The wheels go clatter clatter…

(Written on board Sampark Kranti Express on September 9, 2006)

By nature man is chauvinistic. And at times I myself not excluded. What I mean here is that we take pride in placing our place of origin, our region on the helm and singing praises for it.. But here I want to make an exception. Maharashtra is great! And I say this inspite of that I did not visit the state for the first 22 years of my life. In other words no connection with Maharashrta whatsoever. Not that I lack admiration for my place of origin – the very fertile and reasonably prosperous Punjab-Haryana belt of the northern plains; but Maharashtra is blessed with some great landscapes and a splendid countryside.
And I did not discover it only by living in the state but by traveling extensively on some “select routes”.

Bombay Dreams
And by the great landscapes and splendid countryside, I do not mean Bombay, especially not Greater Mumbai – the city. My first tryst with the countryside happened in August 2003. It was also the month when my “Bombay Dreams” were shattered, something that I had built over an year. I landed in Mumbai on the fateful day of 1^st August 2003 for my job with Grindwell Norton with the unreasonable expectation that I shall be based in Mumbai henceforth. However what awaited me was a sleepy village off the Bombay Harbour… It is called Mora. Grindwell had a manufacturing facility in Mora and all engineers, including me, were to be based there for the rest of our training period that ran over several months. That’s precisely what I call the shattering of my “Bombay Dreams”.

I can’t live at a resort forever!
Mora had everything that made it a resort. Sea coast, silently away from the city, green cover, hilly terrain and great food. To add to it the apartments were good and the balcony opened to a striking view of the harbour overlooking the famous skyline of Mumbai. But there were two other similarities that Mora had with a resort – one, there was no city life (forget night life!) and two, you cannot live there forever. After three weeks I discovered that I was occasionally looking for reasons to visit the city, but there was a take – by road Mumbai was a good 2 hours away and by sea some 45 minutes. This made us loathe Mora all the more. The company was not unaware of our situation. Many engineers had resigned in the span of a few months.

So all the “morale building” measures by the HR department like excursions, football tournaments were seen with suspicion by us. They want to trap us here.. but I don’t want to live in a resort forever!

Mumbai-Pune Expressway… The birth of a desire!
Engineering marvel, scenic beauty or fast speed lanes.. I cannot tell which one out of these describes my fascination for the highway! Again it was a weekend trip from Mora. We were all set for Lonavala-Khandala one saturday morning and this had to be via the much talked about Expressway.. Around 200 km in length, all concrete, 6 laned cutting through mountainous terrain.. Undoubtedly it was something I had never traveled on before. And it did prove out to be worth all the talk. Tunnels, waterfalls and bridges dotted the highway, but more importantly it was once again the adjoining landscape of greenlands and tiny seasonal lakes that took my breath away. Although by then I was used to such view because Mora itself lies in midst of these, but having that stretch all along for hundreds of kilometers was all the more appealing. I did not get to see the complete highway stretch as we returned from Lonavala but it generated in me a subtle and understated desire, which was to have a great effect on me for my years to come. That was the desire to see Pune (which lie at the other end of the expressway). Now I can write end dlessly on how, why and when I fell in love with Pune - the most beautiful of all Indian cities; but I reserve the argument for some other time.

The landscapes..
Ya, I use this word quite often, and perhaps it means the same as countryside but I use it to describe the interiors of Maharashtra. I have not visited Vidarbha often, so perhaps I can leave that out but Western Maharashtra, Konkan and Marathwada., they are all same – I mean the same exquisiteness of landscapes with their distinctive features of course. Marathwada has uneven and vast lands with the hills having a more distinguishing rocky look, Western Maharshtra has more of a green cover owing to the higher rainfall it gets and Konkan (the other side of the Sahyadris) rich in its wildlife and forest cover.

This is what you miss in the northern plains hideously – The unevenness and vastness of the land cover. The land being so fertile up there in north (or call it the frugality of the people there) it is difficult to see even a block left uncultivated, but here you can see the moor for miles and miles in depth (hundreds of miles if you have the eye!) and no plantation.. just grass, rocks and uneven ground. That’s what I love. Then there’s the scattered habitation or the occasional village about the road, men wearing white ‘nehru caps’ and cattle with larger horn. (Again cows and buffaloes up north have much shorter horns!!)