AAMI JE TOMAAR… SHUDHU JE TOMAAR!
I still wonder why did I make this journey of 2000k.m. across the breadth if the country to meet a bunch of ‘JOKERS’ whom I had met just a month ago!! Was it the incessant begging of Ion to visit his hometown or was it Bad Boy’s accusation of calling me a DITCHER or was it simply the boredom I was undergoing at home or was it to make up for my lost trip to Vaishnavdevi or was it simply my vacation mood? I wouldn’t really know and I didn’t care to find out. I had a great opportunity to see a window-full of eastern India, with ample time on my hands and a haunting awareness of regrets I might face had I not made this trip.
To my fortune, another vella- the great Maratha warrior of GIM, Barda decided to accompany me to meet his rommie in the land of his favorite cricketer – Saurav-Da. Both of us had once the audacity to plan a journey to this far-away-RED land on a WL ticket. To our good fortune, dad advised us to rebook tickets on a date when Eastern Railway would guarantee us a berth. Following dad’s advice, I got up early(6:30a.m) and rushed to the booking counter to find a queue of 110-odd people fighting the sleep and calmly waiting their turn. To my fortune I got my tickets booked in Jnaneshwari express for the 21st of April.
On the actual day of journey, Barda came to Thane from Aurangabad and we took the train together to Kol. I was initially dreading a boring journey with him but he was not a bit boring at all. No wonder everybody-loves-barda!! We talked about books, IPL, women, Thackrey’s CP on the Maharashtra’s political stage, et al. The longest we talked about was ppl from GIM, their behaviors, actions, futures and so on! The second day journey in the train was not as exciting- both of us were lost in reading and seldom peeping out of our books for a chat. The only high point of that day was the tomato soup which we had thrice. I managed to read ‘The Alchemist’ in less than half a day. We met Taps on Raipur station-he was in his GLOBAL best! For company, we had a Bangladeshi couple with a heavy fake American accent! The guy of the two looked like Fatality.
DAY 1….(Bhelcome to Kolkata)
On the early morning of 23rd, while I was ready to alight at 0300 hrs, I found out that the train was delayed by 3 hrs. But to our good fortune Ion was kind enough to stay up all night and come pick us up at Howrah station. The first sight of Kolkata was no less than Mumbai – FILTH. We took a prepaid cab. Sightseeing started from then on! The beautiful structure of Howrah bridge surrounded us. The sheer majesty of the trusses (when we were balancing ourselves between sleep & consciousness) was overwhelming. The cab took us to a lane flanked by old buildings on both sides. One such building on the S.N.Banerjee Rd was Ion’s house. It was red bricked wall without large projections but wide windows. We dumped our luggage in his house and rushed to Sealdah station for our return bookings. Being accustomed to queuing habits back home, I was efficient enough to get ahead in the line. Having secured a ticket, we went back to Ions place.
He has a huge 3 storey house with his family occupying less than 500sqft of area. We freshened up and had a good chat with Ion on politics, women, IPL, hockey-Gill scandal, et al. Fortunately Ion’s mom couldn’t catch up with the fast paced Hindi we spoke! Pre-lunch, we were served bread-butter till we were full. Then came fruit plate followed by juice. All this made Barda drowsy and he dozed off. While I watched some TV, Ion announced that it was time for lunch. So we had an amazing round of macher-jhol and bhat in multiple rounds. Even I couldn’t eat so much. A (over-) filling lunch on a warm summer noon inside a dark & shady house with tube lights burning and fan running on its max rpm- and all this after an uneasy nights sleep, automatically drags you to sleep. However the excitement of being on a tour couldn’t let us get into to bed. We called all Kol-ites and scheduled a meet in the eve.
I don’t remember when I slept, but wen I woke up Ninty was sitting on the bed with her peering eyes & huge grin. It was so good to see her again with her familiar ‘Isssaaaan-bhaaai’!! Then we met Aneesha, Knock-knock, Pippi and even Akshat at CCD in salt lake. That place reminded me of Navi Mumbai- organized & well-planned. We were joined by Udit n Gurpreet at Misra’s. Beer and a few lumps of meat was my dinner. We were scheduled to have lunch at Rads place the following day (and the lunch at Ion’s had not been digested yet)!!
Day 2 …(Khabo Khabo)
After a good night’s sleep, I woke up to find Ion’s dad getting ready to leave for work. He managed a small talk with us before he left. Ion had promised us a light breakfast (cornflakes) and he kept his promise… only partially. Cornflakes was followed by luchi-sabji and fruitplate.. phew!! A 3 course breakfast. We were joined by Bhibek-babu who made a trip to Kol from Durgapur.
