Generations have grown up enjoying commuting on the BEST’s double deckers. What a shock it was to learn that the BEST planned to discontinue them from September 15. Even more disheartening was the discovery that they plied on only one route: 415 from Agarkar Chowk (Andheri east) to Seepz.

This reporter remembers double deckers from the times when they were marked by alphabets: A, B, C, H, corresponding to today’s 1, 132, 123 and 103. I still remember a bunch of us climbing unsteadily down the stairs from the top deck every morning, giggling at some inane joke as schoolgirls are wont to do, while the conductor glowered. Those memories were rekindled by my co-passengers today: four school kids clambering to get on to each other’s laps to make the most of the two front seats remaining; a college student returning from tuitions ruing that this would be the last time he’d get this view. There was even an off-duty conductor who’d caught the coveted front seat in the depot itself!

“For us, it’s like parting with a lifelong companion,” he sighed. “Every morning, we get up and get into this vehicle.”

Driver Pereira had been driving double deckers since he joined the BEST in 1998, and loved them. “From my high seat, I can see the whole road,” he said. The high chassis of the double deckers stand them – and Mumbaikars – in good stead during the monsoons, he revealed, as the engine doesn’t get wet. (The new AC single decker buses have a low driver’s seat and a low chassis, making the engine vulnerable in heavy rains.) Conductor Anil Dawal recalled that even in the great deluge of 2005, commuters remained safe on the upper deck.

Besides being able to plough through flooded roads, double deckers fulfilled another valuable function. In space-starved Mumbai, the front seats served as lovers’ hideouts. With nothing in front of them except the broad road, these besotted souls remained oblivious to the passengers seated behind them.

For these and a hundred other memories, Mumbaikars remain grateful. Can’t BEST buy a few more of these hardy vehicles to retain the uniqueness of this great metropolis? After all, double deckers are as synonymous with Mumbai as the Gateway of India, and the BEST is overseen by Asia’s richest municipal corporation, the BMC. If nothing else, surely the BEST can reserve at least one route for the double decker: that taken by 123, from R C Church to Tardeo via Marine Drive, arguably the undertaking’s best route. The BEST owes this much to Mumbai.