Rachna and Richa with their new friends Tanu and Neha
“At 7 am on a cold, foggy January morning you want me to sit in an auto with you and go to India Gate. Are you mad?” I ask her. The answer is: Yes. She turns fifty this May (which is probably why she is getting senile) and on my best (though completely cracked) friend Richa Verma’s “Fifty things to do before I’m 50” list is watching the Republic Day parade from Rajpath, with her own eyes (read: spectacles). “You won’t live to see your fiftieth birthday,” I warn her but she is undeterred. And so, the chilly morning of January 26, 2014, sees the two of us at Gopinath Bazaar, trying to find an auto to Ashok Road. We don’t. Which is probably why I survive to write this. And that my friend is how this story begins.
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Flashback:
26 January, 2014, 6.30 am
I lie buried in my mink blanket, nursing a piping hot cup of tea made by the happy husband who has wriggled out of the suicidal we-will-go-and-watch-republic-day plan with the excuse that he has a flag hoisting ceremony at the workplace; and also (hoarse whisper….) the crazy woman is my best friend and not his. I’m hoping she won’t show up, but the whiney tain-tain-tain of her car coming to a noisy stop outside the house, warns me that the lunatic has arrived. Yo baby! She yodels, swinging a packet of food under my nose. “Alu ke parantha made by Baburam (her man Friday). Kitna maza aayega”. She orders me out of my warm bed, makes me put on multiple layers of clothes and takes on Manoj’s offer of dropping us at the nearest auto stand. Meanwhile, since the net says cell phones are not allowed, she has jotted down important cell nos and shoved one copy in my trouser pocket and another one in hers. Lest we get lost. Later we find out cell phones (that we so obediently left at home) are being allowed but cell phones are 20 kilometers away by now and anyways what better way can there be to live in the moment. With the distinct possibility of death by being trampled under stampeding feet looming in the air.
Still pondering over nasty Whatsapp messages from a cousin who has very poetically said: “All the best Rasna, bas bheed mein mat phansna,” I peer glumly into the fog, and heave a sigh of relief since there are zero autos in sight. Which probably means we can go back home to the garam rajai. No! It doesn’t. Richa has spotted a taxi and, a brief and curt monetary negotiation follows. (It goes something like this: Gruff voiced fat, wrapped-in-mufflers taxi driver: Teen sau rupaye. Shivering Richa (squeakily): NAHI do sau, warna ham dusri taxi le lenge. Gruff voice: Dusri taxi nahi hai. Teen sau laasht (sound of gear changing). Richa: Theek hai bhaiyaji! ) We jump out of one car and into another, waving to the gleeful husband who drives off with a jaunty am-I-glad-I’m-not-coming-with-you salute. “Well begun is half done,” Richa grins happily and pulls out an alu ka parantha from her goody bag and breaking it into two equals, hands over one piece to me. We pull our caps lower over our faces and munch on the paranthas silently. Looking out of the window, I catch sight of a fat white man who is running on the sidewalk in his vest and a tiny pair of shorts with a bunch of giggling chappal wearing street kids following him in the freezing cold. “Wunnerful isn’t he,” Richa mumbles thru a mouthful of her second parantha, enticing me by waving the other half under my nose. I shake my head in a curt no, marveling at the different breeds of lunatics around me that morning.
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The taxi driver takes us to Gyarah Murthy, from where we are directed to Ashok Road from where we are further directed to the Palika Bazaar parking in Connaught Place. A friendly cop tells us a Park and Ride service is being run from there. Reluctantly I pull myself out of the warm taxi and bravely face the full blast of Dilli ki sardi. A cop is directing people to a waiting green bus that will take us to our destination. It is filling up fast and I turn around to ask the habitual slow walker Richa to move faster only to find that she is nowhere to be seen. I scan the road in panic, wondering if she has passed out in the cold. She hasn’t. Like a phoenix that rises from the flames, or a Bipasha Basu that emerges from the waves of the sea in Dhoom 2, she rises from the fog holding two plastic cups of steaming tea. She is simultaneous quoting some deep mathematics while waving a Rs 500 note in the roadside chaiwalla’s face. I grab a cup from her, bring out a crumpled Rs 20 from my baik paakait and hand it to the vendor, shoving her towards the waiting bus. Voila! Where once stood a pretty green bus, there now stands, well, nothing. “We missed it because of you,” I glare at her. “Koi baat nahi, dusri aa jayegi,” she says, slurping her tea noisily. “Hah! Not in this life,” I smirk nastily and look up to find through the mist another identical green bus cruising to a stop right in front of us. I eat humble pie under her I-told-you-so withering look. We flash our invitation card and climb aboard. It takes us past the sights of Connaught Place and deposits us near the National Archives, from where unending queues of people in scarves and monkey caps and mufflers and boots and big jackets are moving towards India Gate lawns.
