Saturday, May 17, 2008

Sikkim Travelogue part -1

If I say it's been long pending, it would be the understatement of the year. I finally decided to put the rough notes I have on my Sikkim travel in the year 2004 as it is. So forgive me for all the bad grammar and misspellings . I hope you have as much fun reading as I had on the tour. To those who were there with me on this trip, hope it brings back some good memories.
I have broken down the post into 3 parts and would be posting them throughout the next week.


1.Chaotic start

“Tum chale jaoge toh sochenge ,
humne kya khoya , humne kya paya.”
Once aboard the train back home, I ask myself this question ‘cause, strangely, I am going back with a heavy heart. Perhaps it's not so strange after all as u feel sad when all the good things come to an end. They have to . Then you remember those things and its your choice whether that you do that with a pang of sadness or with joy and thankfulness.
I am, right now, blank with no memory floating back to make me feel its presence. All my thoughts are as if waiting to explode, shower all their charm and over whelm me. So I have decided to take a plunge and pen down all what I can remember about this trip so as to relive those moments. Take it as a last, frantic try to gather sand in your hand, to fill yourself with nostalgic fragrance and to hold it inside till u can.
What rushes back if I think of the start of the trip, is the calls we made on 21st Dec. in order to meet MC. The chaos of ‘will he , won’t he’ (perennial M.C., more of him as we go along). And finally the decision to go alone to Renukoot, in order to board the train along with VG. Of that journey on bus to Renukoot, all that comes back is dark early morning and a bit of cold. I would have thought nothing of that chill had I known what was coming. The train journey, the guy in that matching sweater (damn!) of all the colors in the world he comes up with the same color as me.
Once we reached Calcutta( sorry , its hard , its Calcutta for me whatever may be its new name), coming out on what we reckoned a street and which was in fact the station, we were just confused due to a car standing in front of us. It was the first time I saw that people can take their vehicles right up to the station or at least have got the facility to do so.
We haggled our way to a taxi and as I sank back inside. Every thing took a back seat and a sort of apprehension started creeping in – an apprehension when u visit some one’s home for the first time, more so when u don’t know the person. This was growing stronger ‘coz of what I felt about this trip from start and telling u what I felt involves a little story titled ‘fifth rider’ .

2. The fifth rider

There were 4 riders ,extremely smart , well dressed , riding on fine horses going somewhere, no one knew who they were ,where they came from or where they were headed to .A big news wherever they went , they produced an awe in the general public. So everyone noticed that they were really fine and acknowledged the sight they presented with praise and wonder. Now there was this guy who saw all four and thought “wow, I should be part of this troop “. He was a clever guy well versed in the ways of this world. He took his dilapidated self out on his carcass of a horse and followed them as the fifth rider. From then on if anyone wondered who they were or what did they do, this fifth guy will speak first “we are going to meet the king. We are on a secret mission”. The thing to notice is the “we” in the sentence. Thus he was able to count himself in, attaching himself to all the glory emanating from the other four and taking all credit to his measly self.
Of course the story is dramatic and not the real representation of the situation I was in. But It does tell how in this world most of the people are fifth riders who don’t work and blah blah….all being fallouts of failure of society as such and what not, but the story is the closest I can get to express myself, as my claim to fame was just being a friend of a friend. I hope I have been able to tell how I felt, always a dicey thing to do, satisfactorily enough. Even the fact that the situation was a little bit similar didn’t help my cause.
I tried to battle out of these fears, by boring VG with some poems of mirza ghalib, coincidentally on Mirza ghalib street and then listening on to all the babble of the taxi driver , all the while taking in the first sights and sounds of Calcutta. By the time we reached Mukundopur I got to know all about real estate surrounding the bypass road courtesy the driver. Alas! if I had enough money I would have invested it there. We met Sudeshna waiting for us wearing a gray jacket and a muffler. Not much change from the last time I saw her except a pimple beneath her nose. She guided the taxi to her home – a place which I must admit I was not able to associate with her at first. The house sitting pretty in a line along with other housed as seen from the street looked well set in rural back ground with grassy land and a few ditches along both sides of the path leading to it from the street. The path itself was of red gravel with small bricks and stones sticking out. There was tranquility about the place, serenity almost natural if u forget the fact that Calcutta is a hustling bustling city over populated as are all major cities nowadays. The house is flanked by small houses on either side. The gate of the house was exactly fitting the place with a mesh of bamboo sticks doing for the gate. Touching the gate was a staircase parallel to the Verandah which brought us inside the porch. Here we were greeted by a scowling dog, a ‘quasi pet’ as Sudeshna put it.
This was the moment I had been dreading and had at last resigned myself to . How would I be taken as? The proverbial ‘fifth rider’?

6 comments:

N said...

Waiting for the other parts to come out soon!!!

Raj said...

Nice description...
Please reveal the full names of VG etc... :P

Mukesh Agarwal said...

man .. u are going to make an epic out of that trip .. waiting eagerly for the part 2 , 3 ..

VG said...

Where's the rest?

VG said...

Are the other parts still there with you somewhere jotted down? Or do we trust on our memory to churn it out someday when we get to chat abt it?

VG said...

Still there on blogger?

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