Puri - 3

Hi again people! Welcome to the 3rd part of "Puri". Check out the previous parts: Part I & Part II here. Hope you'll enjoy this.

Part 3 begins:

From Raipur we were on the way to Sambalpur, which would be, our first night-halt. I don’t remember much about this journey but the only thing which I remember is our stoppage for lunch at Angul. Where we stopped was a typical dhaba but with some Orissa touch. We were just wandering at that dhaba when Arwa and Mariah came bursting while laughing hard!! When they caught some mouthful of air they started to tell the reason. They had spotted some chicken there. They must have thought of having it for their lunch but they wanted to confirm first whether its jhatka or halaal, so they went to that counter. There was standing a boy to which they asked "Yeh jhatka hai ya haalal?". By the look on his face they interpreted that the simplest of the questions seemed so complicated to him that he just kept staring at them for some time. Then what he answered was the reason for their laughing fit; to their question he had replied just one word: “Broiler”. It was really so funny for that moment. We always laughed at that bit of our memories whenever we got to reminisce about this trip.

We remember Angul for one more incident: The railway level crossing near the dhaba. Some of us boys got near the crossing to relieve ourselves when we saw a layman riding on a bullock-cart. His bullocks were having some trouble pulling the cart over the crossing so some boys got over to push the cart while having some fun too! They got on the cart, were cheering, and having good time riding the cart. Even the cart-man was smiling with them :-P  Then we heard distant honking of a train engine. This was another factor for our mastifull mood go even more mastiier (sorry for inventing new words :-P). Nishant pulled out a coin from his wallet, put it on the railway track, and then we waited for the train to run over it. Train came and went right over the coin. After the train passed we hurried over to the track and located the coin. It was completely flattened from one side and was now in a little elliptical shape. This became Nishant’s prized possession and he kept it in his wallet for a long time. I think he lost it sometime in college…

Well, we carried on our journey to Sambalpur. Whenever we were in the bus there was always a mood of mischief, masti, singing, etc; you get the drill. So we were busy like hell enjoying ourselves. Tripathi sir was carrying a black briefcase in which he had, may be, some documents, but most importantly MONEY. All the money for the trip was in that briefcase and Vivek sir got that b’case and allowed us to use it as ‘table’ to play cards!! Vivek sir and another guy put that b’case on their laps, put a napkin on it and were playing cards, he he he… I think that was the point where we got on a friendly note with Vivek sir.

Arwa was still Miss Chhattisgarh.

So, we reach Sambalpur at around evening time. There was some guest-house where we had to stay at night. I don’t remember much around this time but I remember where we had our dinner. Man, it was disgusting… Well, let me have you look though our eyes. We were taken to some bhojnalay for dinner. It was a simple looking one so we thought we’ll get ok types food. When we looked around we thought what can we order which is least likely to be as disgusting as it looked around?! I don’t remember what made us order it but we ordered some Paneer preparation. And when it came we recognized it only through the piece of paneer in it. The thing which was supposed be the ‘gravy’ was like colored water!! It was looking as if the paneer was served to us soaked in a kid’s coloring palette. I don’t even remember how we managed to gulp it down our throats. Well, as it should have been, everyone was upset at the teachers who were with us, to make us eat at a place like that (and Deep was saved to eat that sickening food bcoz he has some relatives at Sambalpur so he went at their place)

I remember this vaguely but I think Vivek sir understood the state of our minds, and may be that’s why he took us all at a cold drink stand and let us have whatever we wanted. That helped us relax a bit and I remember that helped me a lot to mix up with the juniors whom I didn’t know at that time.

Next morning we had to leave and our next stop was Puri but we were having some fun time even at late night. Unexpectedly almost everyone was ready on time to depart. But Sarika ma’am was feeling unwell. She was insisting Tripathi sir to carry on without her. Tripathi sir was obviously reluctant. However after sometime she was feeling better and we finally started towards Puri. Not many will (and shall not) understand this but now we had “Chukuk” on-board with us ;-)

This part of our journey was typical picnic-goers type. Some singing, some having earphones stuck in their ears, some playing cards, some dozing off, some looking outside…

It was early evening time when we were expecting to reach Puri soon. There were rows of coconut trees, some houses, and more coconut tress adjacent to the road. Suddenly Sridhar screamed “Arre dekho samudra!”. Everyone came to alert and were looking everywhere for some signs of the beach. There were coconut trees and houses all along the road so we thought Sridhar was just playing with us when suddenly the trees disappeared on the left side of the road and there it was. Sand and vast waters till our eyes went. Everyone started to sing and hoot (even though almost all of us had seen a beach before :-P but I guess it was the company we had which made us jump with mischief)

We asked Vivek sir to make the bus go towards the beach and let us have some time there, but he said we have to first check-in somewhere to stay. We all were so high that we started pleading him! He is not so rude so he let us have some time at the beach.

