Imagination by night

‘ASSAM!!” my mother exclaimed when I told her I have to go there to attend a seminar (that could be the only reasonable explanation to visit this place, which I doubt my mom knew was even a part of India).



“ Why Assam, you said there are seminars in Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, why cant you visit these places, why Assam?”



“ Mom, its compulsory, am getting marked for it, its part of my study course”; I explained trying to sound as truthful as possible.



“I don’t know, you ask your dad, but I am sure his answer will be NO, that place is full of terrorists and… and… I don’t know,  ask dad.”



Assam is not so popular to people in the mainland and the only information they have about the location is the existence of terrorists, thanks to the media, which has no other news about this commercially untouched beautiful part of the country.  A few petrol bombs,  inconvenient access and lack of  knowledge about the place, curtail tourism growth in spite of the picturesque sceneries and countryside atmosphere that the Northeast has to offer.



Well there goes, I thought, it would be better to drop the plan than ask dad about it. While I pondered at the thought, my sister told me that I was being foolish to think of dropping the plan and that she would kill to get to go on a trip with friends to visit some unseen unheard place, what fun, and I was being a loser by giving up so soon.



Ok, I thought, I must ask dad. In the meantime the number of people who were to make it for this trip was falling like mercury in a cold thermometer. 8 became 7, “my sisters in town from abroad, I have to spend time with her, don’t know when I will meet her again."

7 became 6, “I have my exams coming up, need to prepare."

6 became 5, “my mom says if Nina is not going, am not going!”

5 became four, “am getting engaged so…”

and the count fell to just three.

“ look!” bellowed Helen into the phone, I didn’t need the phone to hear her from Pune, “if you are not coming am going alone understand, what’s your  problem? Just tell your dad its compulsory and you will fail the year if you don’t come!!”



I could understand Helen’s plight, she was one of the lucky kids, whose parents granted her permission to go, the minute she uttered the letter A for Assam. They had spent a few years there and had no hassles about the political nature of the state. Well, so that confirms Helen, which leaves Anita and me.

“Jyoti please come, my mom says she will let me go only if you come, please”



At the end of all this I had actually started enjoying all the attention that I was getting, so I thought well now that Anita’s going depends on mine, I might as well give it my best shot, so there I was in the hall, convincing my dad that my studies depended on this trip and how important it was in my life and my career and blah blah blah … “ok go, when do you leave?” blah blah, I was so sure that he wouldn’t let me go that I didn’t hear what he said .



So there we were, all set to leave, packed with bag and baggage, boarded the train at Pune Railway station. We were so excited that all the while, from the time we reached the station to the time the train left, we stood at the door, saying goodbye to Anita’s mom, who was constantly telling us to be careful, act sane and be vary of strangers, call up regularly etc…etc…Finally the train left and we went to our seats, we saw three burly men had already occupied our reserved seats. They looked so menacing, but we mustered as much courage as we could and tried to sound bold and requested them to leave our seats, so we could sit. One of the burly men with a big moustache, without batting an eyelid asked us to ‘adjust’ for a little time, as they were getting off at the next station which would arrive soon.

Well, since we couldn’t do much about it, we agreed. On asking we found out the next station would come only after 6 hours! Much to our anger and helplessness we decided that we wouldn’t let these stupid hooligans ruin our trip and ‘adjusted’ our butts to fit into the place of one.



Eventually the next station came and to our relief the men got off and we occupied our seats finally. We really enjoyed our trip in the train. We ate every thing that came on the train, right from boiled eggs, to bhel puri, to sev kurmura to coconut water. By the time we reached Kolkata we were so stuffed that we could feel our bodies bursting in their seams. The train slowly chugged into the station; it was unlike the station that is so busy at any other time of the day. Our train pulled into the station at 3 am, much to our dismay. Our connecting train to Guwahati, the capital of the State of Assam, was at 4 pm so we decided to spend the day at my aunt’s place in Kolkata. To add to our discontent that we had to wake up so early,  we couldn’t find a payphone at at the station, so we decided to reach my aunts place with no directions, and trusting the cab driver, we took to the streets of Kolkata, a city we all were visiting for the first time, at 3 am.



