How do we Delhi folks or anybody for that matter from Kolkata or Hyderabad travel to the hills of Uttarakhand to see the peaks of Garhwal that are right now in a bad shape due to the disaster that laid so many people low. But these mountains gave us sustenance and rejuvenated us to face our daily humdrum lives in the plains and the sight of those snowy peaks gave us such joy. I have travelled and trekked in Himachal to Kashmir but these last few years it has only been Kumaon and the upper reaches of Garhwal like Kuari pass and Chorbaritaal and many other delightful places.
But have we sat back and thought what kind of pressures we faced getting in and getting out of there and often sitting in my car to Rishikesh I have asked myself why I went through this process of getting angry about the traffic and long queues of cars, tractors or buses that I always managed to get stuck somewhere just as one is approaching Roorkee be it from anyway. So early this 2013 March I took the easiest approach and got on to an air conditioned bus just outside the Anand Vihar interstate bus terminus and the narrative below folks will find have been the same as theirs on this route as there is none other but this !!
The scooter rickshaws and tempos clogging the single-laned carriageway outside of Ghaziabad names of areas like Ghazipur,Hindon, Indirapuram slowly pass one’s eyes in the green road signs till the road becomes wider and then the shell like factories of Modipuram and Modi Nagar pass by to give way to fields where engineering and medical colleges offer courses ranging from aviation to brain surgery ; God save the pusher man !!
Then the highway veers to the left and again the road becomes littered this time with horse carriages or tongas as city dwellers of inner ghettoes of Chandni Chowk were used to and one knows this announces the arrival of Meerut. The bus had left Delhi at 11.30 a.m. and now it was fifteen minutes past one and the torture has just started as the bus groans making strange braking noises and suddenly goodness gracious the air conditioning fails in the bus and the heat becomes intolerable with passengers demanding their money back as the conducted now is charging the passengers from Meerut to Rishikesh the fare charged for a non a/c bus.
As the protests become strident a few toughs emerge from the glass covered driver's cabin and bare their teeth and flex their muscles having rolled up their sleeves and now I know why the Bengali saying came about which was " Fute Mostaan " !! The Delhi crowd kind of stop as they had started looking nonchalant as if it was the other guy who was clamouring for his money and cool their heels in big bad Meerut where burkha covered ladies daintily pick their way through horse manure littered streets and some roadside Romeos with the characteristic handkerchiefs tied around their necks eye their next victim while hanging around the neighbouring snacks cart. The traffic policeman in the typical big buckled belt holding up his half pants looks on helplessly blowing his whistle furiously as the traffic goes which way but loose. The pot bellied staff of the Uttar Pradesh constabulary in their brown uniforms with their batons tucked under their arms as they tuck in their wad of tobacco which is also known as khaini.
The little restaurant next to the petrol pump where our bus fills up on diesel looks like a nice refuge from the reek of the fuel suspiciously smells punched with kerosene being pumped into the innards of the thirsty vehicles parked for their drink. The cafeteria advertises mushroom omplate and my belly grumbles for a taste of such fare and for Rs 80 with two slices of bread thrown in I am game. The owner orders the boys to open up a tin from within the fridge and with a knife the workers bust open the works spilling out the quartered mushrooms and I reach out for the tin to inspect the date and woe be gone the print is indelible due to the paper having melted in a mess inside the fridge.
Knowing that I have paid Rs 100 for the omelet and a bottle of Kinley drinking water or reverse osmosis origin there is no refund in these surroundings and I order them to put green chillies and onions and God forbid, no garam masala which the owner says will make it chatpata. The slices of bread is given the same treatment by soaking up the greases from the pan where the omelet has been fried. Now is the trying part where under the disapproving eyes of the skull capped owner and his curious assistants !
I first sniff the goods and then tear of a small morsel to be sure if the mushrooms have not turned into the magic variety that will make me laugh all the way to Rishikesh. As I tear into the contents knowing I will survive the experience, the owner's taut grimace relaxes and he goes back to what he does best and that is rearranging the wads of notes of money and counting them using his thumb to his tongues to lick them into position.
