City City Bang Bang-Part 1

How do you feel when you are going to land in a place known as city of dreams, the IT capital of the world, the silicon valley of Asia, the epicentre of Indian White collared youth brigade???? Ecstatic, isn't it like that? Well, so did I. But awfully, it occurred to me differently. Here is the story.

On a seemingly cold Friday morning I left my place, Bhilwara- the Manchester of Asia (don’t know whether it still meets that reputation) and headed for my first ever job centred at Bangalore (I love this name, don’t know why people changed it to Bengaluru ). I was scheduled to board the train from New Delhi at 9.30 pm the same day. My journey till the national capital was slated to pause at Jaipur, which is precisely 5 hrs journey from Bhilwara. Form there on; I was supposed to take another Bus for Delhi which again generally takes 5.5 hrs. Therefore, knowing the time distance equation I was well off with my travel plan leaving Bhilwara by 8 am. This was how it all started.

During the first half of my journey to Delhi, I enjoyed what I always do. I slept for complete 3 hrs absolutely ignoring the need to keep a check on my valuable luggage I was carrying along. Anyways after satisfying my diurnal sleep pattern, I profoundly found everything in place and safe when I reached Jaipur. Everything was going fine till I committed a felony. I confused Rajasthan Roadways to be a follower of Indian standard time (which is consensually taken across the nation as 5 min back of time shown in watches). Just when there were 3 minutes left in scheduled departure of the bus, I intended to take a cold drink and got out the bus. That was no brainer; the bus was half empty till then. And you know, they never ride the bus till it is suffocated to its beastly capacity. But who knows when luck is in a naughty mood.

The core of my crime was that I left the sight of the bus. I just took 2 mins to come and was left aghast to find that the bus was missing the scene. Totally flabbergasted, I pleaded the ticket booker to find out any way to catch the departed bus. All my certificates and my purse were inside the luggage. Mercilessly and to utter ridicule, the ticket booker grinned and joked: Bhaiyye, Bus to Gayi. He ..he...he. I somehow maintained my calm, grabbing the complexity of the situation and still asked him if there was anything that could help me catch the bus. He now retorted with a not so humble reply: humari galti he kya? Aage wali bus jayegi 5 min baad, usme baith jao. Agar naseeb hoga to aage wali bus raste me mil jayegi. I just blindly followed what he said. Now, the most intelligent thing I did here was that I called my Dad and explained him the situation. He relaxed me and told me to wait till his next directions. I kept alarming the driver to go as fast as he could, but he never seemed bothered. I even lured him for monetary benefits but to no goods. Just then I received my dad’s call. He told me that the target bus was waiting for me at a station 5 Km from city station and that I should reach there as early as I could. Luckily, we got there in time and I had the glimpse of the bus from a distance. I left the carrier and ran to catch the sought one. Just as I entered the bus, the passengers started yelling at me. Are you some minister’s son? Are we fools that we can wait for anybody who is not sane enough to keep a watch on his boarded bus? You have wasted our time. I admitted with a gallop of disgust and shame. But somewhere down, my heart was rejoicing the salvage of my maiden journey en route to my career. I pretended to be shaky but exploited the hidden celebration. During the last half an hour, I could sense each of my nerve stretched to extremes and lived the moments of profound misery.

I placated as they say, all is well that ends well. But it didn't end here since I had no idea hitherto what my soul was about to experience in the next part of my journey.

Are you taking it closely? Are you anxious to know what happened next? The next blog answers all. Stay tuned.