Sundar Nagari Paani ki tanki

Attending a friend’s wedding is a fun event. The wedding that I recently went to was no exception to this rule. Dhiren’s much awaited wedding was set for 16^th February 2010 (a year later than expected) in his home town of Ghaziabad. There was enough Bollywood masala coating this pakoda. In brief, the girl’s father was totally against the wedding but as they say ‘ miya biwi razi to kya karega kazi’, the date was set & invites sent out.  

The fun started from the day Dhiren casually mentioned online that yes, the wedding date is very much fixed with no change whatsoever and I have to be there! Well, had I known this earlier I would have taken the much comfortable Rajdhani to the capital city and back. This lead time gone, I had to turn into a VIP and get flight tickets to and fro. Thank the low cost airlines for coming to my rescue at such short notice. Oh and I must mention that I made sure I was buying “refundable” tickets, you never know, what if the date got postponed again?

 Fast forward straight to the evening of 16^th February when we 3 – Mudit, Prakash & I were to cab it up to Ghaziabad from Delhi for the reception. The fun factor starts climbing the crest, the cab booked by Mudit does not turn up! It is nearing 8pm and we are without wheels to go for the wedding. To the rescue comes the hotel bell boy and voila we have a cab in 15 minutes time where Mudit took many unsuccessful hours. Finally, we settled down to a long drive of approximately 75 minutes. The highway was packed which came as no surprise and the estimated 75 minutes turned to 90 and then 120. Every 10 minutes we would check for the Ghaziabad railway station turn off with passing by auto rickshaws and it would go on – ‘bus 10 minute aur aage hain phir left lena.’ These 10 minutes transformed to almost 30 minutes! Finally we turned off towards “Ghaziabad”. All that we had as an address was – Old Railway Station Park, Vijay Nagar side, New Over Bridge Railway station. Yes, same was my reaction – huh? What is this? Quite affirmative yet vague & conflicting. Landmark – Ghaziabad railway station. Dhiren confidently said – ask for Ghaziabad station, the park is close by and you will find it very easily. Highlight – there was innumerable weddings happening on the same day in the small town of Ghaziabad and we would actually try & look out for the couple’s name at the flower studded entrance hoping one of them would be our destination. However, as it goes, we kept going round in circles like a dog trying to catch its own tail. We spent another quarter of an hour talking to drunks and finally ended up at a dead end that was the Ghaziabad railway station. Prakash strolled off to ask for directions and lo and behold when he came back we were so hopeful that yes, finally we have made it. Well, it was not to be so! However, the easiest way was to climb over the foot over bridge and cross to the other side, which was our destination. WOW, indeed so close by we should have been able to see it and walk right into it had it not been for the damn railway tracks. But we had to necessarily drive around and not walk over for 2 main reasons – firstly it didn’t seem safe at all for a lady to be walking in Ghaziabad at that not-so-ungodly hour surrounded by so many drunks and secondly, our cab driver’s cell phone had conked off and if we lost him in person, we would be stranded once again without wheels (no Take 2 please). So well, we had to stick together – the 3 of us, cab & the driver.

I have never before made acquaintances with these many drunks nor do I expect I will be doing so in future. Every 2^nd person we would ask be it a passer by or a hand cart puller or a pan wala would be happy high and over enthusiastic in guiding us – “waise to yeh sadak seedhi jaati hain par aap ek kaam karo, aap baye mud jaana agle choraha se” (all the time he would be pointing the other way i.e. left and ask us to go right)! We would go round and end up at the same point where we had turned off. Up one bridge, round back and under that bridge next! Who ever thought crossing one railway track was such a herculean task. We passed by the same landmarks over and over again – the “gao shala” and the under pass. Oh and it was rude of us to turn down a few offers from some nice gentlemen who wanted to climb into our cab and direct us right up to the gate of the venue, “chaliye hum chod aate hain aapko waha tak”. To add to this rapidly building crescendo were the incoming calls from our other dear friends who were already at the venue waiting for us. And hey, we now had a new landmark that was sure to get us there – sundar nagari paani ki tanki! Isn’t it such a catchy and impressive landmark? You would imagine a BIG tank and smack below it would be the venue! Oh wishful thinking. The road to this tanki was wide enough for one hand cart but of course our Indica could squeeze through. By now, I guess even our driver (who was so far cool as a cucumber) was getting a way bit annoyed. He rammed into a hand cart while waving out to him to stop. It didn’t occur to him that if the hand cart isn’t stopping he could brake. Here was acted out one more drunken scenario. I exercised tremendous control over my giggles. Picture – Sunil Pal (of the much famous Laughter Challenge) drunk & cross eyed and you have the passenger of the hand cart. And now picture a down trodden, poor, hardly surviving ordinary hand cart puller. Action – our cab bangs into the hand cart (of course, our driver’s fault but would he accept it? Of course not!), the passenger gets down and uses some widely colorful language (my vocab surely expanded that day), slaps the hand cart puller around, pulls away the hand cart from the cart puller and tries to mount it! Intervenes a localite and saves the cart puller from further slaps and tries to push away the drunk. Round about, the passenger now offers to ride the cart and he does! He mounts on to the cart, turns about and rides away leaving behind the bewildered cart puller and enough way for our Indica to pass through. This scene still makes me dizzy and seems so very unrealistic till day.

Moving ahead, we decided to give it one last shot (else we would turn around and head back to Delhi) and bumped into a sane young chap (a rare find so far in all the time that we were there) who kindly directed us to the right path. Having reached one more junction, we decided to check for directions once again lest we turn off the other way. Lo and behold, action replay – “waise to aap left jaa sakte ho par aap right chale jao”, “aapko parking main jaana haina, acha parking nahi? Park main”, “park jaana hain to left chale jao (again when pointing to the right)”. Was this all intentional? Or is this a basic flaw in the geography books of Ghaziabad? I will never know!

Finally! We reached the venue, a little shy of mid night. It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to us that the reception was over, the food was packed up and caterers were off to make their own merry. Our friends too had given up and left sometime back. Asking around, we came to know that the girl’s house was close by and that was where the pheras were happening and the couple was, and we could go meet them. How do we reach there? “Light follow karte jao, pahuch jaoge”. We were relieved to finally see Dhiren’s to be wife surrounded by the usual bevy of women & looking pretty as a doll. Dhiren was already carrying out the necessary rites and hence, all we could do was pride ourselves on the fact that yes we could finally make it. His to be wife was upset we had missed dinner and started ordering around for some food to be got in, but we begged ourselves out of it due to the late hour and the need to go back to Delhi.

Back to Delhi took us half the time than earlier and we were in Delhi at 12.45am. No dinner and stomach rumbling had us racking our brains for a possible eatery that would be open at this late hour. The one hope – paratha wala, was shutting shop just as we reached there. Luckily there was a McD open nearby and we were able to finally grab some burgers & fries. I was back to my hotel at 1am and feeling guilty for waking up the hosts so late but to my surprise the other group who was staying there was just finishing up dinner. Playing back the entire day in my mind, I finally dozed off at 2am, had a late wake up the next day and an awesome breakfast of gobi parathas and was off at ease for my flight back home!

This is one whirlwind wedding that I will surely not forget in a hurry and recall every time I need a laugh. The drunks are imprinted on my mind for long..........HIC!

PS: I have titled this so because it not just sounds impressive but in my view, was quite an accurate landmark in hindsight because the main highway was just 2 turn offs away from there................