Another "first job" story. While at HCL, I extensively traveled eastern Uttar Pradesh - the
largest state in India. PC's were just starting to make their way into large
cities, Universities and Corporations. Small businesses and individuals were also dipping their toes into the digital world.
This particular trip started with an
uneventful overnight train ride from Lucknow to Varanasi, where I spent two
days. Next stop was a coal mining township - Singrauli. The only way to get
there was by road. A six-hour trip. The last bus for the day had left and the next
bus was in the morning which would mean losing half the day. A well informed
local let me in on another option. I could potentially get a ride in a
newspaper delivery Jeep that would leave around midnight and drop me about 10 miles away from Singrauli. After a late dinner. I headed to the rendezvous
point and to my horror the driver informed me that all the three seats were
sold. I was desperate, I had to be on this Jeep
and was willing to pay him a few extra bucks. Soon we were on our way, the
driver and three passengers in the front, I was at the back lying flat on top
of a stack of newspapers. The crawl space barely ten inches high, just enough
to get my plump self on top with not an inch to spare. It was a soft top Jeep
and the back flap was tattered and torn.
The Jeep would be making three stops en-route
and dropping off bundles of newspaper at each stop - the roads were bumpy,
dusty and with every bump my face would hit the soft top roof and very soon I
was chewing sand and dirt. One of the stops was an Aluminum plant in Renukoot
owned by Hindalco. A large bundle of newspapers delivered here finally gave me
some breathing room on top of the heap. Fast forward to 4:30 am, the Jeep stopped at a fork on the state highway, this was my drop-off point. Total wilderness and pitch dark, not a soul around, no habitation, no nothing
around. no light, no water, no nothing! My final destination - Singrauli was about 10 miles away and a local bus would come by at around 5:30 am. This was turning out to be a bad idea, a real bad idea! I did not blame myself, I cursed the guy who gave me this great idea.
The one-hour wait was an eternity, scary,
cold, dark. At every sound in the darkness, I jumped out of my skin. I set my briefcase down on
the shoulder of the road and sat on it, waiting. In that one
hour, not one vehicle came by, not one! And then a distant sound - growing
louder gradually, and a faint light in the distance. A vehicle approached,
rattling along, I hoped it was the bus. It seemed like a bus, the rattling really
loud as it approached me, I stuck my hand out and waived, Yes! It was the bus,
sharp 5:30 am. I boarded the bus, there were no lights inside, I felt my way to
the nearest seat and sat down. Ouch! the seat was just a plank of wood, no
cushion, the bus was a relic! Ouch! Thank God for the bus! I was the only
passenger on it, we set off on the road to Singrauli. I was so tired and
sleepy, I dozed off within a couple of minutes and was suddenly woken up by the
loud crowing of a rooster....and oh the Rooster was on the bus, three rows from
me, his owner had him in a cane-basket sitting next to him on a seat. It was now
light, and I could see stuff around, I looked around the bus, there was one
more person standing in the rear with two large milk cans. The bus carried on
at barely 10 miles an hour, bumping and rattling on the single lane road. The
rooster-man and the milk-man had boarded at a bus-stop when I was fast asleep. Next
stop, yup you guessed it, a farmer and his wife with two goats! The goats refused to board the bus, so the man carried them up one at a time. It was one happy family now
- A computer salesman, a rooster-man, a milkman and a farming couple with two
goats, all in a rickety bus with no cushioned seats and broken windows,
headed on the trip of my life! The Jeep ride by contrast was a piece of cake.
I got to the guest-house, freshened up
and started preparing for my meeting with the EDP manager (Now known as the
CIO) which was scheduled just after lunch. My senior colleague would be arriving
directly from Lucknow, in time for the meeting. The meeting was a moderate
success, we had a decent chance of securing the upcoming bid the client would be
putting out to buy a host of computer systems. We had dinner with the EDP
manager at the company guest house. He had arranged for a company vehicle to
drop us about 40 miles away at a small rural railway station. From
there, we could get a train at 2:00 am to a city called Allahabad, a 5 hour
train journey.
1:00 A.M, we got dropped at this small
rail station, just another trivial fact - we were out of money. We were unable
to get a tour advance when we started the trip because the branch office
was out of money. Credit cards had not yet arrived in India. We had embarked on
the trip with whatever we each had in our banks, which was fairly
insignificant, given that we were at the beginning of our careers. The train
arrived, we decided we decided not to buy tickets, we were dressed
appropriately to be traveling in first class, so we confidently boarded the
first-class coach, peeped into a cabin which we found empty, climbed on to the
two upper berths, and using our briefcases as pillows, we settled down for a
comfortable few hours in first-class, Ticket-less! We had barely traveled an
hour when the train suddenly stopped, and we could hear a lot of commotion on
the platform. We jumped down from our berths, stepped out of the cabin and
peeked through the window, horror - a surprise check for
ticket-less travel, how did they know we were traveling ticket-less? The
inspectors were headed towards our coach and would be upon us in a minute. In a
flash both of us grabbed our briefcases and jumped off the train on the other
side. The train started moving, the 'unreserved' coach was six coaches ahead of
us, we ran like crazy on the large pebbles that are laid all along the rail
tracks in India, the train was picking up speed, we were trying desperately to
run faster, finally we got to the "unreserved" coach, my colleague
got on to the foot board first and tried the door, it was locked, he handed me
his briefcase and started banging the door. The coach was packed like sardines and the sardines would not open the door. The train was now going faster, the
banging on the door was getting louder, the cursing even louder. I was running
now for my life, with two briefcases, formal shoes, dress pants, running on
pebbles! Mercy, the door suddenly opened, my colleague squeezed his way in,
grabbed one briefcase from me and then gave me a hand up. Panting, breathless,
home! There was standing room only, sweaty, stinky, colored fluid flowing on the floor
from the lavatory at the end of the coach. What is that fluid? Don't pay any
attention to it shouted my colleague! - just do not look that way, just do not breathe if you don't
have to!
We stood for the next two hours, we were sardines
too, stinky, sweaty, tired - when miraculously at a stop about thirty people
got off the train and no one got on. what a relief! There was no sitting room as yet but we
could walk around the coach freely now. The other end of the coach was dry, our
morning newspaper became our bed-sheets, which we laid out in the passageway,
our trusted briefcases once again became the pillow. When you are exhausted, you can
sleep anywhere, even on a stone floor in a train with a sheet of newspaper as your
bed-sheet and an occasional passenger tripping on or kicking you!
7:00 AM Allahabad, no money, feeling
yuckier and filthier. Fortunately, another colleagues' father was the Director at an Engineering College here and they had a bungalow on campus, our
colleague was also going to be in Allahabad that day. We hired a rickshaw and headed over, we had just enough to pay the rickshaw. Warm bath, home food,
some rest, human again.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, we
borrowed money from our colleagues' dad and after a day of work in Allahabad
went back to Lucknow the next day.
#varanasi #allahabad #trainjourney #renukoot #busride
