Well here comes my first story bit of fiction mixed with a splash of reality.
A long road back is an excerpt about what could be done when you have along road to cover and have a lot of time to spare.
This incident happened to me last year. It was may summer evening my adventure started at 3 in the afternoon the temperature was soaring around 34 degrees but it felt more than 40 due to the hot loo blowing all over, I was in Chandigarh doing coaching for my BBA entrance exam, my schoolmate Rohit had invited me to watch the IPL match between Mumbai Indians and the kings 11 Punjab. We had decided to meet at the stadium itself I was living with my uncle back then and had a distance of about 10 kilometers to cover to the stadium in Mohali I took a bus to the stadium and got together with Rohit just in time to watch the match. We had a pretty good time watching the match and enjoyed to the fullest after the match was over we were satisfied and tired because of the heat we were sitting in.
We decided to go back as we were tired and after a short walk Rohit had found the auto rickshaw taking him home so I bid him goodbye AND THIS IS WHERE THE REAL ADVENTURE STARTS is suddenly realized that there was no auto rickshaw going to where I wanted to after a furious auto rickshaw scanning session to no avail I decided to take the "the long road back" it was around 10 kilometers and I was dead tired but anyhow I decided to cover the distance on my trusty feet.
As I was walking down the long road which had decided to conspire against me seemed as if there was a curfew in the city the dogs seemed to have lost their howl the traffic seemed to have stopped only things that made me realize that I was in a city were the distant growl of traffic and rare passing of an truck by my side, all this gave me the perfect time to fantasize and "daydream" as some say. The first thoughts were about the match I had just witnessed and I thought of why was there a crowd of players converged at a small place after the match and why was the always animated Shreesanth crying even if his team had won the match. Anyways I marched forward trying to enjoy the summer evening which was now much cooler than the day was, I think it is a feature of us Indians to quickly forget any of the problems we have and enjoy the present, same way keeping up with my Indian features I forgot that I had to walk such along distance to my destination. But destiny plays great role in deciding our destination and my destiny had more than a long and tiring journey. I won’t say that what happened changed my outlook towards life but it definitely showed me a different phase (one which I did not intend to see) of life. Anyways I was walking the long path back home and after walking a few kilometers of loneliness I ran into another salient feature of our diversified country (I don’t want to be regionally biased but I will have to mention this) and that was ‘THE BIHARIS’ there is a strange about these aboriginals of Bihar they come to the areas of Haryana, Punjab and Delhi (wild spenders and yes lazy people) to earn their livelihood and they live in strangely the same way as they do in their particular region but the thing that struck me this day was how easily were they able to turn the boring and dead seeming environment into a lively and what some people call fish market type situation but to me it seemed more than a fish market it was a pinch of life in the dead environment there was some kind of haat on, it was a sale of clothes going on little stalls by the roadside and along with these stalls were the regular ice cream vendors and the balloonwalas a bit further was the tea vendor without which any hangout spot in India is incomplete. And among the stalls and other vendors was a herd of people moving around scanning from one stall to other at one stall the ladies were doing bargaining the Indian style and on yet another one could find people browsing through the heap of clothes to find their choice of attire among all this commotion one could find children moving around playfully. It was a complete world by itself in that space of about 100 yards. As I was lost in that commotion of the little world of people I didn’t realise that it was quite late and I had walked only about one fourth the steps I wanted to quicken my speed but realised I was too tired so I walked slowly by the road the commotion of the haat was left far behind and I was once again surrounded by the silence and when I was too tired to move on I thought of pulling my hand out with a thumb pointed out and ask for lift but just then I decided to walk a few yards more as I liked evening and did not want my tiredness to ruin the ‘feel’ but this would turn out to be my regret that evening. From the back of my eye I saw a grey chetak coming my way I was confused whether to ask for the lift or not as I was in the dilemma the man about 50 wearing shorts and t shirt stopped near me and asked wither I wanted a lift I was too tired to say no and asked thanking him I sat on the pillion seat. The scooter started and off we went. The first words came from his mouth “Kitho aa reha hain putter” (where are you coming from?) I answered graciously “Mohali da match dekh ke aya han uncle jee” (Was watching the Mohali game). Just as I was speaking out the answer I smelled something foul (literally). The man was drunk!!!!!!!!! “EKDUM TULLI” well I said to my self just a kilometre to go what can possibly go wrong. But I was wrong once again I realised that he was grabbing my thigh a gay!!!!! I thought as I shrugged his hand and shifted to the farthest back of the pillion as I could go but the gay was adamant he left his seat and came on the pillion seat and once again tried to grab my thigh but this time I held his hand before he could grasp me and as I was doing this I thought to myself “kaha phas gaya yaar lift ke chakker mein” but my body said just a kilometre nothing will happen. But this ended when he tried to grab my thigh yet again this time a shouted “scooter rok” (stop the scooter). The man was shocked and he stopped the scooter and got off it as quickly as I could. Then I turned to the man and gave him a piece of my mind. My rage was uncontrollable I let the jatt inside me out and abused him with every type of abuse I knew, there is something with the language Punjabi when it comes to abusing they come out in a flow when I was all out of my abuses I shouted what are you looking at get off here. The man was shocked as he saw me leap into fury from nothingness he turned his scooter which was still on and went off. I was in a mix of shock and fury when an auto rickshaw appeared. I hopped on it at once and told the driver my destination within 5 minutes I was back at my uncle’s home and went to bed at once as I wanted the night to end ASAP.
