One more Diwali gone by… Sigh… It’s one festival you cannot ‘not’ enjoy… I mean, who can resist a home lit up like a lantern, heavenly aromas, that tease your palate, emanating from the kitchen , the Puja room looking like it took a flower shower, the tall brass lamps looking like they just took a nice long sparkling and shiny bath, your mom looking like she is the happiest person on earth with her family all together on that one day (Despite the fact that she has been sweating it out in the kitchen from the morning and also the fact that, for dad, she is a one stop shop for anything he is not able to find in the house…), your dad bossing around everyone to get the Puja items ready (While pretending to be working himself, though all he does is order people around, hmmpf, a proper manager…), your younger sister going around the house complaining how she is so overworked because she is the youngest (Though that’s all she probably does, crib, I mean… I only saw her shuttling between rooms and not do anything specific…), your cream butterball sitting in a convenient corner (From where he can observe everyone and still doze between all the excitement…) in a very peaceful manner, oblivious to all the hungama going on around him, and barking once in a while when he feels he is forgotten. Didn’t I tell you, it will earn you a place straight in hell if you dare to enter our place and not smother Duke with hugs and kisses and tummy rubs… he is spoilt, we know it but its too late to do anything about it now, so if you ever come home, you know what to do! So, yeah, Diwali is a combination of all those people and sights and sounds and smells and sentiments; all those laughs and chuckles and jeers and shouts and melody; all those mad rushes between rooms and in and out of the Puja room and between your home and the market place… The feeling of being home for the festivals settles over you towards the evening when you realize you did all the things you do each year, without any change in pattern, despite all your claims of trying to be more organized the next year (Of course its not your problem that the Puja got advanced because Ajji, our maternal granny, suddenly recalculated the muhurat to discover that it has to be done the same evening and not the next morning J Hahahahaha, of course you need to have someone to blame for your hurry burry…)… But I guess each family has a particular tradition and feel they attach to each of the important festivals and events in their lives. Diwali is one of the most important festivals for us and you can see it in all the preparations and anticipation that goes into it. We love being home that one day, being blasted by dad for our inefficient work, being consoled by mom with a ‘You know your dad, na…’, fighting with my sis on who was supposed to do a particular (And of course, incomplete) chore, rubbing Dukie’s ears or tummy every time we pass him by, stealing bites of the yummy stuff ma spends time preparing for us, and getting all decked up and feeling all traditional and nice and pretty when you finally are ready for the Puja and entertaining the guests that come over to share your happiness and laughter… And then there are the crackers of course. We had stopped bursting crackers the year we got Duke into our home but it was only a couple of years earlier that ma and pa found him jumping around and playing with the flower pots crackers and the zameen chakras and decided that those two fireworks can be allowed into our celebrations. So each year we now have sparklers, flower pots and chakras adding sparkle (And pollution, I know, but in our defense, we just burn a pack of each…) to our celebrations…
Well, I have told you all about the Diwali day but I didn’t tell you about how we actually made it to my parents place in Hyderabad, did I? Hmmm, now that is something I have to have to tell you guys, for it was one time that I was part of a historic moment. Yeah, you heard me right, it was a historic moment alright… My sis and I were caught up in one of the worst traffic jams in the history of Bangalore… And what brought on this Jam? For a change it wasn’t the vehicles (Well, not entirely…), it was due to the strike the passengers of KSTRC went on to protest the lack of buses (or driver or even conductor in some cases) on routes where the passengers had pre- booked, confirmed tickets. Ok, let me start right at the beginning. My sis and I had to catch a Hyd bound bus from Bangalore at 7 30 PM and left home a couple of hrs early to beat the traffic (If only we had known :/) and reached majestic by 6 PM. Well, an hour and a half is not that bad when you have a nice Nokia express music cell phone (I’m not advertising any brands! Just really proud of my new and the hippest ever cell phone I have owned…) and a chatterbox of a sis… You know what, that is the point, one and a half an hour of a wait with these two facilities is not bad, but three hours (Yeah, our bus actually came in only by 9 PM, efficient…) is quite killing. After a while you really get sick of the songs, the chatter and just start getting plain sulky… And then you find out that your sis has booked a bus that starts at Mysore and goes on to Hyd via Bangalore (Of all the direct buses available, she finds the only stop- over route bus and books two tickets on them :/ Ok, to her credit, she did offer to book tickets when I was lazing, so can’t really blame her for my lethargy…). You need to stand with all the luggage (The Hyd bus platforms are to one side and