'Aisa toh mere sath kabhi nahi hua!!' I slept for more than 14 hours, and those who know me would or should know that actually thats pretty rare to happen. Anyway, this fact hardly makes a difference to anyone's life. So how has life been at your end? At my end its been pretty hectic to say the least, the only difference is that this time its by choice than by anything else.
I have been doing interesting things. My work, as expected, landed me up in Jhansi. But that was just to sleep. The work was out of Jhansi and in places like Orchha, Niwari, Tarichhar, etc, which I am sure you have never heard of. For the first time in my life, I saw rural India with such proximity. And on top of that, I celebrated my birthday roaming around in draught hit areas, meeting weird people with acute memory problems, seeing half filled orange coloured sealed coca cola bottles, eating jumbo sized gulab jamuns which are strangely called rasgullas, drinking hot chaai in big khullads, yelling at a half psychotic painter, almost drinking the sinful Bagpiper (Don't worry, I did not do it!!), seeing the largest number of matkas at one place at one moment of time (only second to IIT i guess!), and what not.
If that wasn't enough, my next day saw me had one ride of my life on an open truck. I was on the back side of it, which was open. We were going through a dark jungle in Madhya Pradesh, better known as Chambal. Yes you have guessed it right its the famous land of all the Dakus in bollywood. And what I heard from localites is that the bollywood hasn't done good justice to the area as it is actually far more dangerous than portrayed. Dacoits can actually come out of nowhere anytime on that highway and you are not left with a long list of options. So that was how it was. We were crossing through that jungle and it was pitch dark with a strong breeze. Nothing happened except the fact that I kept listening to all the infamous incidents of past and the long list of Do's and Don'ts if something was to happen.
The most fascinating part of the whole thing was that I could see so many stars in the sky. You have to take my word, if you have always seen the night sky living in a city, you haven't seen anything. There are millions of stars visible with our eyes, which are never seen, because of the the excess of light in cities. That was some breathtaking experience, sitting in an open truck, everyone around me asleep, my iPod on, and the milky sky..brilliant!
About what useful I learnt from my experience, people are same everywhere, even the topics of discussion do not change, cricket rules there too. Most of the people have the basic necessities primarily because of the fact that electricity for them is not a basic need. So even if it is there for a couple of hours they are happy. But there are problems which they do not realize like the sanitation, the education levels and a lot more. The only thing which pinched me in the trip was that I could see that light in so many young kids, that fire to become something, that passion to dream..and I knew most of them won't be able to do it, just because they neither have someone to show the path nor the resources to walk on that path. It is that thing I am really going to work upon. Even if ten students are able to make big out of those places, the most fascinating stars on my blurred sky will make their first appearance.
No comments:
Post a Comment