Enthu cutlets

these days

those days

Delhi is not the same place it used to be. few days back I was there on a business trip.

Changes thrilled me. Changes made me a stranger in a place i have known the first 25 years of my life.

One definite thrill was to see the new DTC buses on the road. The low floored European buses red, yellow and green with electronic route numbers flashing made me gasp! Especially when you have been struggling with concept of travelling in the wooden cages that run in Kolkata.

Memories came rolling back

The old DTC buses. We had several names for them.

Dauro To Charho ( board if you can run)

we also called them 'air- conditioned' buses. windows would be jammed during summers, leaking roofs in the monsoon and no windows in the winters. no one ever had any clue how the windows and roofs knew what season it was and made it sure that the passengers got the best of its experience.

I travelled 25 kilometers every day to my college , to Dhaula Kuan,without a choice of being inside the bus. I only knew some good hearted passenger was holding on to my hands from somewhere inside of the bus. since i could never actually find out who my gaurdian angel had been, i could never thank him.

This was the 2nd year of my graduation, year96-97

Those were the days when i and Annie became very close. One could say we were stuck together at with our odd ends. Annie lived in a women's hostel in South extension, her hometown being Dehradun, and I lived on the other side of the river Yamuna that once actually flowed.

Annie was a neat dresser , except for those days when she couldnt find her clothes under the heap of other clothes kept on chair in her hostel room shared by 6 other girls, and thus had to wear whatever was on the top provided she could get into it. often it happened they were oversized.

To take a bus from college to back home i usually detoured from AIIMS and took an interstate bus which were the only buses then that connected my home to the rest of Delhi. The AIIMS crossing hadnt become a maze of flyovers then, and Dilli haat was easier to reach, or so we had thought that day.

we had plans of treating ourselves to momos and fruit beer that day. i remember Annie wearing the new pair of jeans she had bought and had been quite careful all day not to dirty it . after classes we took a bus to the AIIMs crossing . Those days we carried our free DTC bus passes and were quite dissappointed that no one ever came to check. To reach the haat from the crossing we had to walk around the footpath to get on to a inner path and then walk ahead, which meant walking a path twice to get on to the correct road. however a shorter route caught our eye..

A big drainpipe connecting the two roads.

with great enthusiasm i handed my bag to annie and voluteered to walk over first.
resultant, the expected, not two steps and i was in the drain. by god's grace or the summer heat the drain was only full of dry leaves.

I got up brushing my self and turned expecting to see Annie discouraged . i had almost expected to see her have had started walking around the street. Annie was not half as mad as me. Annie had a balanced way of thinking.

Annie proved me wrong. with double my enthusiam, Annie threw both our bags at me and tried a new hopping/ balance act over the drainpipe . she could solve anything, like the Econometrics sums which went over my head.

The resultant not expected , she too was in the drain within two footfalls.

after pulling her out of the drain and checking that her new jeans hadnt been affected,we realised people passing by had stopped by to see the free circus showing at one of the busiest crossroads of delhi.

Momos and fruit had never tasted so refreshing!!!!

its a sure cure for embarrasment!

:)

Annie and I...