The New York City SBS Receipt Social Contract

Living in New York is a continuous assault on the senses - in a good way. You get to see, hear, and experience so many things unique to the city, that it becomes commonplace in a while. But every few days, I have a new experience that makes me love this city even more. This is one such experience.

This semester I have been teaching in the Bronx 3 days a week. The commute is long, and involves something I have never had to resort to in Manhattan - riding the bus! I take a subway train from Manhattan to the Fordham Rd station. And from there, take a bus to the Fordham campus, about a mile away.

This is an SBS (Select Bus Service) bus. Unlike normal buses, where you pay the fare when entering from the front door, the SBS buses require you to swipe your metrocard at the bus stop, take a receipt, and keep it in your pocket. The driver assumes that everyone has a receipt. Most of the times, no one checks if you actually have the receipt. But once in a while, when you get off the bus, an MTA employee is waiting to check your receipt. If you don't have it, you pay a fine. Doesn't happen too often (I've encountered receipt checkers only 3 times in the last 3 months), but acts as a deterrent against free riders.

Obviously, you need to get the receipt from the fare machine BEFORE the bus gets there. Which is what I usually do. I get off the subway, walk to the bus stop which is a block away, swipe my card, take the receipt, and wait for the bus. That receipt is free, because transfer from an MTA subway to an MTA bus is free. So I'm not paying the city of New York another $2.25, just getting a proof of the fact that I have a right to be on the bus.

A couple of days ago, I got off the subway, and saw that the bus was already at the stop. Instinctively, I ran. I wasn't in a hurry or anything. I could just as easily have taken the next bus and been well in time for my class. But the human urge to run after the earliest bus is as irresistible as the canine urge to chase cars. So I ran.

As I ran, I started wondering if I really could catch the bus. I would have to go to the fare machine, swipe my card and get the receipt (a process than takes 10-15 seconds), and then get on the bus. New York City bus drivers, quite understandably, don't hang around waiting for tardy passengers. Time, tide, and MTA buses wait for no one. It seemed like I would probably miss the bus. I still kept running.

As I approached the bus, before I could head to the fare machine, a man getting down from the rear door thrust his hand out in my direction. In New York, if a stranger makes a strange gesture, you ignore it. So I did. Another man did the same thing, trying to hand me something. I assumed he was handing out fliers like someone at every street block in the city seems to be doing, ignored him, and kept running. Although I was in no particular hurry, I kept hoping I could get to the fare machine, get the receipt, and hop aboard before the bus left.

When I was about to run past the middle door towards the fare machine, a big black guy about 2 metres tall and almost as wide stood halfway in my path. With a swift motion of his arm, he thrust something in my hand and grunted,

"The f**k's wrong withchoo man? Get on the damn bus!"

I stopped dead in my tracks. Not like I had a choice, given that he was blocking my way. I looked at my hand. It held an SBS receipt. I looked up and saw the big lug had already started lumbering away. He looked back at me and said,

"You gonna miss the bus."

With the receipt in my hand, I hopped aboard, and stood there, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. It took several seconds for me to grasp the concept. And I finally understood that the other guys thrusting their hands at me had been trying to do the same thing - hand me their receipts.

I had been the beneficiary of a benevolent social contract that seemed to have come about among those who travel on SBS buses. When you're getting off the bus, if you see someone running to catch it, you give them your receipt. The receipt is no good to you anyway after you've gotten off. The poor running sap will have to go to the fare machine, and will probably miss the bus. So an elegant solution to help others out - give them your receipt.

The simplicity and elegance of this implicit social contract almost made me go "AWWWWWWWW". There's no way to know how this norm started or when. But it's another example of how human beings thrown together in a tough situation develop mechanisms to help each other out. Often, when it's a tough situation brought on by "the man" or the government. It's a bit like how drivers on the interstate highways, when they see a cop hiding in the bushes to catch speeders, flash their lights to oncoming drivers to warn them.

The next time I get off the SBS and see someone sprinting towards the bus, I am going to hold out my receipt for them too. That really is the essence of "pay it forward".

The Biggest Dravid Myth

Rahul Dravid has retired. The end of an era. A lot is being written about him, and will be written about him. I am not interested in writing a comprehensive tribute to his illustrious career. I want to address the biggest Dravid myth that keeps cropping up in most tributes.

