Wait a moment : This small piece below was finished by me some five days back and accounts for events till my leaving Delhi on my wanderlust. Till here, it is more of a cheap account of my witty effort to move on in my life. Post this also I kept on penning as I kept on moving, travelling, meeting & interacting with people etc. What shape it started to take showed a possibility to me of being a piece which travelled forth & between the genre of a travelougue, observation about people, religion, spritualism, culture etc. So I would keep it with me, working upon it in a serious manner and share it, if at all I complete it satisfactorily!!
Disclaimer : The below piece has gone thru the test of MS Word for the check of spellings, grammer, punctuations, thesaurus etc. Still if any discrepancy is found the same should not be blamed upon me, it should be blamed on The Microsoft Corporation & Mr. Bill Gates. I as such have been brought up with the training that " Prepositions are a curse upon English".
Hi Friends!!!
Post my first verbose & open mail, a novelty to me, an anxiety had got built within me!!! How would it be received by my friends ?? Most know me quiet personally but whether was I intruding in the privacy of not so closely known/new friends was the area of discomfort.
Friends got back!!!! Over mail, phone and sms. Different responses, suggestions, praise, jealousy all. None critique or criticism ( as such the later is not expected from friends in these situations, but my low self esteem always somehow expects that.)
Most notably " Jiye jaa pyaare" type two mails from very senior friends. Two suggesting not to abstain from writing about the journey for different reasons & many asking which place was the scenic natural beauty from: sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier in the first mail; it is Mussorie. Lots of phone calls and sms's were received, thanks!
Most notably a close friend from Ahemdabad, clearly mentioning that she was jealous, wanted to take a break from work and join me. Excited, in moments I drew up her journey plan onwards Ahemdabad to Mussorie. But my fickle minded friend after deliberations of around 60 minutes over phone, changed her mind only to listen some exasperated four letter words from me ( rather lots of them). It took me half a day and some 100 sms to get her kind enough over me, to bestow me with her kind friendship again (actually only discerning males know the actual cost of kind friendships of beautiful females: the major component of the cost is Mental Stress.) Lesson from the incidence; mind your tongue in front of your female friends otherwise you will just end up making Mobile companies, Flower shops, Gift shops & Costly Eateries richer!
My journey plan was initially Delhi to Haridwar and onwards. As usual my ever "Vighnakaari" brother Rajesh did the honors. First he made me lure into staying in Delhi overnight with various temptations like " Gaffar Market Shopping" etc. And provided further icing to the cake by speaking to a commonly known, very respectable contact of ours in the Honorable Chief Minister's office of Uttrachal, and got me a status of " Guest of the State of Uttarachal" for the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar. The idea of travelling entire Uttarachal or part of it in a guided and partially State funded manner enticed the " Marwaari" within me.
Some 8 hrs later we received a call from Dehradun requesting to postpone my visit to Haridwar by 4-5 days as there were already close to 9 million people in Haridwar for the " Shahi Snan" on 14th of April, and no more official guests could be treated suitably.
At such moments, sulking is the only choice that remains with any young person in front of his elder kins, which I duly exercised. I had lost one day!!!! I also had to change my entire journey plan to via Mussorie now.
Rajesh bhai tried to appease me by throwing a small binge party for me at his office at Delhi. Being a converted non/rare drinker, I got high quiet early; later to receive the first bliss of the over smartness we had tried to do in the day, concerning that Guest of the State issue; a friend of mine had gone to Goa for a religious cum pleasure purpose, and we caught each other dead drunk in the night over phone. I consider this lady as a precious find of mine in Ahemdabad. Both being Landmark Graduates, speak the same lingo plus net net I enjoy talking to her about movies, music, life etc. We just connect well. We have expressed clearly to have no further mutual plans. She is a wonderful counselor to me, who without wasting words puts me back to work. Her trained counselors act in the West is coming good use to me.
So, it was hours of meaningless gossiping & sharing only to resolute in a lesser sleep in the night and a great hangover in the morning after waking up, actually first time in life. If you want to see someone who has insulted the Divine Elixir " Chivas Regal" by waking up with an hangover after it, should come to me.
Anyways, Rajesh bhai and part of his Delhi office team together with me left from the historic Teen Murti Lane to drop me to ISBT Delhi to get me a VOLVO for Dehradun. From there after an overnight stay I planned to leave for Mussorie. During the whole way to the ISBT, Delhi; Rajesh Bhai kept on poking me as usual. Challenging me to make me speak him to my travel partner midway to confirm with him/her that he/she by then was not dead of my verbal diarrhea. Also he religiously cursed me that I were to get an bearded, smelling, snoring, dirty oldman as my travel companion & me arguing childishly, challenging him that I would get a beautiful young girl as a travel partner!!
