Ride back to Delhi

Arko Ganguly — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 21:07:38 +0000

A Head Start..

Google maps warned of heavy traffic. The rains wouldn’t stop and our driver was drunk. I still wonder why we chose to drive back right after the gig! Talk about nightmares coming to life, this was our great experience. As a starter, our almost asleep driver sped over a breaker and had us bump our heads. A great head start indeed.

Going by the books, he needed to apologise, but given his state of mind, Josh and Shrikant quickly asked him to calm down and apologised for the breaker being placed inconveniently. This man needed coffee, so we stopped to get some. While our Chauffeur knocked the effects of alcohol with caffeine, Shrikant and I stood outside and soaked ourselves in the light drizzle. And this was the second day of continuous shower.

Hitting the wall!

Back on board, Shrikant noticed a long red stretch on maps. We anticipated a congestion, but weren’t aware of its severity. In the next half hour, our luck hit us. We reached a block of trucks that seemed to be stuck there for a while. Engines tuned down and lights off, drivers lay dead on their seats slapping themselves occasionally shooing mosquitoes. Some walked around while a few chatted sharing stories of their drive so far. All of us were quite tired after the night’s gig and couldn’t care less, readjusted our neck pillows and dosed off. Unfortunately, a swarm of mosquitoes had invaded our car leaving us no choice but to break out of our slumber. Half an hour had passed and there was absolutely no movement. All trucks were glued to their spot since we arrived. This started to bother us.

Fighting the wall!

Our driver felt frustrated and needed to get out of stagnation. With a little effort, he slipped past the trucks to find a way into the service lane. It had crater like potholes served with water, one of which engulfed almost half the car! He drove around some terribly unfit roads hunting for an alternative to this truck-struck national highway. An hour of futile search made us realise there was no escaping this. We found ourselves a petrol pump, parked and got out for a little stretch. It was refreshing indeed! The vast empty stretch of green farms soothed the eyes. The clock struck 7 while we heard some honking and chaos of moving cars. It was such a delight to watch this sea of vehicles gather some energy! We hopped on and drove.

Not yet over..

Happiness didn’t last long though. A mile away from our crib, the flow dwindled to an indefinite standstill. Dear CC was nearing his edge. He took to the divider, climbed over it and fled to the other free side of the road! How merrily we applauded his smart mind. While speeding through the wrong side of the highway, we dearly pitied the array of vehicles stuck on the other. Up ahead was a diversion to Delhi that could help us avoid this madness. We found it and took off the highway. We had crossed a distance of about 5 kilometres through the wrong side, but found no traffic moving on the other! This road was free from vehicles, but flooded with water. Some parts of the roads submerged half the car. The car almost seemed to float through the road. We were just happy to have it moving and no amount of water was scaring us anymore!

Will this end?

It was about 9 in the morning, more than 5 hours had passed driving across the rain drenched landscape. We sped through the waterlogged path and took a turn to an unconstructed road. Without water this road was just a pile of dust and large potholes, but with the downpour, it had manifested into a stretch of slippery slime! We almost meandered through the entire length until the highway junction. To our great horror, the traffic had now shifted gears. The Delhi-Jaipur side of the highway was blocked and all our driver’s efforts seemed obsolete. He made it worse by taking a right into the service lane against the moving traffic. Besides being stuck in this inescapable position, we witnessed the bonnet of our preceding car crushed by a huge passing truck. Our driver lost his calm and began screaming at us, held us responsible for all that was going wrong with him and asked us to get off the car and fix the situation. All of us were dumbfound and had no clue how to handle him.

Everything does pass..

Few minutes into his blow out, we spotted a soldier in the midst of this chaos. He helped clear the traffic and got the cars back in motion. Gladly CC responded and quickly turned the car around, headed towards the closest U-turn and got to the free side of the highway. Ohh God! It was such a relief. We drove to a restaurant close by and stopped for lunch. Charged our phones and warned the other guys to find an alternative route. They had left late and thankfully hadn’t hit the traffic yet. We saved them, to which, the treat is still due. Lunch was a solid dose of paranthas, Chholey and glasses of Kadak chai. Sipping hot tea under a drizzling sky and knowing the roads ahead were clear was the happiest feeling we harnessed on that day. All our karmas for road traffic probably ended that very day. With a belly full of goof food, we got back home after about a 10 hour drive. It does count as a lifetime experience for us and what got us through was some good music and interesting conversations.

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