I might have written an incidence or two about my life but I generally haven't written about myself, ever. The reason was pretty simple, there is nothing interesting in my life, is what I feel, its a mundane story of a simple guy, going through life as things happen to him, everything gets induced, nothing comes out of the inner desire that is not affected by things around him. Life has happened to me, I dont know what to write about it. I dont have a story to write on my own, or let me put it this way, I would have to accept my incapabilities and shortcomings and inferiority complex as a child if I were to write an autobiography. I would not be able to write that. But there were interesting stories around. I never wrote about it as I think it would be unfair to write about someone else's life without their permission. But these posts made me think more. I need to write. I want to write. I want to write about the places that have had importance in my life, about the people I saw. I was only an observer. I was only a kid - too simple and too simplified. With the feeling of guilt of not taking permission, I am starting this post, I want to write about personal experiences, mostly of others as I watched them. I want to write about the lane where I grew up, the school I had gone to, the cultural shocks I got in my life, about friends I had in my childhood, about my cousins and so much more. Pardon me if I am getting self-indulgent here, I ought to write this for myself. I am not sure if there will be a follow up post to this but would start.
My Place
Let me start today and introduce you to places that have been important in my life. A person living at a place would never realize what is different or special about his place, but as a visitor you might make sharpest of observation. Let me take you with me to my place, let me take you to Surendranagar as a visitor. The stories are sparsed across times of my parents, my childhood and present times. Timelines are blurred but the place has a character, it survives.
Gujarat is developing and there are expressways running around the length and breadth of Gujarat. Surendranagar doesnt fall on that map. Its a district and a town. Town its quite difficult for average reader of this blog, many of whom grew up in cities to imagine this word. Its not a big city, it doesnt have huge buildings,and it is not a village with farmers and cattles. It is a town. It is a town like the ones you see in the fringes of your IT cities. It has its own schools and it has its cinema theatres, it is an urban place for the villages in the district and a rural place for Mumbai and Delhi walas, who have their ancestral bungalows in there. The villagers around dream to make it to this place for living and the dreams of Surendranagar reaches Ahmedabad. It has the warmth that comes to a place by the virtue of knowing your neighbours, and it has the indifference that comes by having self-centered community-less goals of personal life. And by the very definition of this place and for that matter of any town, it's always in flux.
There are two ways to reach Surendranagar from here, by train and by bus, but we would take the interesting bus route to reach my home. As we take a diversion from the expressways of Gujarat going from Ahmedabad to Rajkot in a State Transport bus whose windows rattle more than its engine, and which moves creating clouds of dirt behind it in which the small villages diappears. Villages on the side of a small pond, where the gutters flow in, where people take bath at one end and cattles on the other and there is a small part where females bath. You might see the teenage kids from the villages going to Surendranagar for weekend peeping on to bathing females from the seat ahead as the dirt comes in. You might even smell the dung cakes that burns to cook the food for people here. But everything runs away fast as you move on that road. More and more of such places that we never thought would have existed. And then as we come just near surendranagar, there is a small town called Wadhwan, a forted town, which even housed an engineering college once. It is what people in cities sell for high price - a gated community. We would come to this place too, it has a special importance in my life. As you cross the bridge over the dried front where you migh see a hut or two and where the river never flows, you would see a the green colors of Dargah at the entrance of the city, and the autorickshawwallahs there would should "10 Rs. to Meldi Maa's Temple" if you happen to be there on a weekend. The person next to you in bus would look at your jeans and red T-shirt and the cap and the Sidney Sheldon novel you hold in your hands and might ask you if you study in the Medical college or if you are visiting your family. You might find it odd to answer questions on your salary and work and family life. But they would be curious to know about your life.
As you move in looking at the industrial establishments around, you would realize that the main stay of the economy of this town is this Industrial belt, small scale and medium scale industries.Conductor would stop the bus virtually every 200 mts. to let people down with a smile. There en route on your right you might see the big electric towers and people hovering around it with the board reading "Pachim Gujarat Vij Co. Ltd." - A place where my dad worked for more than 30 years before his retirement. And just on the left where your bus passes you will see a big banyaan tree. There is a "Parab" (A place to get free water from the matkis) run by an old man there. You would see people gossiping while sipping the tea from saucers making the sipping noise and the "Aah" after gulping the extra-sweet tea. But you dont have time to take absorb all this as the bus stand is just next to it. and your bus stops with a jerk, which might make you fall, if you were standing. But you would not be standing as the smell of the villagers that mars you nose like some allergy might make you feel sick if you stand the kids, would be running all over the aisle of the bus over luggage kept. The bus jerks and takes a brakes as the conductor would get down to help the herds man who is moving the herd of buffaloes out of the way and one of the buffalow is in the process of caking the road. The cakes would be picked by someone by the time you return the next day. Once the road is cleared the bus is parked in the bus-stand at its regular place, and you got to push yourself out of the bus as there are scores of people fighting to get in to the bus. The big red fonts on top of the dirty white building reads "SURENDRANAGAR" in two languages - one you know. There are ads of the international giants like Vodafone and Cococola that fills your eye if you look just a level above the level where you are seeing the Daal-vada vendors and the rickshaw stop. Just about 10-12 years I would have craved for these daal-vadas, but if I eat it now, it would upset my stomach. You definitely dont look at it, as you move past, paan-spitted building and walls of bus stand that gives you the stench of how the urine of the entire town smells.
(Not sure if I can continue this in further series, if I can I would like to take you to my home, my school, my parents first home, their childhood places and see what I can see of it. Sorry for making it so long, but for once, I dont want to stop myself writing this.)
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