Last month I had a chance to visit North India after a gap of two years. I was to attend my sister's wedding. It was 44 hours journey, including 40 hours by train, and 4 hours by bus, thereafter. As it was the month of February, I took enough warm cloths with me. I left Bangalore in only a T-shirt & was expecting a cold morning when I get down at Agra 2 days later. But it was not to be. I found myself sweating as I stepped out of the Agra Cantt. station, looking for an auto-rickshaw to take me to the nearest bus-stand. The journey from Agra to Etawah, my home-town was in a UPSRTC bus. There is a sharp contrast when you compare the bus to KSRTC buses. The bus was quite dirty. It looked like nobody has swept the floor for last one week. There were used water-bottles scattered around, along with groundnut peels. The bus was rickety and made a lot of noise. The journey was not that bad. After moving out of the city, the cool breeze took away my tiredness of the train journey, and I looked out of the bus window. This erupted nostalgic feeling in me. During my childhood I used to see the same scenery out there whenever I used to visit my paternal / maternal village. Those days I used to be very keen in traveling by train. Unfortunately, railway line was kilometers away from my village. I used to feel very sad about this. The last part of those journeys used to be terrible, as we used to travel in private buses, which will be overcrowded by default. Now, the same village was connected by a state highway, and better buses were available (even though I have not visited there for a decade now).
I reached my home in the afternoon. It was a different feeling. The place is a town, and the traffic is definitely different from the city of Bangalore. There is hardly noise and one can feel peaceful even on the road that leads to the railway-station. I had a quite, peaceful walk in the evening. I felt engrossed with peace.
Two days later, I had to get some material for the rituals that had to be performed for the marriage ceremony. I did not take the bike, as I prefer walking. It took me half-an hour to find the right shop. I told the shopkeeper man my requirements, and to my surprise, he gave me the material free of cost. He told that as the material is going to be used for the puja, I won't need a significant amount. And the meager amount that I needed can be given free of cost as it won't affect his business. I came back with the material without spending even a single rupee from my pocket. This was quite an opposite experience from the one I had in Bangalore a few weeks ago. I had shifted to a new house. I do not have any furniture, not even a chair. The house-owner noticed this, and he offered to give me a chair & a table. It was lying idle in his house. I thought that it will be good to have something like that, so I agreed. Immediately he told me the monthly charges that I will have to pay for the set.....!
The main ceremony was to be held in Patna. I went to Patna along with my family and relatives. It was another train journey of 9 hours. The weather was quite different from what I had expected. It was hot.! Thankfully we all were in AC coach.
As we all got down and reached the place where the ceremony was to take place, I realized my mistake of carrying all the warm cloths with me. There was no need for any of them. We were there for three days, and every night we used to switch on fan and sleep. Entire day the room AC had to be on. On the wedding day, I did not even put-on even once, the jacket that I had so lovingly bought in Bangalore to be wore during the ceremony. It would not have been out of place to have an ice-cream or a cool-drink. In fact, ice-cream was a part of the dessert served during the ceremony.....!
My sister went to her in-laws place, and I came back to my home town. It had become slightly hot, with mosquitoes now making there presence felt at night.
Soon it was time for me to leave. As I climbed back into the bus that will take me to Agra, I still thought of the weather, the mindset of the people, and my unused jacket......
No comments:
Post a Comment