I am alone...

(This happens to be the most pessmistic blog I have ever written...)

There was a whirring sound and I was trying to recollect where it came from. Houses, buildings, billboards, hoardings, roads, vehicles on the roads, people in the vehicles on the roads, people on the roads, a few trees here and there, small bridges on gutters, and flyovers, all were flying by, but I don’t recollect where. At times ground used to stop flying by and there used to be either a concrete platform under peoples’ feet, or two parallel tracks of iron. There was a deafening noise all around. The whirring sound used to stop for seconds and then start again. But the deafening sound used to increase when the whirring sound stopped. Was I dead or was I alive and dreaming? No I was in a local train in Mumbai. With at least hundreds of people in 100 meters radius at any given point of time, I was alone.

I was alone, I am alone and I will be alone. I am alone when I eat. I am alone when I watch a movie. I am alone when I sleep. I am alone when I walk. I create illusions to run from myself, and I am afraid to look deep into the illusion because I know that I will find only myself, all alone. I try to create the feeling of we but then I feel that the word ‘we’ is itself an illusion. I tend to enjoy at parties, at get-togethers, at dinners, but I find that there is hollowness, a big and vast hollowness with no boundaries or reaches, just a big hollowness, and I am there, rather only I am there, all alone again and forever.

Sometimes I feel that I am wrong, I am not alone, I have a family, I have friends and relatives. But where are they? Then I find they are all in the mind. If I think that you are my friend then you are but if I don’t think that you are my friend then you are not. So it all comes to my mind, that is me, and again I find that I am alone. I was thinking, tomorrow if I die, it will matter to some for a few days, to some for a few weeks, to some for a few months, to some for may be a few years and to most won’t matter at all. But if I die, to me it will matter the most, or I would say, it would matter my lifetime (this makes me laugh). And at the end I still find that I am alone.

Its not that I am bored with life or any other such thing. I love the work I am doing. In fact I am passionate about a lot of things I do. I do have a lot of aspirations, some goals and I see a life ahead of me, but at any point I find myself alone. I don’t know why this bothers me. I am a person who loves to do most of the things alone, but at times I feel the need to share a few things with someone. It’s not about sharing a cigarette or my bottle of water or a joke, it’s like sharing my thoughts, my ambitions, my aspirations, a part of myself. But again I find that I am alone and I don’t have a clue what to do about it.

You don’t have to worry because I know that I am all alone as are you.

Getting home at times gets tough…

Here I am with another episode. This one happens to be about one of my journeys to my home in Aizawl. It was during my college days, I was to travel by train from Mughalsarai to Guwahati, and then from there to Aizawl by road.

I was supposed to board the North East Express at Mughalsarai at 1930 hrs (that’s the time my ticket showed). It so happened luckily, that I and my uncle who had come to see me off, were at the station a bit early, in fact, 1 hour early. When we entered the station at 1830 hours, and checked the enquiry, it showed that the train was running right time and the right time was 1830 not 1930, and it was just about to depart. Running and rushing, I and my uncle reached the platform, by then the train had already started moving. I threw my bag in the compartment in front and then I threw myself in. Luckily, it happened to be the same compartment in which I had my seat reserved. When I reached my berth, it was occupied by some elderly man, (which is nothing new in India). I tried to convince him that it was my seat, and he also did the same thing. After 3 hrs of waiting there, the TTE showed up and informed me that it was I who was sitting at the wrong seat, I had a different seat, and it was wrongly printed on my ticket. Finally, I got onto my seat and reached Guwahati the next evening.

After reaching Guwahati I got to know that there had been a land slide somewhere in between Shillong and Silchar, which had (unfortunately) taken down a bus with all its passengers, down the hilly gorge. Due to the land slide, only taxis were able to pass through, so I took a Sumo to reach Silchar. At around 4.30 am in the morning, our Sumo crossed a bridge over the gorge and reached the place where the land slide had happened. The road was full with mud, knee high, and it was drizzling. Suddenly, the Sumo rocked as if it had hit a boulder or may be a tree trunk, some where in the mud. The Sumo crossed, whatever it had hit, but due to the jerk, the carrier with our luggage in it, at the top, broke and fell on the bonnet and then into the mud. All the passengers including me, took off our shoes, folded our pants above the knee and got in the mud to retrieve our luggage. It was chilly outside, added to it the drizzle and the wind. We got our luggage in the Sumo, at the back seat, and somehow adjusted in the remaining seats, and then we realized that we had been shivering all through. The Sumo moved forward, out of the muddy area, stopped near a spring, where we cleaned ourselves of the mud. Moving forward, we stopped near a small motel had several cups of tea to warm ourselves. At that time I was wondering how the driver was able to drive, while shivering all the time. Anyway, late in the morning we reached Silchar.

