Day to remember - An act of serendipity!

October 24th 2005 8:38:45 am: It was just another boring Monday for me. I got ready for the office and started from home at around 8:30. I was strolling towards the main road called BTM Main Road, to get the bus for office, but a different story was slowly unfolding with each step of mine.

Indeed I have come across the high-density-crowd-mechanics situations in Bangalore several times, but this time, the dynamics was real intense. I was able to see the crowd racing on the sidewalks on one side of the road, and I with two of my friends was standing there with few of our stranger colleagues, waiting for the bus to come and steal us. I couldn’t see my bus, though the road was jam-packed with vehicles, vehicles which do not move, which can not move rather.

It had rained quite heavily during the weekends, and the next junction called “Silk Board Junction” where we take a right turn and go along the Hosur road to reach our office in the Keonics Electronic City (read as KEC). Sucks!! This junction was bloody flooded up to the neck and getting the vehicles passed through it was a far flung dream.

9:02:07 am: My friends decided to go back home and get their bikes (though ultimately they made fool of themselves by taking their bike in this rain.) and I was left alone wondering and sweating in the cold morning. So I decided to go back to the last signal, since it was the trailing region of the traffic and I expected at least one bus of mine to be there with a vacant place to sit therein. Huhh! All in vain!! So finally, I decided to go with the wind, and like so many other people I decided to go along the Silk Board Junction, thinking either to get a bus on the way, or cross the flooded junction on foot and then try to get a bus to the KEC.

9:12:27 am: I almost ran, ran and ran. Suddenly I could see a familiar vehicle. Yes!! It was going to my office, but my excitement instantly fainted to see the crowd density less than the optimum value of one person per meter square, infact it was far less than this. But not really, I could see two seats on the back still vacant. God!! I hurriedly went back to take one of those heavenly seats!!

9:22:10 am: I was sitting in the bus for around 10 minutes, but the there was no thud in the half dead engine. It was silence everywhere in the bus, most of them were either sleeping or drinking newspaper or a half finished book, but no sound whatsoever. Commotion outside was worsening. On one side, I was able to see the people nudging each other along the way, people like us, people like them and on the other side I see the dead vehicles, including Ambulance which can’t move, who cares what is happening with the patient inside. Ladies, who were pregnant, and people who were old. Everyone was in a hurry to get out of the labyrinth filled with water from the bottom and rains (At this second, it was not heavy. Fortunately.) from the top.

9:31:34 am: Bus started to move. Slowly. Slower than the bullock cart on my village roads. But that is all driver sahib could do. We somehow reached the junction, but we are not taking a turn towards Hosur Road but we are going straight in some other route, in HSR Layout area. Shit!! What is happening? I looked at other colleagues aboard the bus, few of them were surprised like me and few of them were unfazed and rest, yes rest of them were sleeping. I tried to enquire from others. Bus was taking a round about route to reach hosur road which means I will be going to my office not from Bangalore, but as if I am coming from Hosur itself. Damn..

10:05:14 am: I almost slept and the bus was strolling quite smoothly and we have crossed HSR Layout long back and are in some place called Sarjapur road. Cool. “Are we going to the office today?” This thought had long back left my mind and I was ready for a post weekend kinda trip.Grr. Anyways. I could see lots of beautiful apartments on both sides of the road, Blue, Pink and Ivory. Few of them my favorites and few NOT. I could see offices of few biggies IT companies also. None like mine of course!!!

10:49:29 am: Where am I? I don’t seem to be in any part of Bangalore. No cars, no noise no apartments, no chicks et cetera. I don’t seem to breathe that most familiar polluted air also. “Cool man!! This route is definitely better than the shit of the road we usually take!” I thought. “Moreover, you have to work for lesser hours in the office; for this route will take most of your day time.” definitely sounds better to me. “They will have to give us laptops to work off office hours.” Hmm..

11:05:00 am: I am in a jungle kinda place and it’s just beautiful. I see colorful parakeets in the trees and host of tulips spread across the place, red and violet in color. I see few meditation and religious societies too, in this area. One of them has got a boundary wall with following words written on it:

Devoid of all matters related to cast and creed.
Don’t fight in the name of religion.
Have faith in all the religions.
Gods are same.

I could feel the breeze touching my body and cleansing my soul.

11:10:04 am: We traveled through a good stretch in that heavenly wood like area, on a half-clay-half-tar road and finally we are out on Hosur Road, guess Hosur was nearer than any part of could-not-be-seen-from-there Bangalore. We are traveling back to Electronic City. It’s around 5-6 kilometers from there.

I can feel the torrents of last night.
I can see the water logged area on Silk Board Junction.
I can see the pictures of the over flooded drains and collapsed walls, in the day’s newspaper also.

And I see the families of all those farmers who lost their onion produces in the parts of Maharashtra due to excess rains.
And I see the aggrieved face of my grandfather who is among one of those people who are terrified due to no-rain-situations in my place in the north-east India, though not out of desperation, but out of his love towards his earth which makes him cry every time she herself cries out of thirst!!

11:25:30 am: “ID Please!” says the security guard. I am at gate number 4 of Infosys City; yes that is where I work. I head for my workplace for the day’s work, but these thoughts occupy my brain till I write it here the next day.