I have been traveling in public buses for a few years now and I am quite used to the ever-overcrowded buses of Delhi.
I strongly believe that the private buses in Delhi needs to be enshrined somewhere in the chronicles of someone’s history for being everything that a bus carrying passengers from a point A to point B should not be. They have seats so small that two people can’t sit on it without pressing on each other, not enough rods to hold onto, windows that refuse to open up in summers and get closed in winters and to make matters more interesting they have a breaking system invented in the early days of industrial revolution.

Design is easy to overlook because it is the invisible force that bends technology towards human being. It carries within itself an imprint of use; it converts technology of all kinds from being an abstract noun into a verb. It converts the material into the relevant. It humanises all inventions; it makes a scientific principle an everyday practice.

In many ways, design represents the most economical compression of culture into things. Take the difference in the traditional design of a teacup and a coffee mug. Teacup and saucer containing it is the culture that it was part of. The presence of saucer, not for use, but for etiquettes lest one spills the tea, the small handle that needs unwaveringly prissy holding all serve to evoke the world of elegant British tea parties. The coffee mug, on the other hand evoke the culture of no-nonsense brusqueness of the American deal. You can slip a fist through it, bang it down on the table and ask for more.

It is easy to see why new inventions take so much time to adapt itself to human use. It is more difficult to explain why private buses of Delhi, staircases with high stairs, sandals with complicated buckles and buckets with thin handles that are guaranteed to break backs and foster hernia must be allowed to survive in this world.