In Silchar, I met my dad, who had also come down from Aizawl for some work. In the afternoon after his work got over, when we decided to go to Aizawl, we got to know that a strike had started in Mizoram and no vehicles were allowed in the state. After asking at a few places we came to know that only one bus of Mizoram State Transport was going and that too only till half the way. With no other options, we got in the bus, reached the half way at midnight. After some more enquiries, we found out a guy who owned a taxi. With other people like us who had to travel till Aizawl, and were stranded half way, we got the guy out of his sleep. After paying almost double the fare, we reached Aizawl in early morning. Whatever it was, all this trouble in the journey vanished after reaching my sweet home, but ya a usual proper journey wouldn’t have had caused any harm.

Biswa with his pants down...

Miranda House happens to be one of the best known girls’ hostels in India. This episode happens to be about one of my friends who somehow managed to have his pants down in Miranda House. (Now don’t start thinking otherwise.)

Biswa, one of my friends, as we call him, happened to be Delhi for a few days, during one of his college years. Another one of our friends had a girl friend, who at that time was staying in the hostel. She had invited him to the hostel function, the only one night in a year when boys get permission to get in the Miranda House, and had also asked him to get a few of his friends along with. Now Biswa accompanied him for the function. That afternoon, they were sitting, chatting in some park near by, when Biswa heard a growling sound. The sound was coming from his stomach. Then he realized that there was a huge pressure building up in his small tummy. He (like Rahul, in earlier days) has this habit of getting a pressure at wrong times and at wrong places. Anyway, with mid day just passing by and with couples all around, he somehow managed to control his urge and obviously, he was sitting all the time. Some how the catastrophe which was about to happen in the park, was avoided and it was postponed till evening, when the function started. This time it seemed impossible for Biswa to control himself. The war between, his stomach and his embarrassment of asking girls, the way to the loo, ended with his embarrassment giving away to the (then mighty) stomach. Finally, he gathered enough courage to ask the girls, the way to the washroom had then he settled himself for the big loo. Relaxed after that, probably he was the person who enjoyed the function the most, as they say, a hungry person enjoys his food the most, so did Biswa, comparing his status before visiting the loo.
We all had a good laugh after hearing this, but I admit to this day, that I know only of one guy who had his pants down in Miranda House, and that is Biswa.

A dripping Experience in Dhenkanal

Today I was thinking of what to write about. I don’t know but sometimes it seems my brain goes dead, and today is one of those sometimes. Maybe it’s because I didn’t complete my sleep and I have a huge migraine. Anyway let me stop cribbing.

For the past few days I have developed a view of seeing things. It’s not anything new, but I have adopted it pretty recently. The funda is, of seeing the glass as half full or half empty. It’s the same thing, as a glass half empty is also half full, but the way I take it, as half full or half empty, makes a huge difference to the way I see things. I agree with you that it’s the same as being optimist or pessimist, but I have simplified it in my own way as the glass being half full or half empty. So, taking it that way, I would say, today I am feeling the glass is half empty, about everything. Anyway, let me not make you feel the same way. Here is another of my trips.

I happened to be in Bhubaneshwar for a few months last year. And I fully utilized these few months in the best way I could, that’s roaming here and there. Bhubaneshwar doesn’t offer much to see, but it has lot of places around it which are worth visiting. In fact I had a made it point that I go out of the city every weekend, though all the weekends didn’t turn out (wonderful) roaming times, but most of them sure did. The first experience was going to Dhenkanal. It’s a hilly area, around 130 km away from Bhubaneshwar. I and three of my friends, Vishwanath, Arihant and Tushar, started for Dhenkanal on a rainy Sunday morning, on bikes of course (1 Pulsar, 1 CBZ). It was drizzling in Bhubaneshwar, but we had expected that it would stop once we got out of the city, which didn’t happen. We crossed Cuttack which is only 22 km away, and came onto a two lane highway leading us to our destination. While crossing Cuttack we had to cross the Mahanadi River thrice, which was looking wonderful, in a grey atmosphere with rain turning to drizzles and drizzles to rain. The water in the river was swelling up to the brim, and on one of the bridges, it seemed that we could kneel down and touch the water, (though we never tried it).

