Just Returned from an interesting trip to Punjab!My state of birth and the land where I feel i belong,even though have been brought up in my beloved city Delhi....
The northern belt of the country was covered with a cold wave and "carry a lot of woollens:"is what i was told by people there...so managed to dig out the warmest clothes I had and went ahead for the trip,mentally telling myself,that its just in the mind...will not get bogged down by the cold,the fog or the general gloominess that pervades the winters!!
But as they say,the environment is a reflection of you..just the day we were to reach,the sun had obliged and come out of its hibernation,thawing the state and its soil,bringing in the much needed warmth.So happy and surprised at the same time,by the pleasant weather,wondered if my woollens will be used to the extent (after all i had carried their weight on my shoulders" :0)...
The trip was adventurous in certain aspects(like travelling all alone on uncomirfmed ticket in the late evening train), but one thing that touched my heart was the journey back from amritsar to jalandhar.....
The two cities are 1.5 hours away from each other...and there are many trains that ply between them, so that the frequency is almost an hour or 2 between..but the catch is that there is a heavy rush in the trains.There are a lot of people who shuttle daily for various reasons,but the major one is moolah...lots of them have businesses in one city and need to travel to the other. And these people grade right from labourers of bihar,UP,Punjab to the localites who have become wealthy travelling many years from one city to the other...
....So being a short distance travel people don't generally buy tickets in advance and rather travel on current booking.For the uninitiated like i was,current booking means an uncomfirmed ticket which gets confirmed on your physical strength and speed to jostle among the crowd and obtain a seat even if you have to throw your slipper from window and reserve it!
So there we were,on the railway station,having an uncomfirmed ticket and quite some luggage ,smugly waiting for the train and i longing for a seat to rest and watch the sarso fields we so loved in DDLJ..and there came our train....a very long train chugging on the platform....and suddenly..suddenly alll the trace of humanity that you could find rushed towards the train's general compartment...oh oh!we thought,(and my dream of catching a seat to ponder seeming to escape me like the moving train bogies)...how will we make it??ouch the rush,save!!!
and then!a hero swung into action..the coolie we had asked to carry our luggage transformed to a spiderman and in the moving train itself,he pulled open a window and creeped inside from the 3-5 inch gap there was..the slender figure just reached inside to reserve a seat for us!
And woa,not only did he reserve a seat he came repetitively to the door we were standing and trying to get in from to take a piece of our luggage one by one and assert the ownership on the seats as each bag and suitcase was taken from us to place on the seat...and then he helped mamma n me to board the train...
I was truly touched...it was not just for money that he did it..he could have easily taken it from us and left ....but the pain and heroic deed he did was impressive.I felt something thta seems now difficult to explain,but was very humbling and touching at the same time...
so off we went on our journey,and i quite moved by the recent experience i had...the one hour passed by qiuckly... a small nap and hardly any attention payed to the ddlj fields:)..
