Friday, June 10, 2011

Some Old, Some New

I woke up early in the morning and walked towards the Dam Park to have some poha and tea. In some time I realised that a lot of people were going further up the road of my guest house.Carrying cocunuts and other pooja items.On further enquiry I was told about a ghat further down the road.
I changed my plans of hitting the bridge and headed towards discovering the ghat. Due to the zigzag contours of the lake, I could not see this ghat from the Dam park.

Took a boat ride on the Ghat, where a 10-12 old girl was rowing the boat.After some thought, took a bath as well in the water. After that, I came back to the guesthouse, packed my belongings and walked towards the bridge, which people say has reduced the travel time between khandwa and bhopal by a few hundred Kilometers.

From there I took a ride in a truck upto Moondi. Harsud is about 30 Km from Bondi, and though Google Maps shows a road between the two, actually there is no public transport between the two. I guess a few of the roads stand partially drowned due to the lake. So I took a bus firsk to Khandwa, about 30 KM from Moondi, and from there another bus to Harsud, which was a further 62 KM.

The place I landed up was Chanera. I had my lunch there and struck up a conversation with the dhaba owner. He was originally from Harsud. He said, this is the 7th year since he has been relocated.

After having my lunch , I wanted to see the sectors and the manufactured structures of New Harsud, so I Asked a tangawala to drop me there. I asked him, I wanted to go to Harsud, He thought I wanted to go to the old one and redirected me to take a tempo from down the road.

A tempo is suppose to leave from that junction once every half an hour and I suppose I am lucky that I get into the tempo at around 3:25 PM. But there is a rider, a tempo if left unfulfilled can call off their turn. So with Murphy on the side the tempowalla calls it off at 3:30. Ditto at 4. Finally the tempo leaves at 4:30 and I reach old harsud around 5 PM. The tempo walla promises to come back to pick me in half an hour's time, but ditches me.

I am left at a road leading to no where and the tempo takes a u turn. A few other folks get down who live in the fringes of what is left of harsud. And I walk into Harsud, the destroyed one.

It feels like a deserted town, but more than that a broken and deserted town. I guess all the structures except the religious ones were broken down manually so that people could not return. And all of them have a serial number painted on them.

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