Random Expressions

It wouldn’t be much of a surprise, but some days back I was again on the drive. This time, we were on the stretch between Agra and Firozabad, which falls within Agra District - or so we thought.

Just for formalities sake, allow me to list out the towns/villages we crossed; of course, interspersed with a few incidents that made it possible for this post to be written.

Kuberpur - Wherever the goddamn village is, the office we wanted to visit was thankfully on NH2, leading to Firozabad (yeah, the same place famous for its bangles and glass works). The cold cemented floor, and cobweb laden dirty walls inside the office werent much of a welcome anyways. But we panicked full time when we saw a thousand people (ok, I exaggerate - discount ten percent here or there) clamouring over one hapless employee, who was trying to do ten thousand things (I exaggerate again, but discount ten percent here or there) at the same time. Despite winters, the smell of sweat and human skin was overwhelming, but we managed a feeble smile towards the official, who tried to shake hands with us over the crowd and babel of voices; the official murmured a hundred thousand apologies (I exaggerate…but you get the point by now). We genuinely understood!

Etmadpur - This was just a few kilometers ahead on the highway. However, to enter the village, we had to get off it, on to a now-familiar dusty and narrow road. Our destination was bang in the middle of a crowded street, that lined odd shops, with cyclists covering the entire stretch. We parked my car, and got off.

Curious faces stared back at us, and I felt oddly uncomfortable to be looked at like this. “Why are they staring as if we had just escaped a zoo?” I murmured to my colleague. “Well, tie waale, patte-waale jaanwar kam hi dekhne ko milte honge yahan” he retorted wryly. I didn’t take off the tie, but discreetly placed the ‘patta‘ (our company’s ID-card) inside the pocket.

From this stretch began the real adventure. And thanx to Idea Mobile. Well, almost. It was Idea’s locator that flashed ‘Barhan Crssng’ on my cell-phone, which made me curious to ask about its distance from Etmadpur.

Barhan - To me now any road in U.P. interior is the same. The stretch to Barhan was no different, either in its ‘comfort’ or topography, to the ones that I had traveled earlier while going to Achnera, Kagarole or Kirawali. Barhan is a sandy village, with brown mud buildings - a small, rain-water-filled, by-default formed pond ran alongside the railway track, which pointed to something as high-sounding as ‘Barhan Junction’.

Khaanda - At Barhan, we had enquired on the few other places that we could visit on this route. Khanda was a bit further on and then there was Jalesar, our aquaintance informed. So off we were to Khaanda. The road was a bit better, but as often with these villages, they are never on the good roads. So, soon we had to depart the ’highway’ and get onto a small road that led to this village.

“Err…I hope we are on track” I remarked, when we had been shaken enough. My colleague (let’s call him Ajeet, for nomenclature ease) tried to read some illegible address on a tin shanty.

“Why dont you ask her?” I teased, as a lady passed by.

“You want me to get killed! Dont you see the foot long ghoonghat she is in” Ajeet replied, visibly horrified at my suggestion.  

A few meters later, it was confirmed we were in Khanda - but whosoever we asked, gave a vague direction towards the office we had to visit. So as vaguely we got the instructions, so did we go. And ended up in a huge courtyard full of goats, and lazing elderly gentlemen, who viewed my dust-laden once-upon-a-white Santro disinterestingly.

“I am sure we are on the wrong way” I hissed beneath my breath, as the royal animals grazed the sides of my car and leisurely passed around it.

With difficulty, I managed to maneuver the car out from that sandy courtyard, and finally stopped a sensible-looking gentleman, and firmly asked for the directions.

“Galat ho” he said. “Main road se, bamba kinaare jaana tha.”

The man was gesturing back towards the highway again. Since Ajeet is from Agra, I thought he would have understood the local dialect, but after a few seconds to my dismay, I found him stammering, “B..bamba kinaare?”

“Jee, bamba kinaare!” The man asserted again.

“Ummm…err…yeh bamba kya hota hai?”

Now, the man was clearly lost. With his hands straight and moving in parallel motion, he said, “Bamba…yaani, paani…naala…naala kinare”

How simple! And we tucked away between us one new word in our vocabulary.

Jalesar - “It’s just 21 kilometers” I remarked, when we had finished off with Khaanda. Ajeet was apprehensive in going towards Jalesar. But I argued that we still had some time in hand, plus (as the official earlier had pointed out) there was a direct route back to Agra, and of course 21 kilometers is never ‘far away’ for us Delhiites. I shouldnt have spoken. Because, barely five kilometers on, the road vanished and all we had were potholes, and stones, and sand, and grime, as my poor Santro wove its way towards Jalesar - which wasnt (to our horrific discovery) in Agra even. It fell within Etah District.

At a particulary bad stretch, the car shook so hard that suddenly out from nowhere, Asha Bhonsle started to assert ‘Aaj main khush hoon’*.

Terrified, we both jumped out our skin! For that split second, when the silence was rudely cut by her voice, we were frightened.

Now, I admit I am a bigger fan of her sister’s but that didn’t give Ashaji the right to laugh at my plight, and get happy about it too.

Since Ajeet was shaken too, surely this wasn’t just my imagination. I eyed the culprit - the car stereo had switched on, on its own.

“Tera haath laga hoga,” I told Ajeet.

“Arre nahi baba. My hand was far off,” he defended himself.

The Mystery of Automatic Stereo Power On would have lingered on for sometime, but the road gave us ample opportunity to solve it. The bumps were so hard that they somehow started the power of the system!

We reached Jalesar in one piece, and almost at our wit’s end, and the day’s too.

Jalesar is a town, and a pretty large one, since we got quite lost in its maze of streets and alleyways, and an array of markets. If you care to ever go there, make sure you make the roundabout with a statue as your fulcrum point - everything seems to originate or end there.

(We were shattered to learn there was after all no direct route to Agra, and if we had to reach back home, there were only two alternatives available - either take the same road that we had come through, which wasn’t advisable from security point of view. Or, go through Sadabad - which is some 28 kms from Jalesar - and then move on to Agra. Anyone who has read these pieces earlier would know that Sadabad (in Hathras distt.) falls on the same ‘road-less’ Aligarh route, and is the biggest bane of my current travelling!)

*Aaj mai khush hoon lo tum hi bolo kyun, from Grahan; Music- Karthik Raja; Singers - Asha Bhonsle, Jolly Mukherjee

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This entry was posted on Sunday, December 24th, 2006 at 11:05 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.