Having had my bellyful I enter the bus which as usual gets stuck in a logjam with screeching men with their feet to the gas pedal making their stationary vehicles roar and their air horns giving a myriad of cacophonous sounds. This moment too passes after half an hour and we are back on the highway now headed to Mawana which is famous for sugar products as this is Western UP’s sugarcane belt. If while entering Kumaon towards the East one gets Daurala near Garh Mukteshwar and further from Bareilly to Lucknow has it’s sugarcane belt of Sitapur this area boasts of Mawana.
This area is very green and a lone mango grove shows that this area was once rich with mango trees but like the great mid-western plains of the USA now having boasting of cereals, these plains have only sugarcane ; of course i could be wrong !! Way back during the late 80's or early 90's visiting Rishikesh with my relatives I found these areas were lawless with marauding gangs of Gujjars robbing car owners of their belongings causing convoys to form after the vehicles left Ghaziabad ; such was the reputation of Western UP those days. On asking about why the situation had changed for the better in these years,
I was informed by my neighbour sweating alongside me in the airless Volvo bus with it's air conditioner bust that Mayawati when she was the chief minister had cleaned up Uttar Pradesh So here I was off to the glaciers of the northern Himalayas to see how our sectors would fare in the absence of rains if the monsoons failed ; not that I was a specialist in this field but all these glacial activities I had been observing for quite a few years as a layman.
Our luck has always been that mother nature has been kind to us Indians and the Himalayas were now being preyed upon by the coveting talons of the Chinese dragon who knew future wars will be fought over water resources like Pakistan and Bangladesh were protesting for long over the Tulbul dam in Kashmir and Farakka barrage in West Bengal respectively. It is 15 minutes past two and the road sign shows Mana 413 kms ahead and memories of my Satopanth glacier walk way back in 2001 are brought back in waves of nostalgia.
Suddenly the driver swings his vehicle left and we come to an abrupt stop at an eatery with a old peeling sign board which announces Puja cafe, Navla Kothi, District Khatauli, Uttar Pradesh. The conductor and driver both in loud voices announce like barkers at a circus that the last stop for food had arrived and one should have one's fill and board the bus in 30 minutes flat. Knowing their game plan and the quality of food offered at this Dhaba ; nay not a French cafe as the Swedes on the bus were wont to believe I hung around inside the bus thanking my lucky stars that I had got that clean omelette at Meerut.
After a while not able to take the heat any more now that the bus had stopped I stepped outside. With a glance at the Swedes who had dug into their safe fare of dal and chapatties I saw them sweating furiously ; and one member even held her mouth as the chillies in the lentil's tempering had burnt the roof of her palate and was drinking straight from a bottle snorting all the while and whimpering " Oh my God , oh my God " . Lol, not her idea of a smorgasbord, I said to myself.
I checked out the food in the dhaba having nothing better to do I saw they even had a section which offered vegetarian burgers which was a bun with onions and a potato patty that suspiciously looked like an aloo tikki. Then I checked out the surrounding area behind the dhaba and saw an irrigation canal lined with poplar trees which reminded one of the picturesque road with the same trees as one just was entering Srinagar. The same line of trees have featured in many Bollywood films when Kashmir was safe and fashionable ; and the same road had featured in the Hollywood version of ” A Passage To India ” when the heroine played by Judy Davis visits Kashmir.
Movies be hanged as the pong of human detritus hits my nostrils and I go back reeling to the bus stand reeling to the dhaba realising that this cool grove is used for relieving oneself after a full meal. With nothing more to do I inspected the next stall close to the eatery which was a bookstall full of Hindi detective novels with subjects ranging from decapitation to adultery and the only English books were autobiographies of Mussolini, Hitler, Napoleon, Gandhi, Alexander and last not the least Babe Ruth of all people.
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