In an otherwise well-written article on Dravid at The Guardian, Rob Smyth writes

Though Dravid was technically beautiful, his often weary face
betrayed the fact that batting rarely came easy to him. He did not
have the brutal audacity of Virender Sehwag, the poetic elegance of
Laxman, the unfathomable, enduring genius of Tendulkar or the sublime
cover drive of Ganguly.

I could not disagree more. Dravid had loads of natural flair, and all this talk of his technique trumping all else, making him out to be a dour but determined grifter is the result of cricket fans wanting to neatly pigeonhole batsmen into pre-conceived slots. Lazy cricket fans think of those slots as Richards or Boycott, and put Dravid quite unfairly in the Boycott slot. I also think his "technique" was vastly exaggerated, and is the result of people forgetting what the copybook actually says and equating a slow scoring rate and a solid defense with textbook technique.

I am not saying he was a technique maverick and mostly freakish natural ability like Laxman or Sehwag. But his success wasn't all technique or even mostly technique. He had a few shots, especially in the 90s, that would have made an orthodox coach cringe, but looked absolutely beautiful. His drives square of the wicket on the off side were essentially similar to Sehwag's - no foot movement, and taking a chance against balls in or just outside the corridor of uncertainty, and relying mainly on balance and hand-eye co-ordination. Most other batsmen most of the times would have nicked those to slips or scooped them to gully. He got away with those shots, with a few lives during his 148 in SA and 190 in NZ in his early years. But he batted pretty much the same way in Aus in 99 and failed miserably, because luck wasn't on his side. His swivel pull shots looked beautiful too, but he very often fetched balls way outside the off stump line, something a technical coach would have been aghast at. I even remember him losing his wicket, when very close to a century, to Greg Blewett of all people, to such a pull shot. He often played almost compulsively against the spin, something that got him into trouble against Shane Warne for a while, because Warne's line was often so far away from the stumps. But helped him attack other spinners with relative ease.

And his timing was phenomenal! That was sheer natural talent. I remember watching him once against Pakistan, when he had let his hair down by his standards and was going for his shot. Orgasmic batting that was! I remember texting Amit Varma that this was the most beautiful attacking innings I had ever seen him play. It was his 110 in the 1st innings against Pakistan at Eden Gardens in 2005. He truly must have been at the top of his game, because he followed it up with a vital century in the 2nd innings. But that 110 was REALLY enthralling to watch! Dravid playing purely on instinct, without inordinate fear of losing his wicket,

The thing is, Dravid curbed his natural flair more than the average natural flair Indian batsman. He defended and played it safe more often than he needed to. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That helped him convert several possible 75 off 110 balls into 125 off 250 balls. And his "technique" evolved through the years, like any quality batsman's technique should. He consciously became more solid in defense as the years went by. Often exactly when the team needed him to, but also occasionally when him playing with gay abandon would've given us a better result. So the only reason Dravid is seen as this guy to whom "batting didn't come easy", is that he consciously cut down on his easy shots in the 2000s, when he was at his peak. I know he himself has said that batting didn't come easy to him. But that might have to do with his own lofty standards of ease and strict quality control when it came to shots, than anything else. And it made perfect sense, given that he was in the same team as Sehwag, Tendulkar, and Laxman for those years. With all those aggressive stroke makers in the team, it made sense for him to be the circumspect one.

But batting did come easily to him. He just chose, almost always, to not give in to his natural instincts, and instead relied on his judgment. But the rare occasion when he did give in to his instincts could be brutal. I remember watching with awe an ODI against New Zealand back during my MBA days (2003 or so) when he came out to bat in the slog overs after centuries by Sachin and Sehwag. He absolutely mauled the Kiwi bowling line-up and got to a half-century in 24 balls or so. The friends I was watching the match with kept saying "Who is this guy? this isn't Dravid!" And my response was, "this IS the real Dravid. He just chooses not to be that most of the time."

To sum it up, I think "Though Dravid was technically beautiful, his often weary face betrayed the fact that batting rarely came easy to him." is IMHO the worst and most inaccurate insult you can heap on Dravid on the day of his retirement.