All soaked up we moved forward towards Dhenkanal, stopping a few times to stretch up, or when the pouring became really hard. Finally, reaching Dhenkanal, we went to visit the brother of Tushar, who was studying there. Those 30 minutes that we spent at his brother’s place was the only time when we were dry, on that day. From there we four, Tushar’s brother and a few of his friends went to a temple which was about 10 km from there. There is nothing particular about the temple, but the way that leads to it is something I will remember. It is said that the last 1 km stretch before the temple never sees the sun due to the dense forest around. There is a proper road which goes till the steps of the temple, but the last 1 km is so steep that none of our bikes could go up, and we had to walk all the way up. Coming down on bikes was equally tough with wet slippery roads. Anyway, once down, and once we had our lunch, we started off for another temple, which was 15 km away from the town. Here also the road leading to the temple was an attraction for me. It was pretty long, with hill on one side and valley on the other, both covered with dense forests. It reminded me of North Eastern India, where I had spent my childhood. We drove all the way up to the temple steps, paid our visits to the Gods seated there and also to the monkeys, who were in the temple premises. One of us also gave a few Chloromints to some monkeys, who I guess enjoyed them thoroughly, as they never came back again after us. And to remind, all this entire time it was either raining or drizzling (thankfully drizzling most of the time). We came back to Dhenkanal and almost immediately left for Bhubaneshwar.

On our way back when we crossed Cuttack, it started raining really hard. But since the distance was short, and in our urge to get a bit dry, we raced through the rain and reached Bhubaneshwar safely, although we did cancel our plans of having dinner together. It hadn’t seemed then, but now looking back, this entire dripping during the day was what had made this trip memorable.

Huge ordeal of a small kid in Standard 1.

This time I am thinking of writing something other than travel experiences. Its not that I have run out of them, instead it’s just that I wanted to write about it. To tell you the truth it was my brother who suggested me of writing about this (as he also happens to be the central character in this entire episode).

It’s about the time when I was a small kid in standard 1 (yes) and my brother ‘Rahul’ was a toddler who had just joined the brigade of school going kids. (Rahul is 2 years younger to me). As it normally happens, kids get a habit of crying when they have to go to the school, but Rahul wasn’t one of them. He used to go to school happily, without any complaints, or any aches, stomach, head etc. (I really used to wonder how and why). Instead he had developed a passion of going to school, (which I am forced to believe till date) just for one reason. Every, and if not every, every alternate day, he used to spoil his pants in the school, yes, the big loo, not the small one. And, since I was the elder brother, his class teacher always used to summon me to take him home. I don’t know if he had a loose tummy, or whatever was the reason, he used to repeat the process on a daily basis on and off.

Coaxing and cursing him, I used to take him to a hilly stream near by the school, asked him to wash himself over, which he never used to do. After some more coaxing and cursing, I used to wash him over, put him in his pants and took him home. Since it always used to be in the middle of the day, there used to be no school buses and the only means of communication possible then, used to be our legs. Then, used to start the process of dragging myself and my brother, through a 3 km short cut to our home. Now it doesn’t seem to be anything big, but down the time, then it sure was a big ordeal.
One more incident, I want to mention. It was before Rahul started going to the school. My mom used to come to the bus stand to take me home, after the school. The distance wasn’t very far, hardly 100 meters. Sometimes, my brother also used to accompany my mom. Out of these sometimes, on several occasions, my brother had to return to home alone, or sometimes we all had to rush back to home, so that he wouldn’t dirty his pants. Its not that he had a bad stomach or, had some problem related to health, its only that he used to get emergencies at the wrong times at the wrong places. Thank fully, for him, he has quit this passion of his, long time back, but again, thinking back this part is the only thing I remember of days in standard 1.