In the scorching heat that followed, we rode in a yellow tin box (cab) to Rads place. Her mom could beat all the gals hands-down in talking. She spoke more than Rads. AMAZING!! No wonder Rads is such a patient listener!!Our nightmare came true- we were thrown open to a table full of Marwari lunch (specially the lasagna made by Rads). The taste was too good but our digestive system wasn’t. We still managed to stuff ourselves with as much food as it would take to make us look un-rude. I wished I hadn’t had the rosogulla and sundesh at Ninty’s place on the way! That day I knew why the sloth bears hibernate for 6 months. We lied there on chairs, tables, beds, floors just exercising our vocal chords while the other parts were too lethargic to move.
When we finally could move ourselves, it was dark outside and already 1900hrs. We made a trip in the metro train from Kalighat to Maidan. We had a nice walk on the road to Victoria memorial. The structure is MAJESTIC. On the half-moon-lit night, the white palace was splendid. Its huge gates flanked by two roaring lion statues reminded of the power the Queen and the company exerted on Indians. We were too late for the light and sound show but decided to make it there the next day. We took a nice Baggi ride on the road along EDENs. A nice ride in a boat (chingari-koi-bhadke wala) followed by lemon soda was refreshing.
Our next destination was to be an apartment booked by Pippi somewhere in Salt lake city. We stopped by for a drink with Zicoda who had just come back from taking client calls across the length & breadth of Kolkatta. We discussed Saurav-da and his brilliant career in Indian cricket. That was the same day RR was beginning to show its form and beat DC by a marginal 1 ball.
That cab drive at 11:30 p.m. to Salt Lake with the warm night breeze blowing on our faces, streets deserted by people and flooded with lights and minute levels of alcohol in us after tiring meals thru the day, was a pleasant feeling. We were greeted by fuming Pippi who scolded us for being late. We then settled down with the gallons of liquor; me & Bhibek were urged to sing ‘senti’ songs. When alcohol had got the better of us, Ion called Sandhu late in the night and we sang out ‘Muskurana’ to him. Even at this godforsaken time, esp. after a tiring day, he was polite enough to say that he missed us guys too!! We guys took a stroll in the park outside and I don’t know when I dozed off.
Day 3… (Jai Maa Kaali)
With a heavy head I woke up to find the sun risen high in the sky as if it was noon already. I recollected our last night’s adventures and got ready to go back to Ion’s home. Our lunch was hosted at Ninty’s – an amazing spectrum of Bengali food- macher, chicken, veg, dessert, et al. I specially liked the fish cooked in sesame oil... delicious.
Our next venue was Dakshineshwar temple on the banks of Hoogly. I sat in the dickey of Ninty’s van. It was boiling hot in there but had lots of legroom for myself. Dakhsineshwar was a very well kept, neatly painted and clean temple. We saw Ramkrishna Paramhans’s living room and the place where he found enlightenment. We then took a 25min ferry ride across the river to see Bellur math. The evening sky, the calmly flowing Hoogly beneath us, the rhythmic humming of the motor and splashing cool water of the river felt so enjoyable, so serene, and so peaceful. Bellur mathh was a tidy place and in the actual math, there were 100+ Brahmins chanting some melodious tune accompanied by the organ and dholak … 100% divine. I came out of the mathh to realize that my shoes were missing; but the ‘nirmal anand’ I was experiencing was way too supreme to let mortal things bother me. I felt like giving up all pleasures and settling down there in search of divinity. (CRAZY)
We drove back to salt lake from there. Pippi was kind enough to donate a pair of floaters to me. We then went to a mall and gulped lots of soup. The gals then left and we moved to Ambrosia where we had beer and saw Punjab XI thrashing MI and then Sreesanth crying like a toddler. Ion dropped is to the night out spot again and left for home to do his packing. We did not have the nerve to stay up all night; so I and Barda saw a few GIM videos till we dozed off.
Day 4…(Hey Bhagwan Hey Bhagwaan; mujhe light & sound show mein pahunchaa dey)
Pippi was our host for the 26th and he treated us with nice Bangladeshi Biryani and firni. Thank God we asked Ion’s mom to serve us only bread butter for breakfast. Post dinner we met a couple of sub-juniors; Barda seemed quite impressed with the female of the two. I think this was the highlight of his trip. It was good to see R. Prasher and S. Mehta too. Aneesha and Barda had decided to bore me to death (by ignoring me) at Crosswords but I quite like the place.
Hot Darjeeling tea and rum-balls at Flurry’s was awesome. This place was supposed to be almost thrice as old me.
Recollecting the time for light and sound show, we rushed to buy supaari n ‘mukhwaas’ for ourselves and proceeded to Vitoria memorial. We circled the place 3 times to miss the entrance every time and missed the show by good 20mins. I guess we had digested all the days food by then. So Rads and Aneesha took us to a chat joint where we had nice puchka n bhel.