No sooner we reached ISBT Delhi; one blunder was evident to me; apart from my Chocó Pack Bag Pack & Laptop a new nuisance had added up. A newly purchased black leather bag stuffed with the indulgent shopping of required/not required cosmetics, several types of imported Tea boxes etc. from Gaffar Market. Now I had three large luggages, one could be carried on back, what about the balance two??? If not impossible, it was certainly making my journey ahead difficult & inconvenient. Also now I was clear I will have to make base camps wherever from I planned to take 2-4 days treks!!! Meaningless expenditure.
Here also my dear Rajesh Bhai came to my help. He authoritatively summoned the old parking lot care taker. I was relieved; he was getting help for me. No sooner the old man in the uniform of some regular type agency reached us, Rajesh bhai very quickly thrusted some currency notes in his hands and replacing his Mumbai accent, in a very typical hard Delhite hindi told him to ensure that I boarded any bus for anywhere and under any circumstances never ever returned back to Delhi!!!!
I think I had a pale face then and the old man was perplexed, puzzled. He sometime looked at the currency notes in his hands and many a times at Rajesh bhai's face, looking for a confirmation that what he had heard was correct. Devendra the Delhi office guy & the driver Sanjay watching this drama from behind burst into giggles. Unmoved, Rajesh bhai once again repeated the verdict for me to the old man. I was shaking my head in disbelief over this and the old man I am sure must be thinking that some big law enforcement agency was entrusting him with the job of sending an Al Qaida terrorist to the Andaman s!
The entanglement was broken after some time & lots of moments of embarassment to me and finally I was offered a farewell by digging out a costly original Deodorant from my own possessions & Rajesh Bhai spraying it all over me as a very kind housewife sprays “ HIT “ in her homely abod;, in very decent & adequate quantities to keep all kinds of bugs & pests away, with an explanation by Rajesh bhai that as I was not good for anything, this adequate spray of deodarant would make me slightly acceptable to the opposite sex if I encountered any by chance! The balance of my imported original Lomani was immediately handed over to Sanju the driver, to be used as a car air freshener. Bastard! Rajesh, for this sinful waste and universal loss of a Lomani, as an old Lomani fan I will punish you for this in Kol. That’s my terrain!!!! I will ensure that you wander whole night in the oblivions of some nightmarish place in North Kolkata or isolated parts of Howrah or Hugli with no one to offer you lift or shelter only to rob you or stab you!!! May God help me in this....!!! ( Only if God had been kinder to me this would have happenned several years back when I had sworn similarly; he had made me dance in a top class Dance Bar of Mumbai with carefully selected dance girls by him, in a private but gliterrati full patrty of his; post this caught him several time in Kol but rather than putting him to this sworn punishments I just helped him with his crutial business meetings in Kol and like an obidient lamb left Kol flying at my own cost).
Anyways jokes apart. My journey started. Managing to drag the three luggages, asking directions somehow reached the Uttarachal buses platform. I am sure the ISBT Bus Terminal of Delhi was a far better place some 3 decades back.
Leaving Delhi has given me a kind of mild pain always. So I kept on feeling it in my chest. The rest is meaningless. I got an AC bus though non VOLVO for Dehradun much before my expectance. Praying for getting a seat for the jouney, with all my baggage I climbed the bus. I politely requested the conductor for a seat and that to in the front. The conductor much to my surprise told me that I could choose any of the seats which were vacant. I sheepishly surveyed the occupancy of the bus; there were some 5-7 seats vacant in the bus. 1 each besides uninteresting fat males, 2-3 in the absolute backside and yes two seats available with stag girls sitting in different rows. I further narrowed my search. The first girl was sitting at the conductor’s seat on the window side and was looking attractive & appeared careless and friendly the way had seated herself. The slightly behind one a skinny, dusky, younger, intelligent looking girl; sitting again at the window seat.
I chose the more beautiful & mature looking gal sitting in the front conductor’s seat for all obvious reasons and split second evil calculations of my mind and signaled to the conductor of my choice. The conductor negated my idea by informing that it was the conductor’s seat and I could take any other seat. Very quickly, as if there was a queqe behind me for seats; and somebody else would make me poorer of the second most lucrative option besides the other girl; I signaled to the conductor towards the other seat, took his nod and thinking of Rajesh bhai’s reaction over this and massive achievement/luck of mine dragged my baggage to the aisle seat besides that young gal.
To continue...................................................................
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