4 days, 5 nites, and a New Tolerance Level - Part III of IV

Bangalore-to-Anantapur and Anantapur
-I should have listened to my cousin and waited for an air-conditioned bus to take me from Bangalore to Anantapur in the evening. But no, I had to get stupid and envision romanticism on a regular bus ride in the teeth of summer (my bud was right about my IQ I guess).
-So off I went on what is usually a 4h ride on the bus to Anantapur in a regular bus which had no a/c and almost metallic seats.
-Let’s just say it was an interesting experience being on a 7 h bus ride from 1 in the afternoon until 8 pm in 110F temperatures with no air-conditioning. By the time the bus came to Anantapur I was so sapped that I had no energy to even talk to anyone. Adding to this, there was a power cut as I got out of the bus making it difficult to see who had come to pick me up.
-I hustled to a motel, showered, and changed quickly as I was already late for my cousin’s wedding reception.
-The exasperation of the bus ride disappeared immediately as I met my little cousins and uncles and aunts at the reception. I enjoy hanging out with my little cousins who are in the 16-24 yr age group with razor sharp sense of humor. We hung out at the reception hall for a bit and headed to my cousin’s place for a nite of playing cards. This is always exciting! We had to stay awake until 4 am in the morning as the actual wedding ceremony would take place at that time due to it being an auspicious time. And lo went the card playing and giggling.
-We survived the nite and managed to head back to the wedding hall in time for the wedding. There were very few people left-only immediate family (which is a relative word in my family) and it went off well.
-We scrambled back and managed 2h of sleep. Soon after my mom, sister, little nephew, my aunt, and I were headed off to my grandparents’s village in rural AP in an air-conditioned car. All in all it was a good time at the wedding.
-Another disturbing trend I noticed in Anantapur, which is a reasonably large town, is the lack of public infrastructure. It seemed like there was no change at the central bus station or train station in the last 15 years or so. It was very discouraging. I kept hearing that the local politicians were preventing the improvement of roads, and other public infrastructure whenever one side proposed to go ahead with it. Why? Well, because the other side believed that if the roads and other items were improved the people would give all the credit to the political party which proposed it thus making it difficult for the opposition party to come back to power!