It all begins at the control room of Sukhdev Vihar Depot, one of DTC’s terminals for the new fleet of low-floor airconditioned buses, where Ayub marks attendance against his employee number—19357. At the ticket section, the serial number of the first ticket in his inventory—I’m itching to wield the neat bunch—is noted. At the end of the shift, the number of tickets sold will be tallied with the cash he brings in—a deficit of Rs 10 and he wouldn’t be allowed to board the bus the next day.

The 35-seater bus with a wide aisle, large windows, automatic doors and neon poles is one handsome roadster. The temperature is a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius, the ear-splitting FM radio is conspicuously absent, and dusty Delhi rolls by at a remove. Picking up a few passengers en route to Ambedkar Nagar, where the one-hour-and-twenty-minute-long journey actually begins, Ayub explains the ticketing procedure. I spread a towel on my lap and lay out the tickets, which come in three denominations—Rs 10, Rs 15 and Rs 20.

A girl with a backpack boards the bus at Modi Flour Mills in Okhla; she will disembark at the next stop, her smile the ticket to a free ride. The driver is willing to look the other way . At the next stop, however, I must turn down unruly schoolchildren who do not intend to buy tickets: “Dus rupaiya ticket, pass nahi chalega.”

Clocking in at 3.50 pm at the timekeeping post at Ambedkar Nagar, the bus pulls up noiselessly to admit a drove of passengers. Grateful for the glass pane divider in front of the conductor’s seat—a woman in khaki can attract more than a few curious glances—I hand out tickets for Chirag Dilli, Moolchand and Red Fort, tearing the scraps of white paper at the destination and returning change. The charge of the commuters—some first-timers who ask for clarifications (“Daryaganj jayegi?)—is too urgent, and Ayub steps in.

The spirit of mobility binds all—college-goers, labourers, cloth merchants and turbaned old men—in the everydayness of urban life. An old-timer buttonholes a man in a skullcap in a discursive conversation; a woman catches her forty winks; an executive’s file misses someone’s eye by a hair’s breadth. The doors

open, reminding me that I am not one of them, not today, and I get busy disbursing tickets, folding notes and rummaging for change in Ayub’s leather pouch, all the while entreating the flock not to throng the doorway.

At ITO, a passenger found to be undercharged is pulled up by Om Prakash, the traffic supervisor who has just boarded the bus to check tickets. After some deliberation, he charges a fine of Rs 100 and hands the defaulter a receipt. Prakash claims to catch 20-22 freeloaders on DTC’s A/C buses in the course of his eight-hour shift.

The journey draws to a close. We have sold 95 tickets, worth Rs 1,410, on our one-way trip to Old Delhi railway station, where the street is almost completely blocked by parked autorickshaws. The two decrepit timekeeping booths here have noted that 105 buses have arrived, a few missed making a trip . But for Ayub, there’s no missing the bus. After a quick 10-minute tea break, he will be back in the groove, conducting the long roadtrip back to square one.