On the way back home me and Jij spoke extensively for about four minutes and for the rest of the way I just kept staring at the busy night life of Delhi while at the back of my head I began to compare it with the stand-still life of rural India that I had witnessed in the past 36 hours of the journey. Delhi is a very charming city and although I haven’t seen any other capital of any other country I still felt that this city is very special in many of its ways and I have always had a special affinity towards it. I reached Didi’s place and found my sister more happy and jubilant than she ever could be to see me and thought of the very unlikely kind of a farewell I had back home but anyways everyone seemed happy on both shores and I was just happy to get some home made food. I found that my didi had kept a couple of girls as PG in her flat, both of them students of Amity studying microbiology or was it biotechnology who cares, which meant I wouldn’t get my usual room but I was just too tired to feel bad about it …..I could have slept on the dining table. The next morning I woke up late, real late, so much so that I joined everyone for lunch. My Didi lived in Noida and since her marriage I have been here more than half a dozen times but still I find Noida a very lifeless place that is very different from Delhi and it may be because here everything seems so planned and perfect whereas Delhi with its imperfections is just perfect. I still had few more days before my college started and I thought of making the best utilization of it by …..well watching TV, sleeping and eating a lot. I also made a call, somewhere in between all that hard work, to my college to make sure that the day of commencement of the classes were still the same as said and that’s because when you have been living in India for almost quarter of a century you get used to these unscheduled delays!!!

….contd
I went to bed and though I was tired like hell I just could not manage to sleep. I was not thinking much or probably didn’t think at all, only abstract thoughts. I saw as the night turned from pitch black slowly to a bluish morning sky and then when the first glowing rays of sunlight pierced into my room I knew it was time for me to get up. I got ready and didn’t even bother to think about breakfast I had a train to catch. I went to the station and having traveled in these routes for many a times now I didn’t need to ask anyone. I found my compartment, kept my luggage, and since there was still time for the train to leave I got down to grab a quick cup of coffee. I had a reservation for sleeper class but just to be extra sure I thought I would check out the list outside my bogie and found my name missing. I didn’t panic cause I knew exactly what had happened as this was not the first time. The Indian Railway started this new system of upgrading passengers from sleeper class to AC section if the seats were left empty. This happened to me the last time while I was going from Delhi to Guwahati and it happened again what can I say luck was on my side and I was not complaining. I took my berth and thought of what kind co-passengers I would have to deal with and didn’t have to guess much as I soon found out. An aunty with her daughter and her brother hopped in and started having the robust of all discussions I have heard in my life. The girl was very exited as she was about to get married and her mother just couldn’t seem to get over the thought that her only daughter could manage such an accomplished groom(I began wonder what was wrong with the girl) who is a navy officer and earns Rs.21,000. And how did I know all of that well they spoke or rather shouted so much that it was tough to ignore and I have every possible reason to believe that even the driver knew about her marriage. To my relief though they got down at NGP station and I could not help but thank God. The new dwellers of my compartment were a Bhutanese family, whose daughter had met with an accident breaking one arm, fracturing both her legs and her spinal cord and was undoubtedly in a great amount of pain. I had my dinner and spoke with the father of that girl asking him how it all happened and came to know that while riding her new bicycle she came across the edge of a cliff and forgot to pull the brakes. I went to my berth and got into a slumber only to be woken up by a half hearted shout and found my next compartment swarming with police officers. Some passenger’s bag has gone missing and the GREAT INDIAN POLICE instead of helping the poor guy and trying to find out the baggage was pinning the whole matter onto him for not being too careful and by doing so they wasted enough time and lost all possibility of a search. I tried to speak to the guy who seemed devastated as if he had lost his wife but I found out that the bag didn’t have any valuable thing in that except his mobile and the numbers along with it. I didn’t sleep after that and as day broke I managed to get a news paper and found that the Left was still opposing the nuclear deal. All day long I kept on watching the hundreds of kilometers of farm land and once spoke with an air force officer who seemed very upbeat about the fact that the government was about to come up with the sixth pay commission. As they sun began to set and the fields looked more golden than ever I saw the farmers slowly returning and could not help but think what exactly were they thinking at that point of time. It was January and after dusk the air became more and more chilly, I switched on my cell, we were entering New Delhi Railway Station. My brother-in-law(I call him Jij) had come to pick me up. I helped the Bhutanese family to get their daughter off the train and was on my way to Didi’s place.

....contd

So on 19th January 2008 I left Silchar for Guwahati. I thought I would see a lot of saline water combined with a lot of melodramatic expressions on my departure but to my surprise none of them bothered to shed a single drop of it ....on the contrary most of them seemed pretty happy to get rid of me. Previously my uncle was supposed to leave me uptill Guwahati but blood sugar got the better of him and I had to leave alone(not that I complained). I reached the bus station accompanied by Suren(a cook in our restaurant) and found out that except Rajdeep( Chowdhury ) none of my other friends cared to show up. Tantu and Jeet preferred to sleep and Sourav could not make it because of higher causes. Anyways I was glad that Rajdeep was there when I left and actually dint give much of a thought to others after that. The bus journey from Silchar to Guwahati is something that I have always hated, it was a 12 hour bus journey, and I usually spent most of the time either sleeping or cursing the govt for not making things easier....but at the back of my head I was happy this time cause I was taking this journey the last time for sometime to come now!!! As the Bus slowly moved out of the station, then over the only flyover we have in silchar, a lot of things began to roll on my mind. Ofcourse I was happy but the sights and sounds of silchar suddenly started to feel very nostalgic and I began to think of the things that I will not be able to see for a long time now. I was busy in my thoughts when I was suddenly brought back to reality by a group of tourist, probably from in and around Delhi, when they started talking about all the things they saw and hated about Silchar. They growled about its roads, sewage system, electricity, unemployment, the ignorant people and a million other things and they seemed pretty sure that they will probably never come back. At one point I thought I would jump into the conversation and give them a piece of my mind.But I was a silcharian and I loved silchar for whatever it was and thought that the group behind me was the worst set of homo-sapient in this bus. I don't know when I fell asleep but when I woke up we had already covered about a 100 kilometers and someone in the bus was playing Always-by Bonjovi. The rest of the journey was alright but we had to encounter a two hour delay because of a road block which was ok by our standards.I reached Guwahati at 8 P.M and checked in hotel Siroy Lily for the night....My train was early next morning!!