Gauhati diary- The beginning-incomplete

18th June, 2010

At the Gauhati airport the hotel car never came, and my airtel connection abandoned me. that is when god sent S.Ahmed and is auto rickshaw.

Mahalaxmi hotel, Paltanbazar

Room 208 has a purple bed and sofa. Its 4 walls painted pink, blue, purple, green wall papered respectively and windows, there were none. I seriously began to doubt my ability to visualise and choose. I asked for a change of room. with a warm smile the receptiontist told me how much a room with a window would cost me. non ac rooms did not have that privilege. I listened eyebrows raised. my panic subsided when I realised that nights in Gauhati are very cool, with a fan on one would need a blanket to sleep comfortably.

I entered a cell phone connection shop. The Rajnigandha chewing owner, an exact copy of Lou Diamond Phillips, explained me the rules of getting a local sim card. i needed papers- id proof( I had) , proof of residence( I couldn't possibly have), proof of residence of some friend living in the city( the only one I knew wouldn't be in town till the end of the days and wo had plainly refused to help me). My letter from the jute board saved the trouble of not being a local. Everything was copied. I was asked to get back with a photo.
Paltanbazar has its advantages. Since it is near the railway station one doesn’t have to search far. Tour operator agencies showed me the passport photo shops. The shop that took my picture was selling clothes. in one empty room inside the shop was his 2mpeg canon camera which he flashed, then took the memory chip and the fit it in a super tiny canon printer. i got my passport photo in which I looked just the way I would look before I drop dead out of exhaustion. Lou diamond was surprised and also sorry the way I looked and he way I kept at getting all the papers done. I had my new connection next morning.
Meanwhile out of 3 jute service centers two seemed to be uninterested, one which was interested did not trust me. This lack of trust wasn’t because of any fault of mine. It was just because I cancelled my Gauhati trip twice because the national jute board's stationary printers were out for lunch at the restaurant at the end of the universe.

JUNE 10, 2010
The trust wavered even further down when I was struggled to reach the office at the scheduled time. This time I was my fault. The meeting was scheduled at 2.30 in the afternoon. The morning seemed so fine that I called my favorite auto driver S.Ahmed and asked him to take me to the place from where one could go to the peacock island. I hadn't even opened my mouth to ask for the ferry fare when the lady lawyer from Delhi bargained it to rs60 to and fro for the both of us. To reach the island it takes longer than it takes to return. The boat moves off current. Somewhere in between I couldn't believe the shape the river took with its deadly whirlpools and waves. On the island there is an ancient Shiva temple the Umananda. What took me there was the curiosity to see the golden langurs. I was rewarded with also a cat and a goat. Coming back to the dock I found our boat missing. It had gone back to get more people. grrr! That was what the watch was saying at 2.15. I bribed one of the other boat guys to fit me in. i pleaded putting on my damsel in distress look and he agreed. The lady lawyer tried to jump into the boat but alas...
On the side I hurried up to my auto while the other ferry walas were cursing me for switching boats. I woke ahmed from his dream travels (he was going through my 'lonely planet' in the 'bring in the dancers' position.
I had called K.C. Sarma thrice by then apologising and pleading him to wait for me. In fact he was waiting for me on the main road so that I didn’t get lost.

Evening brought the familiar face of inam. The dinner menu at delicacy confused us. If I could kiss food I would smooch delicacy. Evening also brought the unfamiliar face of Parnab. Inam writes poems sometimes weird sometimes beautiful. Parnab has another claim to his fame which may take another post space of mine and we all ended up chatting at a 24hour coffee shop in Paltanbazar at 10.30 in the night.

JUNE 12, 2010
A lazy day, took me and inam to the lovely Don Bosco institute in Kharguri. This where Parnab was stayed while staging a play with the students at the institute. The institute stands on the bank of a much peaceful Brahmaputra and clouds flying above took a dreamy shape, untouchable.
Parnab’s sketched out busy schedule turned out to be somewhat wrong because he spent the rest of the day lazily eating at paradise and drinking several cup of frothy coffee at the BBC, also feeding us with several rounds of tea, mocktails and cakes. It must have been 6 by the time we got up to leave within which Parnab shot 3 rounds of his super gas gun.
By the time we reached the guest house I and inam had had a terrible fight and I was growling at his every attempt of trying to talking to me. I wouldn’t be friend with a guy who littered the room with all kinds of crap topped with his laptop that needs a bath and several teeth fixed, his camera, I phone, head phone, wrappers of half eaten cakes, his packets of grass and cigarette ash all over the bed. And finally I would definitely not be friends with someone who ditched me for the trip to Chhaygaon.

JUNE 13, 2010
I was happy I was traveling all by myself. After a night’s rain and a water logged Manik nagar the day had turned golden. At Chhaygaon there was no cell phone signal and there was no Deepak Sarma (the certain person who was late the other day) I called him from a local pco and he came running from STC bus stop the opposite side of road. At every house in Chhaygaon I was offered the deadly local paan with tambul and chunn. At the first weaver’s I was not only just offered but handed one khili of the deadly things’ combination. I bit but I could chew only twice after which I had to find a chance of spitting out and hiding the poison in my salwar pocket.

JUNE 17, 2010

There are no rules when it comes to love. There are also no rules when it comes to hurt. Love and hurt have identical ways of knocking a door. they both fool everyone.
A thought hurt me just as tears swept over me as i stood in the living room of a house i stepped in for the first time.....