Can I get a ride? Or three?

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