We join one and start moving with it. In her big jacket, cap and muffler Richa is looking like a waddling Emperor Penguin and I guess so am I since I’m identically dressed but I can’t see myself so I don’t bother with that. A frumpy sweatered man with a baby who, other than the paternal role, looks like a side kick to some Mumbai don, is following me like a shadow. It has been a long time since I was in a crowd so I spend a few minutes trying to figure out if he is being fresh or is just insecure about missing a step. I look at Richa for emotional support. “Kitna pyaara baccha hai, thand mein le aaye ise” she has struck up a conversation with him. I glare darkly at her trying to signal some don’t-talk-to-weird-men intelligence in her direction, but she is already discussing the weather with him. Turns out she has won him over completely, and now we have a friend who hovers over us and chivalrously tells other peopals to make way for “laadis log.”
Well! The laadis log reach the point beyond which you can’t take food and Richa plonks parantha no 3 in my hand. “Quick, eat it. Let’s not waste food,” she says. I revolt telling her I shan’t, I’m worried and I’m not hungry. “OK, give it here,” she says in disapproval and starts taking big bites from it. “Stop! You’ll get sick,” I tell her but she is refusing to waste food. I save her from death by overeating by snatching the food packet from her and thrusting it into the hands of a bemused policeman. “Please bhaiya inhe khaa lena, Mummy ne kitne pyar se banwaye hain,” she directs a parting emotional punch at him. After a brisk walk of about a kilometer, with Richa taking on the role of traffic police by directing people noisily: “Bhaisaab, ladies ko nikalne dijiye. “Panic mat kariye, abhi parade mein bahut time hai,” we get close to destination 26. Both of us are repeatedly asking cops on duty where enclosure no 24 no is; luckily I happen to glance at the invitation card and find that it is for enclosure 19 and not 24. And there it is, right in front of us.
Leaving aside a scary public toilet experience where a floating piece of yellow you-don’t-want-to-know-what puts me off dhoklas for the rest of my life; being subjected to a rather too intimate body search by a female cop who I eye suspiciously for her leanings, and emerging into the stand to find myself submerged in a sea of people, all of who are taller than me; the experience is, well (cough, cough) novel. We walk up and down enclosure no 19 and cannot find a single chair vacant or even a single place from where we can even stand and see Rajpath where the parade will come marching down in about 45 minutes. All we can see are sweaters and more sweaters and fathers with toddlers on their shoulders and bwaysfrands and galsfrands. I turn to Richa in disappointment only to find her smiling like a sage who has recently attained nirvana. “Remember! Journeys matter, destinations don’t” she says. “Let’s go to Coffee House and have breakfast. This was an experience to cherish. We came as the Aam aadmi. Next time we’ll try and get VIP passes.”
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No, the story doesn’t end there. While I and a few others like me are moping around in the crowd of people planning to go back home, the portly Inspector Shri Niwas Rajora of the Delhi Police has pity on us and moving the chairs back a bit, makes place for a few rows of people to sit down. The row of “laadis log” is right up front. We plonk on the ground and believe it or not, watch the entire parade from right up front, after a cheer has been raised for a blushing Shri Niwas jee. Sitting with the crowd we crack jokes on the Chief Minister, asking if a man in a muffler is sitting around somewhere. We cheer for the President’s bodyguards and their handsome horses with plaited tails, we get on first name terms with stealth aircrafts and missiles, we wave to VIP log in shiny black cars and women dancing in the colourful tableaux. We cheer for balloons unfurling Tricolours in the air, we gape at the daredevil acrobatics of the motorcyclists and the fighter planes and stand together to sing “Jana-Gana-Mana-Adhinayaka, Jaya He; Bharata-Bhagya-Vidhata” matching off key notes with other off key fellow citizens. Yes, we feel patriotic. This time it is a win for the aam aadmi. Or aam laadis log, if you please. But I’m not sure if I’ll survive 49 more wishes of the best friend who is slowly going bonkers.
Picture courtesy: Thank you to our new fellow patriotic Indian friend Neha who we met in the laadis log row at the parade. After a brief faux pas when she called Richa auntie and immediately apologized, she repented further by handing her cell phone to us to take pictures and then was kind enough to Whatsapp images to my number. Neha, THANKS!
