ARISE, AWAKE AND STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED

In the year 1993 I was working with a finance company in Delhi. I admit that this company treated her staff quite well. Among the rewards this company used to offer to us to remain in good humor, are, firstly, an outing once in a year to some hill station or to a reserve forest with our family. Secondly, almost every month there used to be a party where there would flow hard drinks freely. This party was looked forward to by all the employees except two or three of us ? the tea toddlers. In these parties scotch, whiskey and wine used flow like water and the drinkers would enjoy to their hilt. I used to feel like a fish out of water. I could never appreciate such heavy drinking and wasting so much money on it. Perhaps this could be one of the causes of this company going bankrupt and consequently sold out. But for the drinkers they enjoyed the party most . The third thing which every one of us awaited eagerly was the ?profit sharing packet? that used to be distributed just before Deepavali. Although our Chairman did not believe such religious occasions to be the right time to share company?s profitability, but he had to give in because of the prevalent custom in North India to give some bonus/presentation or such things before Deepavali.

Among all the three benefits I was entitled to, what I enjoyed most was the two days trip to a new place. All arrangements were done by some of our enthusiastic colleagues and we had no botheration of travel booking, hotel booking and all such smaller irritants neither we had to pay anything for it. Is not it wonderful!

I remember this Ranthambore trip in smallest details because my daughter that year became 1 year old. That was her 2nd birthday in November 1993 that coincided with the date of the picnic. In fact, we were completely taken by surprise when everything was arranged on the evening of 21st November to celebrate her birthday, with cake and a big Teddy Bear, even bigger than her in size as her presentation. About that I will narrate a little later.

Now let us catch up with our travel schedule. On 19th of November, 1993 all the staff members were requested to reach the Delhi Railway station to catch the train for Sawai Madhopur. A little description about Sawai Madhupur and Ranthambore will not be out of place for the readers those who have not been to these places.

Sawai Madhopur is 428 KM from Delhi and located in the South-eastern region of Rajasthan. It has a dry climate with little rain. The Delhi-Bombay broad-gauge railway lines pass through Sawai Madhopur. Sawai Madhopur, the entry point for the famous Ranthambhore National Park. This was the station where we were scheduled to alight from the train and board a bus for which prior arrangements were made.

Ranthambore is situated at about 14 km. from the Sawai Madhopur Railway station. This is famous for it?s wild life sanctuary. Let me frankly admit that I do not like to see animals in a sanctuary. But a sanctuary is a better version than a Zoo, to that extent I tolerate it. What interests me is the natural habitats, a remote stream flowing, water bodies, the plant life and the night sky that abounds in millions of starts.

A full compartment was booked for our travel keeping in view more importantly, I suppose, to have drinks as much as one wishes and secondarily to have enough elbow room to have a comfortable journey without bothering for ones limited space. After a bout of loud singing and clapping, the bottles were uncorked and there flew uninterrupted flow of beer. Here I must apologize on behalf of my colleagues for breaking Railway rules. A ticket inspector who got into our compartment to check our tickets gave up half way as he was offered two chilled beer bottles. He could not neglect wetting his supposedly parched throat. Thus we became the lord of the compartment. A number of times, I had to request my colleagues to tone down their melodious singing (you can imagine it was more of coco phony than anything else) to allow small kids to go to sleep. This requests worked for a while only. Fortunately, after some time the group moved to another corner allowing us to sleep. I am really indebted to them for this favor.

As the train ran relentlessly and our compartment was locked from inside no one could entrain at any intermediary stations to disturb our so called peace, one by one the heroic souls (without any aspersion to real heroes in life) fell to the soothing touch of the cool breeze and the bellyful beer which lulled them to sleep. One unpleasant experience we had during this travel need to be mentioned. This one is related to hard drinking. As I said earlier that most of our colleagues were drinking. Majority of them were non-habitual drinker. Having found free drinks, they were tempted to take as much as they could. One of them was so drunk that he was to be conducted to his berth. When everyone was sleeping this fellow started vomiting from the upper bunk and was unable to control himself. My wife, Krishna, was on the lower berth and her shawl came on the firing line. She was furious and blamed the organizers for such untoward happening. Our Director was sleeping in the next birth and I am sure he must have heard quite clearly thus the message had gone to the right place.

Around 4 in the early morning, we were called to get up as we were approaching the Sawai Madhupur station. Our daughter was still sleepy and I had to physically carry her and my wife had to carry the luggage. Of course some helping hands did help her. When we got down at the station, it was bit cold, being the third week of November. From the station our luggage was carried by the helpers of the buses and we had to just walk up to the bus parked close to the station. As the buses moved fast with the headlights on, we again entered into a state of snooze. At this stage everyone was sleepy, no singing, no clapping, only snoring sound could be heard. The property where we were slated to be staying for the next two nights finally arrived. People who had family enjoyed the best of rooms and the hardcore bachelors were put up in tents, 5 persons in one tent. Ours one looked like, if you have read The Ramayana wherein Ram, Sita and Laxman after being banished to forest for 14 years, lived in forest huts, somewhat similar to that. At a distance we could see the Aravali mountain range with bushes around.

On our arrival, we were welcomed with a hot cup of tea/coffee. The sun was just peeping through the horizon turning the whole area bright and living. After the train and bus journey we wanted to desperately have a nice bath but our hut did not have that facility. So we had to wait in the queue for our turn to come in another facility. However, this was a small hiccup which we did not mind. Next was the break-fast time. The dinning facility was excellent. The hall was a circular structure, and the middle circle was fully covered area and the outer circle had upper portion covered but the sides were open. There was a big swimming pool and some of our good swimmers did have nice dive into the pool. What I enjoyed most was the location amidst jungle retreat.

We were told that the Chambal river flows nearby. So a program was arranged to pay a visit to the river and if interested people could take a bath. I give here a little information about Chambal River. This river rises in the western Vindhya Mountains near Indore, flows easterly 900 km before emptying into the Yamuna River. It's river basin extends over parts of Chittorgarh, Bhilwara, Bundi, Sawai Madhopur (here we caught up with the river) Tonk, Jhalawar, Kota, Baran and Dholpur Districts. We also had a boat riding on the flowing river. It was a sunny day very soon we had to take off our warm clothing. Shivani wanted to play with the water and we let her join other children splashing water to each other. Since our younger days we have been hearing of the exploits of the Chambal dacoits and here we are on this river bank. Bordering with the states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, the Chambal belt of Northern Madhya Pradesh is full of zigzagged ravines providing safe shelters to inter-state gangs of dacoits. A number of novels, films and stories go round throughout India of these notorious dacoits. We were even wondering whether a band of dacoits would suddenly appear there! In one of the stories I read that during a film shooting, a real band of dacoits appeared and met the hero of the film (who was acting as a Chambal dacoit). The reel life hero was afraid but the real hero commented that we risk our life in this act and get little money, and this reel hero does acting of that and gets 10 times more.

What an irony. This is perhaps one of the paradoxes of life, I guess. Contd. II