A pretty ‘Bikey’ trip… (Part 2)

On our way to Agra, we had gone hardly 30 km when the same tyre of the same bike punctured again. Somehow we got hold of a mechanic and got the tube changed. By then it had gone dark, it was cold and according to our earlier plan, we hadn’t carried any warm clothes. Thinking of stopping somewhere in the night, we asked the owner of a small highway side restaurant cum hotel, about the options we had since we didn’t have enough cash to spend a night anywhere other than below the open sky. The hotel owner asked us to eat and stay for the night and pay him back once we got back from Agra. So, we finally had our dinner and stayed in a large hall, some of us sleeping on two double beds and others sleeping on the ground. In the early morning we left for Agra again, all of us shivering against the cold morning air of open fields. After going for about 70 km, the same tyre punctured again, this time even after getting the tube changed. We got the tyre and the tube changed again for which we didn’t have enough money to pay, and promised the mechanic to pay him once we got back from Agra, who to our surprise (thankfully) agreed to it.

Crossing Mahua, and Bharatpur we had just reached Fatehpur Sikri, about 40 km away from Agra, when petrol in all three of the Yamahas got over. With all the remaining cash we had, we got the Splendor filled with some petrol so that it could reach Agra, and since the scooter had a bad mileage, we had already filled it with enough petrol. Four among us went to get the cash (which we badly needed). Rest of us waited in Fatehpur Sikri. Now a rather funny incidence occurred here. We decided to move further towards Agra, as far as we could. We all combed our wallets, our pockets and came out with 25 rupees in total. We had thought of filling each bike with 10 rupees petrol and move forward, but we were short of 5 bucks. We decided to off go and stay there. Since we were not going to use the money for petrol, one of us went and got 2 cigarettes which cost us 5 bucks. At this time one of the guys, Dhar, from somewhere within his clothes, fished out a 5 rupee coin. We returned the cigarettes (which we hadn’t lighted luckily) and got 10 rupees petrol for all the 3 bikes. We moved some more towards Agra, then waited till afternoon when the other four came back from Agra. Finally we reached Agra, had our breakfast + lunch + dinner, and entered in Taj Mahal when it had already started getting dark. We sat at the back side platform of the Taj, for some time, with the dark image of the Taj Mahal looming against the clear sky and the Yamuna on the other.

At around 8.30 in the evening we started back for Jaipur. After driving for almost 4 continuous hours we reached the mechanic (whom we owed money), paid him in his sleep, came to the hotel where we had stayed, had our food at 2 am, slept till late, then started again back for Jaipur. After going about 10 km from the hotel, the same tyre punctured again. We got it mended and decided to go to the Balaji temple again, and since it was closed, we came back without going in.

We finally reached Jaipur in the afternoon and to the much surprise of our friends in college, we were alive. In our uninformed absence, our friends had tried all sources of getting some news of us, but thankfully hadn’t called our homes (well that’s something we do at the last), and had finally made some weird theories of what might have happened to us. Anyways, we distributed the “Prasad” of Balaji to our friends. Some of our friends who know the rituals and beliefs of Rajasthan then said to us that it’s neither recommended nor considered safe, to travel with the Prasad of Balaji with you. You are supposed to consume or dispose off the Prasad before you leave the Balaji temple area. Anyways, whether we believed in it or not, we surely had a wonderful and memorable trip to Agra (memorable also because of the stiff back for 2 weeks after that trip).

A pretty ‘Bikey’ trip… (Part 1)

(As this episode is pretty long, I will be posting it in two parts. This is the 1st part, and the second part will be coming shortly.)

Seems like, I am going to catch a habit of posting now and then. Anyway, this time I am going to write about another of my traveling experiences. At that time I was in college, in Jaipur. I was one among those guys in the college, who do nothing which they are expected to do and everything which they are expected not to do. It was the November of 2002, Diwali night (seems like most of my memorable travel experiences are around Diwali), when few of us who hadn’t had the chance or didn’t want to go to our homes, were sitting in front of Hostel No.5. We had spent the earlier two days (rather nights) getting bored and had two more to get more bored. Shukla, as we used to call Priya Ranjan Shukla, suggested that we go to Balaji, the next morning and return by the evening. Ten of us agreed, and obviously all of us didn’t have bikes and more importantly the money, so we spent the rest of the night ‘managing’ bikes and money. By the morning all ten of us started on our way to Balaji, on 3 Yamaha RX 135s, 1 Splendor and one scooter. Out of all these only one Yamaha belonged to a person (Nipun) who was traveling with us, rest all were borrowed, added to it only two people had Driving Licenses one of which never knew how to drive.

