A Journey

Finally I chose to write. It is absurd to start with ‘Finally’, I suppose, but who cares? Neither is this work a liturgy to English; nor is it any form of servitude to the architectural brilliance that the language can produce. So I would dare to be whimsical in my narration and colloquial in spirit as long as I could keep my scornful hormones under the carpet.

In some pre-historic ages, I was a host to reactive Eosinophilia and hence relatively allergic to dust and moisture. Even a plutonic bollywood rain song on television triggered an itching sensation on my palate. This followed with some hundreds of sneezes - generating a seismic energy sufficient enough to get registered on a Ritcher Scale. A day or two later, a red proboscis, the description of which might leave this article on the peril of an ‘A’ certificate, confirmed an end to that gelatinous expedition.

Many doctors investigated the traces in the caves of my nose; only to find it benign. One among them even postulated the need of circumcising (my nose of course) - to get rid of my problem. Finally my allergy only succumbed to tiny white globules of a Hahnemann Homeopathy practitioner and I was eventually cured - ‘finally’.

But every medicine has its’ side-effects. My allergy to moisture left me with an immense affinity with moisture; or rain in particular. I befriended rain to such an extent that we had clandestine conversations between us and foul play with others. So when I was not prepared for any exam, it used to rain heavily, until the school declared it as a rainy-day/holiday.

Now that I have diligently framed four paragraphs above, I would like to adhere to my principle of non-compliance with any general prose format, and would like to ascertain that the above information does not form an introduction to what I intend to write below. Rather, to simplify things, lets’ treat all that as a preface, to be followed now with a prologue and finally end with a preamble.

A couple of years back, I landed into my first job thanks to a software renaissance. I call it a renaissance because in India it revived back from total annihilation with a popular Y2K syndrome. Though my company sanctimoniously distances itself from that cat race, overstating its competency in other domains, internally, we are all germinated from the same seedling.

My first job scooped me into a vivacious city called Chennai. I still remember the day when I left my home-town, Bhubaneswar, bundling the guidelines of dos and don’ts suggested by my father, that I guess when printed would be more voluminous than the Britannia Encyclopedia, and carrying all eatables packed by my mother - sufficient enough to out weigh the food in the pantry car of my train, the Coromandel Express. I left Bhubaneswar amidst tears and trains, prolific enough to put an Ekta Kapoor tele-serial into shame.

It was a batch of some 120 trainees in the company, all set to unleash the shackles of time, to which we were all bound to. New faces, new friends, new computers, desks, shelves, dustbins, boards, markers, instructors; all of them took ephemeral center-stage thereof. I can recollect just two events during my induction – day one, when I lost my mobile phone, and day thirty one, when I got my first salary.

Now to those swift brains, sagacious enough to outfox the lack of correlation in my writing; there is some fodder to your inquisitiveness. My earlier friend, the Rain, visits me at a time when I was prepared to move to my hometown - bundled with all the gifts purchased with my very first salary, for the Diwali vacation. The events that follow are a reminiscence of the floods of October 2005 which had hit coastal Andhra Pradesh and northern Tamil Nadu.

One, two, three… I counted the packed bags on a wet Friday morning. It had been pouring since the day before. The roads were water clogged, owing to the decrepitude of Chennai rain-water drainage system, and had a potential to turn into a mass breeding ground for mosquitoes. My train was at night 9 p.m., so I still had a fervent hope that the rain would give way to my journey. But as the day progressed, the city was invaded by a thick blanket of dark clouds; like the ones we see in a Spielberg movie. In the evening, I reduced my luggage to a bare minimum, hired a lonely diesel auto-rickshaw discernible on the road and headed to the Chennai Central Station.

Auto-rickshaws are the wheels of India; most preferred means of transport for the masses. These roistering vehicles are like hum bees, the sound mellifluous enough to burn your ear-drums. Every autowalla in Chennai is a Rajnikanth in khaki uniform. Whistling or clapping for an auto is considered as a niche gesture, for if you don’t, the autowallas have every right to show you the entire city for a ride and consequently penalize you with the fare. And auto fares in Chennai are more complex than income tax calculations; the fare gets doubled if you are from a software industry, quadruples if you are a foreigner and if you are a woman…it depends.

So this time, the wheels of India zoomed through the canals of Venice, until rain water gurgled in the silencer pipe and finally anchored the boat – just a few meters away from the Station. The autowalla and I pushed the auto to an upland dock; and I finally walked towards the station with my jeans folded till my knee. The station bore the look of a people manufacturing assembly unit. If you release some sand from your hand in the station, the probability of it falling on the floor was very low; but the probability of getting your hand back was even lower.

