Delhi Darshan

In my numerous visits to Delhi before, mostly as a transit halt, I had not bothered to discover the city itself. But this time I took a day extra from my official visit and took some time exploring stuff.

1. Paranthe wali gali, chandani chowk
2. Lotus Temple
3. Iskon temple
4. Humayun's tomb
5. PVR Saket and DLF Saket mall
6. Lal Quila
7. Jantar Mantar
8. Airport Metro

Though I abhor malls, sometimes with people around, you just cannot help it. PVR saket has been thoroughly deserted these days. The last I went there was I guess in 2005. Now it's as good as a graveyard.

Delhi is a historical city, unlike Mumbai. The most impressive was the semi museum outside Humayun's tombs, which explains the same. Apparently there have been attempts to found 7 cities in and around Delhi all along Yamuna's course.

Also discovered the Ho Ho Service but could not get in as I was travelling in a direction opposite to it's. It is a good idea for Rs 350 a day and the convenience of taking your own time at a place. Link here. 

The airport metro is pretty fast and sometimes way too high,but a pity that it starts from New Delhi. CP would have been a better option. Though with so many terminals,(T1, T39 no T2 ?) one of these days I am going to miss a flight by ending up on a wrong terminal.

Lotus temple is affiliated to the bahai faith. Another religion/ sect.

Hand Rickshaws still ply in Delhi, and chandani chowk is not as bad as people in delhi make out. The natives generally do not seem to prefer going there. Too congested, the sophisticated snobs say.

The next time I am there would like to explore Humayun's tomb a lot more, as that was the most interesting thing I saw. The area around it as well. The narrow road which goes past the main entrance. 

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.

Narmada Sagar - The Trip

Execution

Day 0:
I get into Punjab mail. I have some side lower seat in a second class compartment, adjacent to the compartment door. Something to generally cherish, but not n a second class compartment, coz any Indian train usually also is a general compartment, where people generally hop in for short distances, and pay the TT some petty bride to just sit there.

I discover my seat, and three people are already sitting on it, with one guy putting his chappals on the seat, I rudely ask him to take his feet down and not make my would-be bed dirty. During the night I discover that the dude and 7-8 along with him are part of MP's wrestling team, and had come to Mumbai for some inter state wrestling contest.

I exchange my seat with some other dude, who has a longer seat, where i might fit in, and get ready to sleep, only to discover that it is pretty cold, and I haven't brought  any pull over sheet. The rest of the night is spent shivering, and trying to sleep. The wrestling company gets down at Khandwa, from there they will take a meter gauge train to Indore. The one I took the last time, on my way to Maheshwar.

Day 1:

I get down at Khirkiya around at 6:30 AM and walk into the station master's room. I discuss my plans of seeing the dam, some water and Harsud with him and his side kick.
Kya dekhna hai tumko, Paani?  I nod in assent. I am given my options. For new Harsud, there is a bus every half an hour starting from 7-7:30. I may also take a train and get down at Chanera and go to Harsud. I discover in due course that Chanera is also New Harsud, my destination, but later. In my mind there still is only one Harsud left, the new one, but when I am being advised, they think I want to see the old Harsud, and advice me accordingly.

If you want to see water, you can go to Piplani in a share auto. I later discover Piplani is one amongst three stations which has drowned due to Indira Sagar Project.
For the Dam  take the Kashi passenger in the reverse direction at 7 AM, get down at Talvariya and take a bus from there for Narmada Nagar.

But why the hell did you come to Khirkiya, In any case you should have got down at Khandawa. I did not have the heart to tell them that from Google Maps, Khirkiya, looked like a good option to start this trip.

I make my plans to go to Piplani, got into a shady lodge to freshen up, have a breakfast of Poha and chai, walk up to the share auto to go to Piplani, but then chang my mind and go back to the station to go to Talvariya. I royally miss the kashi passenger and sleep on the station bench for a couple of hours for the next passenger train. The train arrives at around 10, and reaches Talvariya some time later.I take a bus from there and work up a contact to find somebody in Naramada Nagar, when it occurs to me that an uncle actually has worked here for some time about 15 years back.

I get myself a government rest house, pretty shady and dirty, but with the one thing I badly want that day, a bed. I was told bluntly, there is no lunch, if you want to have a lunch, you have to walk down a couple of kilometers in the blistering Saturday afternoon. I watch some first few overs of the India Sri Lanka final and then go to sleep.

I wake up in the evening, see some 40 to 45 overs of Sri Lankan innings and go discover the Dam. The dudes have made a nice park for people to come visit the dam. For a lot of people, the dam usually is part of some pilgrimage, as if it is some sort of a temple. The CRPF dude informs me that the Musem in the park has been closed permanently because of the dehati people, who generally vandalize the properties.

I go back to the guest house, try to convince the khansama for some dinner, but he flatly refuses. So I walk down to the bus stand to have my dinner. I also watch bits and pieces of the match outside every shop on the road. A TV has sprung up mysteriously in all the shops, and everybody is watching the match. People in the colony on some big screen in the open air theater.  I curse fate for making me walk 4-5 km for a dinner. Tomorrow, I will walk 6 KM at a brisk pace to try not missing my train. I come back to the guest house watch Dhoni move from 46 to 90 odd and win the Cup.

Tomorrow, I make plans for leaving for Harsud early in the morning. But before that I need to go the bridge downstream to the Dam and then take an early morning bus for Harsud. I will first have to go to Khandwa and from there to Harsud.

Finally Harsud

The Planning

I have wanted to go to Harsud for a long time. Couple of reasons. There was a lot of hue and cry when it was getting submerged few years back, around seven, and the fact that a new city was manufactured called new Harsud and people forced to believe that this is their old Harsud. Divided into sectors, very well organised etc. I wanted to see how people have taken to this form of staying in a manufactured city.

I was assuming that Harsud as it did in the past does not exist anymore as it has been completely submerged by water. This was an assumption which got busted in due course.

The other reason is my belief in the Arundhati Roy school of inquisition, where you your self go and see things as they are for yourself, rather than read or see some journalists presentations of the facts. In short, I call this method as : Go to the source.

And I had seen this reservoir, Indira Sagar on Google maps and  wanted to go and see it. Since this is a reservoir, there should at least be one damn somewhere around it. And my vague idea was that I wanted to see it.

Broadly if I were to structure my thoughts, I would say I am interested in huge infrastructure projects like Dams and its effects like resettlement. I have not go much into environmental effects and other ecological changes caused by dams.

This was a whim like a thousands I hold, but firmly believe in taking them seriously. So Harsud was in the background. And I also happened to be reading this book , The river and Life by Sanjay Sangavi, which talks about some NGO type conference which happened in Harshud in late 80's. This brought Harsud back on top of my mind and somebody told me that Monday was off.

I joined both these and figured why not use the long weekend and see Harsud, so what if there is a world cup final on Saturday.So this plan was made thought on a Thursday and executed on Friday evening, when I barely got out my bosses clutches to hang on to a Punjab mail, that evening leaving for khirkiya.

P.s. Someday when I start taking my writing more seriously, i will try to edit out the crutches of "And", "That" and "So" from my writing.

Ordering

A lot of what we end up doing, picking up jobs, marrying women, picking on B schools, picking cities, deciding whether we want to end up in US or remain in the dhool mitty of India depends on the order that these things arrive in our lives.

One women before the other, one job before the other, one screw up before the other...

Even the time it takes to execute v lookup depends on whether you have sorted the data or not.

In Mathematics, duality or inverse is akin to what would have happened if things were presented to us in a different order, would't life have turned out pretty different.