“You are really married?” She peered earnestly into my face , her face lined with concern . I smiled . I realised I wasn’t wearing any of the standard signs of matrimony. No saree , vermillion in the hair parting, no gold bangles or ear-rings etc. I was a freak . Dressed in pants and shirt , in a remote bengal village , I must have come across as strange as a beached whale in Juhu . And as much of a crowd- magnet . Whispers made rounds , and a small crowd of dusty , bundle toting bengali women were gathering around me , like monsoon clouds . Some men also peered in from the edges , interested.
“You’ll go back , won’t you ? After all , your kids are there . ” She was getting frankly nosy.
I had begun slinging my backpack now . It was time to run . I nodded breathlessly and started walking away . Whispers and strange looks followed me , like a contagion . Some frankly gawped . It was terrifying .
The train was an express one, and never halted on this God-forsaken station . It was dusty , had two huts for refreshment, one had run out of its simple fare of aloo-torkari and bhaat , the other of its chai , served in mud cups. One overbridge linked one platform to another , on either side of the now stationary train. The reputation was such that I was reluctant to leave the comfort of its innards ." The railways couldn't let me down "I thought . But it could .
There was a massive power outage in whole of Northern India.It started somewhere in Haryana, and ended domino-fashion, with Kolkata Municipal Council conking off the power supply .The train stood , unable to budge , and disgorged its spoilt occupants onto the dusty platform . Like hungry locusts, they consumed everything remotely edible , including fly infested, ancient sweets in glass jars .
We were joined by the mofussil crowd from stranded local trains . This is where , I became an unwelcome centre of attention .
Luckily , my father , despite his palpitations and neuroses , drove down with our family friend ,who was waving frantically , now at me , from the opposite platform . Relieved , I raced up the overbridge to find him on the stairs , surrounded by a group of villagers , whom he was trying to expound the causes and duration of power outage . A typical bengali characteristic is to appear sure and well informed in a crisis , which no one knows anything about.
Driving through the highway , one met with siege like scenes. Huge , confused looking masses of humanity , dis engorged by stalled Metro and local trains , thronged streets, turned buses , trucks and cars into seething human masses , crawling by .
Evening falls swift in the east , and darkness added to confusion as in Mathew Arnold's poem "Dover beach"
"Where confused armies clash by night".
We stopped at a roadside eatery for that famous nectar of life _"Chai " Or "Cha " as it is called here , served lip-searingly hot , poisonously sweet , in tiny terracotta cups, for 2 rupees a cup.
As we drank our third cups , the street lights , reluctantly blinked on . And a collective sigh of relief rose from the parched , dark earth.
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In another remote part of the country, in Gorakhpur , two small girls , aged 8 and 10 , made a makeshift bed on the carpet , as the bed room was stiflingly hot , opened the windows and doors to permit cross ventilation.
Papa was away on emergency duty in the hospital , but he was constantly on phone to tell them what to do and where to find candles and matchboxes .
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When I reached home and rang up , both my daughters had already relocated to their beds and the comforts of a fan , light and air conditioning . The power was back.