It is time to move from singulars to plurals; as, at the station I met two friends; the first one - a guy named Kiran - who greeted me with a perplexing axiom that the train is cancelled; and a girl named Ajitha, whom I am yet to meet in the next paragraph. Accidentally, we all booked our tickets in the same cancelled train.

Kiran is from Vijayawada, which is some six hours away from Chennai. A hedonistic person though; he looked upset for the cancelled journey. But it took him only a few seconds to rationalize his senses and compose his volition when I asked him to accompany me on the laid off journey. A series of permutations and combinations; and we were with a game plan. And the game plan was – “Choose any train heading north”. Just before we got into a train, we met Ajitha, who immediately joined us without any questions – a big thanks to her conviviality.

Some events or reactions cannot be expatiated; may be because of my vocabulary which is taciturn in nature, or because of the fact that visual senses denigrate reading ones. Whatever; the truth is that, the euphoria we underwent at the moment we got into the running Charminar Express was soon burped out when an old man in the train told a depilatory dialogue that the route of the train has been changed and it would no more touch Vijayawada. Though the old man was as thin as a lie, his words were believable as we all knew that there were floods ahead.

That moment - we went through a shock. But referring that event as a mere shock would somehow exorcise the volatility of the situation. A correct reference would be to call it a jhatka - a Hindi word. A jhatka might not make sense to some readers; but with so many Hindi words being adopted into major dictionaries worldwide, in a few years, a jhatka might even make full sense to an average American. So we were in a correct train that followed a wrong route, and hence - technically without Ticket. This is called a jhatka.

On a normal day, the Charminar Express shuttles between Chennai and Hyderabad via Vijayawada. But that day was just not ours. The vast firmament was left to us to unleash. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – is what it is called in Neil Armstrong’s words; hence at night 9o’clock we got off the train for the better and took our best foot forward at Renigunta Junction.

Renigunta Junction was lit dark. There were no signs of human around. We managed to hire a lonely auto outside the station and headed to some place where we could find signs of life. That place turned out to be Tirupati; a place some ten kilometers away from Renigunta Junction.

It is always morning in Tirupati. The city of seven hills is a luminous epitome of Hindu aficionados. The richest temple in the world is governed by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, a body that is entrusted with a responsibility of handling over 1 lakh devotees on any given day. Holy ambience, glittering crowds, scenic milieu, tonsured heads and religious chants is how I would describe the temple city.

When we landed at Tirupati it was night 10:30. Our intestines were screaming for food and our eyes were probing for hotels. We had excellent food - keeping in mind that we may not have any; the following day.

Transportation from Tirupati is never a problem. We met a young couple who were looking for companions to travel to Vijayawada. Together, we hired a jeep to Vijayawada and set off in that dark misty climate. That night no one slept in the jeep, courtesy to the chill which shook our spines, but over and above, with an objective to keep the driver awake all night. We had frequent tea breaks, with the last tea stop being at Nellore. This was the place where we heard faint murmurs of the floods ahead.

Morning around 3 o’clock, our vehicle was stopped by few policemen. They advised us to take some by-pass road owing to the magnitude of rain damage in the low level villages ahead. From that moment onwards we could find some foretaste of the damage that had already occurred. There were hatches of small huts flowing in the water alongside the road. Though the sun was some hours away, we were able to spot logs of wood and cattle getting washed away - every now and then.

After about an hour of sliding on the marsh road, the jeep came to a stand-still. It was a traffic jam. Military was deployed to assist flood victims in that vicinity. The 4 o’clock light has given way to a point on the road where there was no road ahead. A stream of water was crossing the road with stupendous velocity. The road rose out of water after about a kilometer distance, which was the cause of the traffic jam. To add spice to the situation, my covert friend started drizzling.

There was water all around; even my bladder was full - to be frank. But adventure was there on our boisterous minds and we walked our way through all the comatose vehicles to the end of the road where the water flirted with the road. The Krishna water, brown in color, showed no mercy; and neither did the rain which started escalating in intensity. At the same time, the continuous surge of vehicles to this dead end increased exponentially, not to forget that the same happened on the other bank of the road.

