Taking off

Beautiful ideas are often generated out of the blue and the luxury of joblessness is actually being able to execute them.

So a friend and I rickshawed off one day, to the railway station, randomly picked a place to go- Kamshet - unknown and unexplored, en route between Pune and Lonavla.
After having almost resigned oneself to the blows of multiplex prices on the wallet and the heart, paying only 11 rupees for the local train ticket was… was so touching! I looked at the ticket window guy with disbelieving, grateful tears in my eyes, and he grunted back the lack of change. Ah well…

Like all train journeys it was full of the things to see, conversations to eavesdrop and people to observe- their clothes, (one guy’s tight fitting jeans said ‘Arrest Me’ in embroidered red, just above his butt!) varying levels of sleepiness and animation. Standing at the door made our hair fly in the warm wind and we got a more than cinemascope view of the scenery- blazing yellow, red and pink flowers of trees against the blue sky, green and yellow fields and village people, their homes and their cattle…. the works.

The train started filling at every station and then suddenly emptied out almost completely, with more noise and bustle than a place called Begdewadi warranted. We wondered why; later we got to know that there was a Mahashivratri jatra happening and Begdewadi was happening too. Ecstatic kids and young men in addition to their energetic voices, now possessed loud, ingeniously crafted, cardboard horns, which they blew through with great gusto, producing sounds like an amplified goat. It was an awesome din.

Kamshet: The station was right next to a river, where the water was being utilized optimally by lots of people washing clothes, utensils, vehicles and buffaloes.
We explored the small town, more than half owned by Jains, which made my friend swell with pride (he is Jain, of course.) But I declared it no use if he couldn’t get us a free meal in someone’s house.
This possibility was left unexplored unfortunately, because we spotted कांदा भजी in a shop and gorged on it, not caring one bit who owned it. The dish washer and I were the only women in the place and I got looked at more because I was worse dressed, especially with my bandana.

Then we found our way to the river, soaked our legs in the dubiously murky water (who cares?) and met a lot of floating clothes, algae, guppy fish and some ‘sucking fish’ (I don’t know what they are really called) who just stayed stuck to one place- a stone or a piece of floating cloth or my friend’s foot and apparently got their nourishment or kicks from that.

Fortunately we didn’t have enough money to buy bottled water, because the borewell we found near a multicoloured temple later (with ‘प्यार का दीपक हर अंधकार को दूर कर देता है’, written on its ceramic tiles décor wall) was one of the tastiest waters I’ve ever tasted.
The sun was super strong and while dozing in the temple, we saw a sign a little in the distance saying ‘Pets and Honey’.
Any randomness just had to be explored, so we chatted up the security guard and he gave us a gate pass.
The place turned out to be a trust which had an orphanage, a nursery, vermiculture pits, ducks, turkey, pigeons, monkeys, dogs and get this…. emu (who had strange guttural voices and the most beautiful, emotive, brown eyes), and a soon-to-be-opened old age home.
A very friendly employee there enthusiastically gave us a tour of the whole place and we were really impressed. In this out of the way, little known town of Maharashtra, 53 orphans had a real childhood- a good education and a loving home with dedicated caretakers.

The children who had grown up and left the home, had planted trees to remember their time there.

When we left there, some of my chronic cynicism about the world had been healed.

On our way back to the station, we stole some sugarcane from a passing truck by running after it (the road was really bad, so we could keep pace quite easily) and tugging at a stick of cane with all our might. Then we walked to the station feeling really rustic, spitting out चूसा हुआ sugarcane.

The Begdewadi Jatra had been a superhit. All the stations on the way back rang with excited horns and in the falling light, the hill at Begdewadi, swarmed with hundreds of people, like ants.

In the rickshaw back home, the Pune traffic didn’t seem so unnerving anymore. Though this was only a short term effect, the trip rejuvenated me to take on my struggles with Time again.