Aneesha being the host of the evening, took us to Park Hotel’s pub (called Some-Place-else). The crowd there was head-turning & eye-popping. I could see people dressed in expensive outfits, alighting expensive cars, smelling expensive perfumes and ordering expensive spirits. The undersized pub had no seating place for us so we stood all the while watching RR take over RCB. We had an expensive KF pint (130/-) and listened to Raghu Dixit play live. The music, in that ambience, seemed amazing; the singer well-trained and the band, lively. When I heard the same music back home, it sounded pretty mediocre. We then went to Rads place and had a nights sleep for 2 hrs.
Day 5 … (Amaar shonar Shantiniketan)
At 5:00a.m we drove to Howrah station and took a train to Bolpur. Alipore to Howrah in 12 min is only possible at 5:00a.m in Kolkata. We were destined to see Shantiniketan today. Since the general compartment was full, we got into a ladies compartment which eventually turned out to be a general compartment. In the process we could get a good window seat and a peaceful sleep. Interior West Bengal is very flat. Till the horizon we could only see green pastures of paddy – not a molehill in sight. From the train window, we could see the stretch of plains and occasionally a laborer or two slogging in the fields. The cool morning breeze, the warmth of the rising sun and the absence of Kolkata filth made the scene very scenic.
We spent a good one hour at Bolpur station canteen waiting for Bhibek babu. When he arrived, we sat in cycle rickshaws like babus while the laborers pulled us towards Shantiniketan. The rickshaws took us through a small-town market place with kuchha roads, dangling electric wires flanking the road and unkempt shops manned by country folk.
We were shown Shantiniketan’s art gallery, some portraits by Rabindranath; a museum bragging the things used by Rabindra babu. The museum also elucidated his lineage and his history. It also had the history of Shantiketan in the backdrop of WW-II and Indian freedom struggle. This whole showcase brought forwards Rabindranath Thakur as a social reformist who besides being a literary genius challenged the Imperial education system and started one on his own. That was indeed a freedom struggle in his own way. We saw the place where students study, where they learn, where they live. The whole place is now politicized and ‘communist-ized‘. This was the place where once Indira Gandhi studied, where Amartya Sen has a house, where PuLa wrote his literary work ‘Vanga Chitra’; the place seems to have lost its charm. We saw shady cottages which had once been the residence of Rabindra babu. Once a barren land, the place houses many trees now and the fills the place with breeze in the scorching sun.
When the heat was getting better off us, we had a meal and came back to Bolpur station. We had to kill 3 hrs there to get into an overcrowded train which was coming from Assam. We couldn’t find a seat & travelled standing. Barda made some futile attempts to fold his extended legs and cramped-up on the floor but he found standing more comfortable. When we arrived at Burdhwaan(or Vardhamaan) we got a seat and immediately all of us dozed off only to wake up near Dakshineshwar station. The train ran over the bridge under which we had made a boat ride 48 hrs ago. The weather was getting pleasant in the eve and the wind in the running train was worth taking on your face. We got down at Sealdah and rode o Aneesha’s house to freshen up. Mr Dhanuka offered us drinks and I was glad when he unscrewed Red Label. Me n Barda had only enough energy to gulp a peg. We finally had dinner in Kolkata that night at Momo place. We had delicious momos and Barda’s favorite ‘soup’. Back at Rads place, we got a good night’s sleep.
The next day was again a heavy breakfast day with kachori(which was actually hard puri) and sabji. Baked beans on toast is such an amazing dish, I wonder why I haven’t eaten it ever. I had multiple rounds at breakfast and then we set our shopping. Ninty joined us and we got sweets, shakha and Knight Rider Tee for Barda. Some local newspaper guys took my snaps while I pretended to shop for the Tees. Finishing the final shopping of rosogulla’s on the station we started back on our journey in Geetanjali. I bade Ninty n Rads good bye before they cud start shedding tears.
This time, ‘The Adventures of Feluda’ (Satyajit Ray’s work which got more famous as Byomkesh Bakshi) were my company in the train. I was very irritated by ticketless passengers sitting in my seat- but those poor souls also had to make the journey so I tolerated them.
The train was an hour late(pretty punctual for a 30hr journey). I came home to find uncle, dada, vahini and taai waiting for me.
Some of the peculiar things of the whole episode were:
- We had dinner just once in Kol, the other days it was just beer!!
- Bengali hospitality choked us!
- We got a chance to move in different circles: us-Aneesha-Pippi, us-Aneesha-Rads, us-Ion-Zicoda, us-Ion-Bhibek …
- Virtually any sweet that is not rosogulla/rasmalai is called sundesh.
- Barda’s one-liners are priceless.
All-in-all; a wonderful experience.