By the way, Balaji, our destination, is a temple, 110 km away from Jaipur on the Jaipur – Agra highway and it is famous for “Bhoot Bhagana”, i.e. treating people who are supposedly possessed. And the irony is that, there is a lunatic asylum on the road to the temple, not even 100 km far from it.

Coming back to our trip, we started in the morning for Balaji. When two of the bikes jumped the last traffic signal out of Jaipur, we used all the possible methods of convincing the traffic ‘mamas’, which we had thoroughly learnt and practiced in our college days. Moving forward, we reached Balaji in the afternoon, had our lunch and went to the temple to find it was closed till 4 pm. At 4 pm we got in a pretty long line, and after waiting for half an hour, were out of the temple in a few seconds. On the 1st floor is the temple of Bhootnath, and behind that is a way (gallery) that leads to the foothill of a small barren hill. In this narrow gallery you can see people being chained to big rocks and for some people the rocks were kept on them. It seemed like huge paper weights sitting on top of some paper like humans. Anyways we climbed the hill to find a few ‘Samadhis’ on top of it and a small temple of ‘Seshnag’. This hill is supposedly filled with snakes and it’s not advisable to go there after dark. So, being good boys, we came down in time, and decided to head back to Jaipur.

When we reached the place where we had left our bikes, we found that one of the Yamaha’s had a flat tyre. While it was being addressed to by a mechanic, we sat down for a cup of tea, when some weirdo in our group, suggested that we go to Agra instead of Jaipur. We just had enough cash to reach either Jaipur or Agra. But that problem also seemed to be solved (at least at that time), as Navin, one of the guys traveling with us had relatives in Agra, so we could pick some cash from them and return it back from Jaipur. So, finally we set off to Agra.

The BT in me…

For over 5 months I had been thinking of posting a blog somewhere. ‘Had no time’ is a good excuse, but I really was a bit busy shifting from one place to another and then deciding where to shift again, and then shifting over again. In the past 6 months this is my third city. Anyway, (as we say) cutting the crap, here I am posting my first blog.

I am a kind of person who loves traveling around. Rather its something like, if I stay put at one place, without going out somewhere, I get impatient. But this time it was Diwali (yes of 2005, am I pretty late in writing about this?), and I was coming from Guwahati, using our wonderful Indian Railways. I call the train system wonderful, not (only) out of sarcasm but because we get to meet many interesting people, the kind of ‘interesting’ which are interesting because you happen to be with them only for sometime (fortunately). Well out of these interesting persons, two of them, brothers, must be in their early 50s, came right up in my compartment. First thing they did was to lift the middle berth. Now you will ask, what’s so big about it. Nothing I guess, except, it was 12 pm midday, and both the oldies were sitting in a back breaking position on the lower birth, with their heads popped out. The middle berth came down when the train started moving, and the purpose as it seemed was to avoid anyone else from sitting on their lower berth. All through the journey either one of the brothers was sleeping on the lower berth and the other sitting in a cramped position. I was really amazed at the possessiveness they seemed to have for their lower birth.

Next day in the train (yes it was a long distance train- 3 days journey), at some station I don’t remember one of the brothers got off and he really got off. I mean, the idiot train left one of the poor brothers on the platform. Discovering this, the other brother made a huge hue and cry, and really made us believe for some time that the train driver had done this intentionally. At this moment let me mention that the brothers were Bengalis (no grudge intended towards the entire community), but this is a particular quality of Bengalis to blow things out of proportion. As it happened at that time, it was only my cell phone that seemed to be working, and the brother in the train (mentioned BT henceforth) made a few calls here and there. At the end of all this calling session, when he was pacified that his brother had safely boarded some other train and was heading in the same direction, BT offered me 100 rupees for using my cell. I out of the feeling of helping someone in distress and may be out of shyness, refused it.

Now in the evening, two students boarded the compartment, and they didn’t happen to have a confirmed ticket. They asked BT if they could use the middle birth as it was free now. Seems like, BT started using his business mind and started negotiating to sell the birth for 350 rupees. The negotiation rounds went for about 30 minutes, with me and a few others, taking sides of students and BT alternatively. At the end, the middle birth was sold for 50 rupees to the students. This is when I got the feeling that with such a man as BT, I should have taken the 100 rupees he was offering me.

Fortunately, I reached my destination at 1 am in the night, cursing the entire railway system as they had made my train 90 minutes late. Seems like, the BT in me was at work then.