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Flashback:
26 January, 2014, 6.30 am
I lie buried in my mink blanket, nursing a piping hot cup of tea made by the happy husband who has wriggled out of the suicidal we-will-go-and-watch-republic-day plan with the excuse that he has a flag hoisting ceremony at the workplace; and also (hoarse whisper….) the crazy woman is my best friend and not his. I’m hoping she won’t show up, but the whiney tain-tain-tain of her car coming to a noisy stop outside the house, warns me that the lunatic has arrived. Yo baby! She yodels, swinging a packet of food under my nose. “Alu ke parantha made by Baburam (her man Friday). Kitna maza aayega”. She orders me out of my warm bed, makes me put on multiple layers of clothes and takes on Manoj’s offer of dropping us at the nearest auto stand. Meanwhile, since the net says cell phones are not allowed, she has jotted down important cell nos and shoved one copy in my trouser pocket and another one in hers. Lest we get lost. Later we find out cell phones (that we so obediently left at home) are being allowed but cell phones are 20 kilometers away by now and anyways what better way can there be to live in the moment. With the distinct possibility of death by being trampled under stampeding feet looming in the air.
Still pondering over nasty Whatsapp messages from a cousin who has very poetically said: “All the best Rasna, bas bheed mein mat phansna,” I peer glumly into the fog, and heave a sigh of relief since there are zero autos in sight. Which probably means we can go back home to the garam rajai. No! It doesn’t. Richa has spotted a taxi and, a brief and curt monetary negotiation follows. (It goes something like this: Gruff voiced fat, wrapped-in-mufflers taxi driver: Teen sau rupaye. Shivering Richa (squeakily): NAHI do sau, warna ham dusri taxi le lenge. Gruff voice: Dusri taxi nahi hai. Teen sau laasht (sound of gear changing). Richa: Theek hai bhaiyaji! ) We jump out of one car and into another, waving to the gleeful husband who drives off with a jaunty am-I-glad-I’m-not-coming-with-you salute. “Well begun is half done,” Richa grins happily and pulls out an alu ka parantha from her goody bag and breaking it into two equals, hands over one piece to me. We pull our caps lower over our faces and munch on the paranthas silently. Looking out of the window, I catch sight of a fat white man who is running on the sidewalk in his vest and a tiny pair of shorts with a bunch of giggling chappal wearing street kids following him in the freezing cold. “Wunnerful isn’t he,” Richa mumbles thru a mouthful of her second parantha, enticing me by waving the other half under my nose. I shake my head in a curt no, marveling at the different breeds of lunatics around me that morning.
----------
The taxi driver takes us to Gyarah Murthy, from where we are directed to Ashok Road from where we are further directed to the Palika Bazaar parking in Connaught Place. A friendly cop tells us a Park and Ride service is being run from there. Reluctantly I pull myself out of the warm taxi and bravely face the full blast of Dilli ki sardi. A cop is directing people to a waiting green bus that will take us to our destination. It is filling up fast and I turn around to ask the habitual slow walker Richa to move faster only to find that she is nowhere to be seen. I scan the road in panic, wondering if she has passed out in the cold. She hasn’t. Like a phoenix that rises from the flames, or a Bipasha Basu that emerges from the waves of the sea in Dhoom 2, she rises from the fog holding two plastic cups of steaming tea. She is simultaneous quoting some deep mathematics while waving a Rs 500 note in the roadside chaiwalla’s face. I grab a cup from her, bring out a crumpled Rs 20 from my baik paakait and hand it to the vendor, shoving her towards the waiting bus. Voila! Where once stood a pretty green bus, there now stands, well, nothing. “We missed it because of you,” I glare at her. “Koi baat nahi, dusri aa jayegi,” she says, slurping her tea noisily. “Hah! Not in this life,” I smirk nastily and look up to find through the mist another identical green bus cruising to a stop right in front of us. I eat humble pie under her I-told-you-so withering look. We flash our invitation card and climb aboard. It takes us past the sights of Connaught Place and deposits us near the National Archives, from where unending queues of people in scarves and monkey caps and mufflers and boots and big jackets are moving towards India Gate lawns.