We ran towards the beach when the bus stopped. We took the football to play volleyball with it (ha ha ha…) but played football instead (OH LOL, HA HA HA!!) The wind was awesome. Some were running here and there, some were playing catch-me, few girls was making gharonda, some were running in the water. Everyone was enjoying. I kinda remember that Tripathi sir and Vivek sir left us to ourselves and left to arrange for accommodation. Then we played Gol Gol Rani by the time it was getting pretty dark. Everyone was practically very exhausted when we reached the Shankaracharya Mathh where we had to take lodging for 3 days. I was exhausted more than anybody else. I remember that I couldn’t even carry my luggage properly, I can’t remember who helped me with it. So, we boys put our luggage in our room but the room was too stuffy to sleep in so we decided to sleep in the aangan under the cool breeze.  I was dying to sleep as my head was banging from inside. Girls had 2 rooms. One for the girls of 12^th and another for the girls of 11^th. The dinner at the mathh was pretty simple and gulp-worthy. Girls retired to their rooms. Every one was tired enough to lie down on the mattresses immediately after the dinner. I fell asleep pretty easily but others were still chattering. In the middle of the night I woke up to answer the nature’s call. I figured it must be very late as everyone else had gone to sleep as well and it was very quiet all around. I was still under heavy tiredness with hazy eyes and couldn’t make out who was sleeping where. I cautiously started walking towards the toilets as I was still feeling a little murky. I was just passing the girls’ room when in my partial slumber I heard faint sounds of hee-hee-ha-ha coming from inside. (I didn’t know at that time which girls’ room was it.) Just as I passed their room’s window the whole room fell silent. They must have seen me and might be a little perplexed to see me. Anyways, I went, finished what I had woken up for and went back to sleep.

I was awakened by someone at the earliest morning possible. I was being asked to come along to the beach. When I came to some sense I got up, freshened up a bit and went along with others to the beach. Someone woke up the girls as well. It must be hardly 200-300 mtrs of walking to the beach. And it was so fun-filled time in the water!! In the waters, Sridhar and Vicky (one of the juniors) were pursuing Sarika ma’am to enjoy a little deep water too. She reluctantly went with them but nearly got drowned!! She gushed in the water with a big tide but Sridhar and Vicky pulled her out of the water. She was a bit shaken for awhile but it was part of the fun we were having there. Every now and then someone would do a somersault in a big tide. We used every bit of time we had to the fullest and were as exhausted as we were the last night. We returned to the mathh and got ourselves properly freshened up and ready for the day ahead. It was then when I came to know that it was the “11^th girls’” room I passed in the night and they thought that time that I was trying to scare them by suddenly appearing at the window. I stated the fact to them that I was very tired at that time, was not able to even see properly and didn’t even know it was you girls’ room; so don’t mind me turn out like that. Anyway, we had a laugh and it was just 'raat gayi baat gayi' for us.

When at Puri we had only few things to do. First of all we were going for darshan of Shree Jaggannaath Puri. Our bus stopped very far from the temple and we had to walk all the way there. Everybody left their footwear in the bus and took off for the temple. It was so far from where our bus was parked, and there was so much rush too. I was again exasperated by walking so much and that too among so much rush. By the time we reached the temple I was totally spent. I saw one panda getting the camera from Vicky and notified that cameras are not allowed inside temple premises. I was also carrying a camera. So I just turned around and started off towards the bus. I was having some rest in the bus and everyone else was having the darshan. Only few minutes later Nishant, Sridhar and Loki (Lokendra, one of the juniors) joined me in the bus.

Our routine for 3 days at Puri was: going to the beach at early morning, getting ready after coming back from the beach and stroll the market place around the mathh, having more window-shopping than actual shopping, and going to the beach again in the evening. Sometimes we would go in the morning to visit few places and return by evening. Then again beach.

When we would go to the beach in the evening there were so many peddlers supposedly selling "genuine" shells and clams. Every few minutes one would come to us trying to convince us to buy them. They went particularly to the girls, to tease them more than to sell the fake shells. But there were always some guys from our group nearby them so the hawkers didn’t bother much. There was one incident we can never forget. On the second evening at Puri, the hawkers were trying to tease some girls from 11th class. Me, Sridhar, Nishant and some others were there with Esha, Meenal and Mariah. The girls were really getting frustrated at those hawkers as they were misbehaving quite a bit. The girls taunted us "Aap log kuch karte kyu nahi?". Bass kya tha, we took it as our insult and off we went to shoo those peddlers. Nishant went to the peddler, put an arm around his shoulders and said in the fake drunken tone “Arre kyu pareshan kar raha hai yaar ladkiyon ko?? Unko kuch nahi lena hai to nahi lena hai! Kyu faaltu mein bhai (pointing towards Sridhar) ko gussa dila raha hai?” Just as Sridhar heard this he also came to the drunken state and almost shouted “Kaun hai be jo natak kar raha hai? Kaun hai be?!?” The peddler was pretty much very scared by now when I also got in the middle to have some laughs. I started ‘Keshto Mukherjee’ laugh (EE-HEE-HIYAA) and talking gibberish, which scared him even more. The peddler didn’t look back while trying to get as far as possible from us, ha ha ha ha…!!! :D

Puri’s drinking water was so much contaminated that Vivek sir had allowed us to get ourselves soft drinks anytime we felt thirsty. The result of it was that we drank there more soft drinks than we had ever drunk in our lives till date. Everywhere we went someone will pair up with someone else and they will get themselves one 500ml bottle of any soft drink. Sometimes we had 'mocktails' by mixing two flavors of our cold drinks. When everyone had got what they wanted Vivek sir would go and pay for the drinks. Oh man, we still wonder how we could drink so much! I don’t remember drinking water anytime we got thirsty. We would always look for cold drink stands where ever we went. (By the time we were leaving Puri our bus was filled with so many empty plastic bottles that it seemed as if we had become dumping ground for garbage of such bottles)

(sadly, but due to lack of time to write, it's still "to be continued"... But it will be my sincere effort to complete this in next post.)

Thank you for reading, and for your patience :-)

N'joy...

-Its, Me... Harsh

edit: Part 4 is posted here