On Travels And Trevails

'Give PGI Chandigarh exam', everyone said. 'You wont get a seat, but the trip is like a nice break.' 'It's a good experience', they told us.

From Mumbai

So we set off. Me, Dhrumin, and V2. We believe in planning early, so we booked the tickets well in advance. Later, we found out there were other people who had booked it even before. Even later, we found out that 2 weeks prior to D-day is not early. But whatever.. we tried.

Our tickets were stuck at waiting list of 2, 3 and 4, and they refused to commit further. We coaxed and prayed and tried pulling strings, but apparently we pulled the wrong ones, because things were falling apart, and not in a good way. We were supposed to reach Bandra station at 10 AM; we did. Our train was scheduled to leave at 11.35 AM; it did. And by 1 PM, we were sitting comfortably, having lunch that we'd specially packed for this journey.. at V2's house. Goddam early planners.

Via Delhi

Of course, everything worked out in the end, like they usually tend to. The flight tickets to Delhi for the next morning weren't too pricey, and the car ride from the airport to Chandigarh was, to put it mildly, very entertaining.

A word on the car ride. Our driver was a young fellow, going by the good name of Kulwinder. And i'm sure he's a splendid person otherwise, except for the days when he's convinced that the world will end at 6 PM. That day happened to be one of those. And while there are people who have the fortitude to accept such an event with calmness, not Kulwinder. He was a man who believed in action; and since, being our driver, the only action he could reasonably do was driving, he did that.. admirably, as it turns out. We got to Chandigarh from Delhi in under 3 and half hours. Would have reached faster, if we hadn't insisted on stopping for lunch.

Through The Toll That Never Was

The driver and the driving aside, the drive itself was a highlight. The highway from Delhi to Chandigarh was undergoing a large-scale makeover. Which meant that most of the journey was through a narrow corridor on the road, with the rest under fly-over constructions. Imagine driving through such a corridor, reasonably crowded, at 140 kmph. That itself would have made for an entertaining ride. But this was followed up by 2 stunts that absolutely made my day.

First, our driver suddenly decided that this tiny highway was far too crowded for him, and proceeded to race up a flyover still under construction, speeding though the narrowest of gaps between two roadblocks. Up ahead at the highest point of the flyover was clearly a gaping missing section; and before that were trucks and cement mixers blocking our path. Just when i was starting to feel like like one of the passengers of the bus that Keanu Reeves was driving in 'Speed' - the movie, our own hero took a violent left turn, down the steepest slope of about 10 feet, and we skidded back onto our original road with a shower of pebbles following us.

Next came the toll. It was an impressively built toll, full of metal gates and automatic levers, with guards near each booth. We approached the booth to the extreme right, next to the main divider, and slowed down appropriately, as if we had every intention of paying up. Now, i have traveled with drivers who refuse to pay tolls, choosing instead to just speed off. But what with all the security in this place, i wasn't really expecting what was going to happen.
We were almost at the toll, when our driver took a right, out of nowhere. I immediately imagined we were going to go over the huge divider, in some sort of last-minute reluctance to shell out cash. I waited for the shaking and the scraping, but none of it happened, and we were on the other side, driving back the way we came. I looked back, and saw that two of those stones in the divider were missing, and our wheels had somehow turned through those gaps!
What followed was even better. We drove to our left-side edge, entered a small by-lane, drove past the toll, came back to the highway on the other side, took a crazy U-turn near the toll like before, and sped off. And the guards stared at us the whole time. Looking back, i should have waved. But remembering back, guess i was too psyched.

To Chandigarh

We were finally there. And we reached before our friends who were in the train we'd missed. I love the 21st century.

Here's my title for Chandigarh - The City Of Circles-II. (City of circles-I would be Delhi)
Everything goes round. And everyone who goes around comes around. You're always lost, but in reality, you're not really, because no matter where you are and where you want to go, you're bound to be on one of the right tracks. I've arrived at my hotel from more ways than i could keep track of.
The auto rickshaws of Chandigarh deserve a special mention. I took one from near Chandigarh station, which is on the outskirts of the city, to sector 22, which is more at the heart. All the prices were pre-decided, and therefore, open to bargaining. We settled on an amount, and we took off. And it was during that 20 minute trip that i realized that the Rickshaw-wallahs in Chandigarh operate on a very simple principle.. We go where we go; if you want to come along, thats cool. A guy standing at a corner was offered the honor of getting a ride by my auto-wallah. The guy said he wants to go to sector 17. The driver made a noise as if that was crazy, and offered to drop him off at sector 19 instead. They bargained, the guy's main point being that he doesn't live in sector 19, he knows no one there, so all in all, it wouldn't help him at all to go there. My driver spat out some expletive, which i later found out to mean 'freaking retard', and drove off. And for the rest of the journey, he was cribbing to me about how people can be so narrow-minded, and he hoped that the guy rots in that corner for eternity.

The Exam

It was decent. Could've been better, but definitely could have been a lot worse. So lets leave that at that.

The Return

This time, we really did do our homework. And V2 managed to get VIP quota seats in the train. The train ride was routine.. some nice charecters, some irritating, and loads and loads of kids.
Kids! They're cute, when they come one at a time, but put 15 of them together in a compartment and its a circus in crisis.

Home

Was sweet. And I just got off the phone with a junior who asked me how was the PGI Chandigarh exam. I told him,'You should give it. Its a good experience'.