I have been travelling on work since the start of my professional career way back donkey years. Chugging into busy and noisy railway stations during my early days and presently landing at swanky and noisy airports. So, just what’s different now!
The past few months of travel have tickled some nerves in the memory lane – hence the thought of writing my travelogue. I am not sure how a travelogue is written, though, it may not be very distant from the truth about ‘write what you feel and felt’. I do hope that I would be able to close my eyes and relive those moments - hoping that the colours, hues, smell, touch, taste and sounds are entrenched in my memory.
This is a travelogue seen through my eyes and may not in any way match your knowledge of the place, town or city. This is also not an effort to tutor historical facts – known and unknown. Nor it is an attempt to highlight our ignorance of facts and figures.
I have started to write this, as I am waiting in departure lounge of Bhopal airport, enroute to Delhi.
I am not sure how I should describe this airport. The setting is serene as you turn into the airport road. Small roads, quite ambience – there is sense of lethargy and laziness in all the movements. The cars are few and far between. So are the passengers in the supposedly queue to the check-in counter. The baggage boys leaning casually on the trolleys. The building is quaint, small and all glass from the outside. The inside is neat, not swanky.
One thing that hits you here is too few of everything. Too few passengers, too few flights, too few cabs, too few baggage trolleys, too few check-in counters, too few security check walkways, too few food zones, too few things to do.
Then I think that we have had too much of the modernisation of airports. Indian airports were always like this – small, quaint, sluggish and very heritage-ish.
Bhopal – the city of lakes, I did not know about this till someone told me about it. Believe it when you see it. Three, four, five, six lakes and still counting. They say there’s lot more. I believe, now!
The capital city of Madhya Pradesh, once the largest state in India, is what a non-metro should be. Lots of greens, water everywhere, chaotic traffic, arms-length roads – two-way traffic, no dividers add to the excitement. It’s touch and go.
Everyone whom I have met here are soft spoken, lethargic, enjoys their noon siesta and loves food. The non-veg platter is supposedly scrumptious. I did not venture deeper into this adventure of exploration – on business, no time.
Everyone also told me, often many times during the day, that the Nawab of Pataudi is now the ruler of Bhopal. An inheritance that came by his way due to providence – the Jamai of Bhopal. He owns this, that and all’s that is there to be owned. He lives here, there and at all the palaces that are there. He visits now and then and whenever he feels like. Bhopal is proud of having the Nawab of Pataudi – Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi. Sharmila, Saif and Soha add to the glamour.
But that’s not what I started to write this travelogue for.
I did take some time out to walk by the Bada Talaab and inhale the fresh air. Clear my mind, I thought, and refresh my fatigued body, I wanted. This was post lunch at 3 pm at one of the big hotel attractions in Bhopal (name withheld for want of publicity fee).
Taking in the expansive view of the largest lake in Bhopal, I tried locating the other end. My eye-sight failed me. I think I am growing old, or is it the largeness of the abyss.
Families, couples – newly married, to-be married, may marry, studs, petite and buxom chicks, school kids, college groups, singles, ogglers, chana wala, bhel puri walas, balloon walas, motorboat walas and few people like me – a no one in this boisterous crowd, having their leisurely walk and enjoying the view – to each his or her own.
Then my eyes caught a sight. Looking up a small hillock, I saw the jutted out structure of the palace that is now a hotel – the one I had lunch at. The architectural wonder (don’t know the style or era) peeking through the foliage, with the backdrop of the grey and blue sky, looked majestic and magnificent.
Right on the view path, stood another white structure – more angles and modern, concrete and glass, on the left of the palace. This is the laboratory and office of Union Carbide – now closed, locked and barred.
Union Carbide – the name that evokes unexplainable silence and rigor-mortis of the eyes of the Bhopalis. The name that suddenly flashes the most gruesome pix of a baby girl taken during the ill-fated Bhopal Gas tragedy, splashed across media which is entrenched in the minds’ eye.
Bhopal today still lives with this burdensome heritage.
At this moment, as I stood there gaping, a thought rushed through my mind.
