerchief just as the bus stops, else the seat can get reserved by another person.


BUS overflow:
This phenomenon has been commonly observed in cities in India, where there is shortage of public transport during peak hours and people are forced to resort to standing on the foot-board, back ladders and the roof tops of the bus or any public transport. I have traveled like this many times, though there is a little amount of suffocation on the inside, hanging on the foot board could be a fascinating experience.

Bus overflow

Footboard travel

As you can observe in this figure, women enjoy a better facility when it comes to foot board travel and many prefer to take the next bus instead of trying to fit into the same bus.

My Bus Life

I had joined a school that was at a walkable distance from my home. When I completed my 10th standard i joined the  Sri Vidya mandir PU college in Malleshwaram. I had to change 2 buses. But all i did then was go to college and return home... had not even seen malleshwaram properly.

Then i joined Amrita school of engineering. This college is 30 kilometers from my home. I had to leave home every day by 6:45 and bus used to reach my stop at 7. The stop is about 2 kilometer from my home. Dad dropped me early in the morning to the bus stop. There were 2 seniors till th semester and then 1 till 6th.

Bus in the first sem was strange... Seniors rarely interacted while waiting for the bus. There was a shortage of seats in out bus and almost throughout the sem i sat on the foot board. That was perhaps the best seat in the bus.

First sem the seniors were very involved in the retun journey. Sometimes we used to get indulged in very strange conversations and discussed almost every possible topic under the sun, some of the memorable things  included imaginary numbers, string theory, trusses, aerofoams, random PJs  when we started discussing. And on some of the days we used to share earphones because I did not have FM or MP3 player to listen to it.

Yogeshwara, Karthik, Nagendra were the most involved ones in the discussions. There were some teachers also in the bus, but they used to get along with what ever we did.

On the fridays we used to be accompanied by hostellers who used to brighten the bus with their stories and jokes.


Everything changed after the first year. The college split us into two different group and since we had very few juniors, there wasnt much to talk about. How ever in the third year, we got pretty exciting juniors. People who were involved in a totally different way in the bus; It was then that we started playing Dumb Charades in the bus. On some days even the girls stated joining the game.


We used to always find Mahesh sleeping in the bus, Vinay and Visarad always involved in music. Suhas always ready as if there was something exciting going on, every now and then. And there was pranjal, a seriously cool guy, who was way beyond my league. Though I find shortage of words to express this, there were some pretty awesome everyday people.
(LOT more to come...)

21st birthday - For once i felt special.

Birthday is that special day, where you wake up with the feeling that everything is just perfect. You feel like you own the place and every time you are wished you have that special feeling.

I have always felt that the people i travelled everyday in the bus (the college bus by which i used to travel during engineering). Every one with a different idea. Everyone with a different behavior. But when it came to the time in the bus, everyone was a team.

On my 21st birthday I did not expect anyone to remember the event, because i hadn't been wished the previous 2 years. But this day as soon as i entered the bus, almost every-one wished me. Usually we used to go and eat at the Sairams Chat at Malleshwaram. On the 6th of april also the guys insisted that I go with them. Though my birthday had passes on march 31.

None of my batch-mates were coming that day, so i decided to come up with some excuse to not go. Fortunately (rather unfortunately) it was my brothers birthday that day and I insisted strongly on not going with them especially because in the past several relatives used to visit on that day. As it turned out, AFTER 10 years I had an opportunity to enjoy my birthday celebration, and there i was fooling around.

The guys in my bus had even gone ahead and bought me a wonderful T-shirt for my birthday... I wonder how I could have over-looked it. I mean there I was, a fool not going to this chat with them. I still did not go, feeling very bad, and it happened so, that because my brother had his final exam. Even he did not get a birthday celebration that year (:P).