We spent two hours in that rain, fishing our thoughts and frying our brains. There were small kids crying with hunger; old people trounced by fatigue; retired employees bantering politicians; cab drivers cursing their ill luck; and military – yes! The military was analyzing the graveness of the danger ahead. The meteorological department had predicted some heavy rainfall in that area, and with the rate at which water was swelling, the worst was bound to hit. An aerial view would have mapped us in an island; and with every passing second, we were losing some territory. Finally, the crux of the problem for the military was to somehow clear the traffic before the water drowns all of us.

Break-even point!!! The military was out-flanked into action. Some jawans dared to go into water. They walked on the divider of the road, which was completely invisible, but the outline of which could be traced due to the plantation on it. Few Gulmohar trees, planted equidistant from one another, formed the only guide to the itinerary. The jawans walked along this divider, connected to one another with a rope, from both ends of the road. But when they traveled some 300 meters from both ends, water clambered to neck deep levels and there was cease fire. Some remaining 400 meters were unseen waters and the need of the hour was a captain who knew such waters.

A truck driver volunteered to break the deadlock. This captain was well instructed by the army to stick to the divider as close as possible and never to lower the accelerator. The truck lacerated through the water and moved in small baby steps. All eyes were on the truck and all hopes on that driver. The obscurity was broken and a couple of minutes later the truck started rising in height. The crowd was overjoyed and the truck came out safe.

Now a similar expedition was initiated from the other side but it met with some ill fate. The second truck toppled at a place and managed to balance on three wheels. But there was no hindrance or setbacks for other drivers and more and more trucks participated in the rally. The military now allowed passengers to board the trucks and yes, we three were the first among them to board the next truck.

The Ashok Leyland truck has only a long bench in the front cabin on which a driver, a helper and this time - we three were seated, all huddled together and with heavy baggage on our laps. This driver had a long curly moustache, which would have put a proud crustacean to shame. Castor oil massage, which he later claimed to be the secret of his glistering moustache, seemed to start a process of osmosis; sucking all his body energy to his whiskers. And I swear by those tentacles, I was nervous.

The army signaled and the truck started its descent into water. The bumpy roller coaster ride depicted that the floods have turned the road beneath water into some land dunes; and a shrill nostalgia stung us; we were sea sick. The truck was always in its first gear and the engine on full rise. Water was above the wheels of the truck; the truck close to the divider. Gradually water started seeping into the truck. The army line now ended and the trees were our only fathomable defense. We sank into water till the water level touched the window of the truck. Had the road been a bit lower, water would have gushed into the truck. After some catwalk, the truck started gaining weight. The buoyancy was decreasing and the truck was emerging out. Finally we reached the last stretch of the road, the juncture at which the water in the truck started flowing out. A couple of moments later loud clap, cheers and applauses vanquished our terror.

To the dissatisfaction of the readers, I do not know what happened to the other passengers and vehicles as the driver did not stop, or rather the army did not allow us to halt for some time. We zoomed on the road - fearless and ferocious. After I reached home I surfed through all the news channels but I couldn’t trace the condition of the other passengers. But there is yet something to tell before I reach home. Lets’ continue.

After we crossed those waters, the driver switched on his tape recorder and played some filthy private album songs in Telugu, the lyrics of those songs being so jinxed that each line formed a metaphorical reference to none other than sex. At one point, the moustache man asked me to comment on the songs, to which I replied – ‘Mastuga unnayi anna’. He was pleased and did not charge anything for the journey. We thanked him and got down at Ongole, a minuscule town in Andhra Pradesh.

At Ongole, we found only buses to Chirala and hence we got into one. Here the same game plan applied – ‘Take any bus heading north’. At Chirala we eased our bowels and bladders, had some food and finally took one more bus to Vijayawada - Kirans’ hometown. It was afternoon 2 o’clock when we reached Vijayawada railway station. Ajitha and I bid farewell to Kiran and finally the two of us got into a Visakhapatnam bound train. Around night 11 o’clock we reached Visakhapatnam station.

Ajitha’s parents had come to the station to receive her and to my surprise they brought pulihora (tamarind rice) for me as dinner. Pulihora is something which I can die for. But a bigger surprise awaited me; my father came all the way from Bhubaneswar to receive me. Together we traveled back to Bhubaneswar and reached my home the next morning.

And at home: a grand welcome; my mother scolded me for the rest of my vacation. “I will never travel if it rains! I will never take any risk. I will never travel without ticket. I will never get into a truck. I will never travel if I don’t know the route.” – These were some of the promises I made to my mother, or to put into better words: the promises which I was enforced to commit to. Ah, ‘Finally’; these promises have become the preamble to this article. I keep promises; the easier ones. For promises are made to break: I suppose, but who cares?