We join one and start moving with it. In her big jacket, cap and muffler Richa is looking like a waddling Emperor Penguin and I guess so am I since I’m identically dressed but I can’t see myself so I don’t bother with that. A frumpy sweatered man with a baby who, other than the paternal role, looks like a side kick to some Mumbai don, is following me like a shadow. It has been a long time since I was in a crowd so I spend a few minutes trying to figure out if he is being fresh or is just insecure about missing a step. I look at Richa for emotional support. “Kitna pyaara baccha hai, thand mein le aaye ise” she has struck up a conversation with him. I glare darkly at her trying to signal some don’t-talk-to-weird-men intelligence in her direction, but she is already discussing the weather with him. Turns out she has won him over completely, and now we have a friend who hovers over us and chivalrously tells other peopals to make way for “laadis log.”
Well! The laadis log reach the point beyond which you can’t take food and Richa plonks parantha no 3 in my hand. “Quick, eat it. Let’s not waste food,” she says. I revolt telling her I shan’t, I’m worried and I’m not hungry. “OK, give it here,” she says in disapproval and starts taking big bites from it. “Stop! You’ll get sick,” I tell her but she is refusing to waste food. I save her from death by overeating by snatching the food packet from her and thrusting it into the hands of a bemused policeman. “Please bhaiya inhe khaa lena, Mummy ne kitne pyar se banwaye hain,” she directs a parting emotional punch at him. After a brisk walk of about a kilometer, with Richa taking on the role of traffic police by directing people noisily: “Bhaisaab, ladies ko nikalne dijiye. “Panic mat kariye, abhi parade mein bahut time hai,” we get close to destination 26. Both of us are repeatedly asking cops on duty where enclosure no 24 no is; luckily I happen to glance at the invitation card and find that it is for enclosure 19 and not 24. And there it is, right in front of us.
Leaving aside a scary public toilet experience where a floating piece of yellow you-don’t-want-to-know-what puts me off dhoklas for the rest of my life; being subjected to a rather too intimate body search by a female cop who I eye suspiciously for her leanings, and emerging into the stand to find myself submerged in a sea of people, all of who are taller than me; the experience is, well (cough, cough) novel. We walk up and down enclosure no 19 and cannot find a single chair vacant or even a single place from where we can even stand and see Rajpath where the parade will come marching down in about 45 minutes. All we can see are sweaters and more sweaters and fathers with toddlers on their shoulders and bwaysfrands and galsfrands. I turn to Richa in disappointment only to find her smiling like a sage who has recently attained nirvana. “Remember! Journeys matter, destinations don’t” she says. “Let’s go to Coffee House and have breakfast. This was an experience to cherish. We came as the Aam aadmi. Next time we’ll try and get VIP passes.”
-----------
No, the story doesn’t end there. While I and a few others like me are moping around in the crowd of people planning to go back home, the portly Inspector Shri Niwas Rajora of the Delhi Police has pity on us and moving the chairs back a bit, makes place for a few rows of people to sit down. The row of “laadis log” is right up front. We plonk on the ground and believe it or not, watch the entire parade from right up front, after a cheer has been raised for a blushing Shri Niwas jee. Sitting with the crowd we crack jokes on the Chief Minister, asking if a man in a muffler is sitting around somewhere. We cheer for the President’s bodyguards and their handsome horses with plaited tails, we get on first name terms with stealth aircrafts and missiles, we wave to VIP log in shiny black cars and women dancing in the colourful tableaux. We cheer for balloons unfurling Tricolours in the air, we gape at the daredevil acrobatics of the motorcyclists and the fighter planes and stand together to sing “Jana-Gana-Mana-Adhinayaka, Jaya He; Bharata-Bhagya-Vidhata” matching off key notes with other off key fellow citizens. Yes, we feel patriotic. This time it is a win for the aam aadmi. Or aam laadis log, if you please. But I’m not sure if I’ll survive 49 more wishes of the best friend who is slowly going bonkers.
Picture courtesy: Thank you to our new fellow patriotic Indian friend Neha who we met in the laadis log row at the parade. After a brief faux pas when she called Richa auntie and immediately apologized, she repented further by handing her cell phone to us to take pictures and then was kind enough to Whatsapp images to my number. Neha, THANKS!
The Delhi tableau
An unhappy citizen
The camel contingent
Selfie
Our hero: Inspector Shri Niwas Rajora of the Delhi police who could not tire of asking (mostly male) people: Kyun TV nahi hai tumhare ghar mein. Uspe nahin dekh sakte the parade. Yahan aana jaruri tha?
A rare moment: The stress of being an aam aadmi gets to Richa
Inspector Rajora with female fans
Yo baby! It's the big bday year
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