The cabbie enquired the address we wanted to go to as he started the engine of his vehicle. He drove through the deserted streets, which seemed like no mans land. It was cold and Kolkata’s Victorian styled, fusty old buildings reminded us of the Gothic. The streets were empty and tall buildings bordered the main roads. The signal lights were flashing, indicating ‘watch n go’. As we drove on we slowly found all those cars that were with us as we left the station had taken different routes and we suddenly found ourselves in the only vehicle on the road. I clearly remembered my aunt mentioning that the station was only 20 minutes away from her house. The cab drove on for what seemed liked hours now. I glanced at my watch and it was 10 minutes from the time we left.



“ OK” I thought, “let him drive another 10 minutes and then we will see”. He went on steadily driving at a speed of 30 mph. He stopped for other vehicles to pass by at cross lanes, and was very relaxed. I looked at his face from the corner of my eye trying to sense if he was looking at us on the sly, planning any moves on us, but found his eyes focused towards the front. He was almost like a mechanical toy, which moved its hands up and down to control the steering wheel. The streets were slowly getting smaller and we had moved from wide roads to narrow by lanes. And sometimes lanes that seemed like alleys between two buildings. By this time fear gripped me. Where was he taking us? Was he taking us to some other place?  Is he taking us to sell us off to some pimp and engage us forcefully into the flesh trade that Kolkata is so famous for? These old by lanes and dingy streets that we are driving by do look like some ‘shady’ places like we have seen in hindi movies.  I started groping into my bag for something that I could use in case the driver attacked us, when the cab stopped in the middle of nowhere. There were no streetlights; it was pitch dark, the only light was a faint red light a few metres ahead.  The driver left the engine purring while he got off and started walking away from the cab… 



The minute he was out of earshot the three of us almost spoke at once, and we realized that we hadn’t spoke a word since we got into the cab. Helen and me were thinking on the same lines, while Anita had a different story to tell. She was imagining this driver to be some psycho like in the movie Bonesetter. She was imagining that he is going to take us to some place, kill us and dump our bodies till it is decomposed completely and then adds our bones to his precious bone collection.



While we froze at that possible thought and quickly dismissed it , we all made a quick plan on what to do in case he attacks us. As we spoke our eyes were fixed on him, we noticed him take out a bottle from his pocket and take a sip of what we thought was water then, Suddenly from nowhere a man came on a cycle, we couldn’t see his face, it was covered with a shawl. He stopped, spoke to the driver and cycled off. We all collected our so called weapons ready for attack, mine was a pen knife, Helen kept her deodorant spray ready to spray into his eyes, if needed, while Anita was all set to run out of the taxi and scream her lungs out for help. We agreed that  he would attack me first, since I was sitting in the front , Helen would immediately spray the deo into his eyes the minute he turned to look at them, that would get him to release me and use his hands to rub his eyes when we all would get out screaming for help. Three people screaming in to the silent night was definitely going to gather a crowd and besides this man was single and we were three.

“Suppose he has a gun?” , asked Helen.



“Well in that case he will threaten to shoot me and keep me hostage, and ask you two to follow orders, hmm… why don’t I come and sit behind with you?”



“Yeah that’s good, you come behind” just as I was going to open the door of the cab, the driver swung opened his door and got into the taxi. he sat in his seat, with no attempt to start the cab.  He  just sat there, didn’t move, a faint smell of cheap country liquor filled the air. Our doubts were reaffirmed, we were now sure that this man was up to something, why would he simply stop the cab in the middle of nowhere and get out for a drink? Who was the man on the cycle? He obviously was getting prepared to do something, we gulped hard thinking what his next action was going to be. 



We kept our weapons ready, almost waiting to strike, when “WHOOOOOOOOOOSH……….” a train siren stormed into the silent night and the three of us jumped in our skins as the train sped past by in front of us. It ran in front of us for a whole minute, the sound reverberating in the silence. As we looked at the train stunned and startled by the sound, we realized that the three of us were so scared and preoccupied that we didn’t realize that the driver had stopped at a railway crossing and was waiting for a train to pass, and we were too caught up in our thoughts and plans to hear the train at a distance. After the train passed and the surroundings regained the silence the driver revved the engine and we crossed the tracks, as we were jostled in the cab while driving over the tracks we were somewhat relieved that he didnt attack us as we thought, but still worried about where he was taking us. While we drove around some old buildings, the driver said it was the place we told him we wanted to go to and just stopped saying he wasn’t going to go round in circles and this was the place and we had to get off. Before we came to terms with what to do next a light went off in a balcony of one of the houses and a familiar voice called out asking, “Jyoti is that you?” it was my aunt. The three of us thanked our stars for not landing up in a brothel, or donating our bones AND the driver for bringing us safely home.