do not have sufficient seating area, of course right? Why would things be easy for us??? Hmmpf…) and keep moving to vacant platforms as and when the parked buses either move out or new ones occupy the vacant ones you are standing in. And to top it all, you have bugged all the KSRTC officials, standing there for people’s assistance, about when your bus is expected to come at least a hundred times that you are now scared to approach them again (Well, you don’t want to get yelled at in front of a zillion people, do you???) and just end up spotting a couple of guys that have enquired about the same bus and just tail them (It was hilarious to watch my sis follow around this guy wearing a yellow t- shirt! She would panic the minute she would lose sight of him, and give a big sigh of relief every time she spotted him again J). Then finally at 9 PM, our bus’s arrival is announced and we trudge towards the outside of the bus stand where the bus has parked itself. Boy, are you happy with the sight of the dirty, delayed bus or what??? Oh yeah, you are… But the joy is extremely short lived. The reason? A haunted seat :/ My sis was very clear that she wanted the window seat so I got stuck with the aisle seat. The seat was already in a reclined position and I sat down quite comfortably in it. After a few seconds I used some colorful language (In my mind of course!) for the guy sitting behind me as he was pushing my seat upright with his knee. I, very deliberately, pushed my seat back again only to be pushed forward again. I am an extremely non- confrontational person (Read wimp) and plucked up enough courage to give this guy a piece of my mind. It was only when I got up from my seat that I saw that the seat behind me was vacant. The damn seat was moving of its own accord (Seriously, why me?!?!?!?). And the best (Or rather the worst) part of it was that the chair would stay pushed back if I didn’t sit in it and move start pushing me forward only when I sat in it. I got my sis to sit in it check if it hated just me or everyone in this world. Apparently it did hate everyone, it pushed her forward too (Hahaha, I was almost relieved it wasn’t just me…). So then after a small argument with the conductor, who refused to acknowledge the fact that I was talking to him, my sis went and sat in an empty seat up ahead (There were two seats empty as the guys who had booked those two seats had left for home with the belief that the bus would not run that day…) and gave me her window seat. The bus started at 10 PM, an hour after we had boarded, and I dozed off almost immediately. I vaguely remember crawling through unbelievably thick traffic, a lot of angry drivers honking at each other and any unlucky pedestrian that crossed their way, some raised voices inside our own bus before I was woken up by my sis at around 12 30 AM, two and a half hours after we had left majestic. The conductor had taken on additional passengers and there was a heavy set man sitting next to my sis. She got uncomfortable and asked him to take my seat while I moved next to her. We completed the swap, luggage et all, and before closing our eyes again just happened to throw a glance outside the window. We were in a place quite familiar to us and we spent approximately 5 seconds trying to figure out exactly where we were before, tatadaaaaaaaaaaaa, we realized with unrestrained horror that we were back in majestic. Seriously?!?!?!?!? What had happened in those 2- 3 hours that we were blissfully unaware of our surroundings as we dozed? Apparently, not much :/ Yeah, the bus did a full circuit of majestic and landed straight back in the bus station to pick up a couple of additional passengers. Three hours of bladder control wasted :/ And when travelling in a bus, it almost feels like a huge monetary loss!!! So, it was actually 1 AM before we started for Hyd. Hmmpf.
The rest of the journey was ok, just ok. Well, I do have the gift of being able to sleep through any journey and that saved me on this trip as well. The only problem was that my throat was parched and my dehydrated body was screaming for water. I fooled my body with a few measly sips of water and settled back to sleep. We reached Hyd at around 12 30 PM the next day and got roasted in the heat there (Did someone say there were floods in Andhra? Where did all the clouds and water go?) for half an hour before we were picked up by our dad (Happily seated in an air conditioned vehicle and smiling at us…). Our place is on the outskirts of city and it was another hour or two before we beat the traffic and made it home at around 2 30 PM. And then the mad Puja rush I described earlier started when dad said he had advanced the Puja to the same evening based on the inputs provided by our Ajji…
Well, the rest of our stay was really pleasant and memorable as well (Luckily the travel back wasn’t eventful; except for the fact that we rode over the new fly- over in Hyd, the 11 KM one, yippee!). While I don’t ever want to suffer through another journey like the one we experienced on our way to Hyd, it does seem so funny and adventurous in hind- sight (I’m sure my views would be quite different if my sturdy bladder had had other plans!)… Having my sis by my side definitely made it so much more memorable and, in a way, enjoyable…
So lesson learnt (Don’t worry, there wont be a lesson end of every bulletin!) is that there is happiness in almost everything around you. You just need the right people and the right outlook to see through it!
Cheers
Megha Havaldar
