Chalo Patna.....!!!!

Gurgaon, 2107 hrs, May 05, 2011

Dhruba: My father’s getting transferred to Ranchi.

Me: Great... Now please have your marriage take place at Ranchi. Probably then I shall have a chance of visiting the place again.

Dhruba: Sure dude, Ranchi it shall be, the day is not far away.

Delhi Airport, 1015 hrs, May 06, 2011

Jet Airways female: Sorry, our flight to Patna is overbooked, we don’t have any seats left.

Me and Sister: Are you out of your mind?? We ain’t here to catch a bus, we are here for a bloody aircraft.

----------Half an hour of fighting with the Jet officials and enquiries for alternatives---------

Jet female: Our two best options are, same flight for tomorrow, or an immediate flight to Ranchi and subsequent surface to Patna.

We (after few minutes of deliberations): We shall take the Ranchi flight.

Barely 4 days back, we were sitting in a theatre and treating ourselves to Lara Dutta’s miseries due to an altered journey in Chalo Dilli. Now, with us being subjected to a “Chalo Patna” situation, the next few hours did not seem to be too exciting.

However, it was Ranchi, the place where had grown up and the place which we loved. The excitement for a few minutes which we were going to spend in Ranchi, was good enough to beat the anguish over the 9 hours drive which would be following it. So after a delayed departure, we finally landed at the Birsa Munda Domestic Airport at 1330 hrs. Quite surprising that this was only the 2nd time I had landed at the Ranchi Airport, the first apparently when I was less than a year old. And why would I, almost all our journeys in 'those' days used to take place to Patna, and the good old Hatia-Patna Express was good enough for that. After an hour of chaos and confusion at the Airport, we were finally given a taxi which would take us to home...oh wait.. weren’t we already at home, at Ranchi ???

The drive started and it was after 6.5 years that I had stepped onto the Ranchi soil and it felt great. The first place of recognition was the Hinoo Golchakkar, the Temple, and the Sweet shop next to it. As we proceeded from the Golchakkar to the H.E.C. Main Gate, we realized that the renowned Chola Tailors was still holding its place while the petrol pump next to it had closed down. Birsa Chowk looked exactly the same and the entrance to the road leading to Hatia carried an arch reading “Hatia Railway Station”. We also spotted a new restaurant at the HEC Main Gate, and we just managed to convince the driver to take us for a brief round inside the HEC colony.

And thus we re-entered the cool, calm and serene world of Heavy Engineering Corporation. Much to our disappointment, the “jad se toot aped aur talaab (uprooted tree and pond)”  were nowhere to be seen. (Don’t break your heads, only me and my sisters can understand what this means !!!)

The huge football field on the left, the CD Type and E Type Quarters on the right, all seemed the same as they were 7 years back. There was a Mahindra showroom just opposite to the Russian Hostel Entrance, which itself was now converted to the Jharkhand Vidhaan Sabha. The roads too were in pretty much the same condition as I remembered them to be, and I could almost see myself cycling on them. We could spot numerous small blue coloured tents on our right as we crossed VVM, and why not, it was a Friday, the ‘Haat’ had to be there.  The driver then pointed us towards a bunch of floodlights, belonging to an International Cricket Stadium being constructed next to the Plant Hospital. Wow.... I didn’t know that!!!

We then took a round of the once-esteemed F-Type Colony and trust me, almost 7 years and you do expect some changes. The place didn’t seem to have any!!! In spite of F-29, our residence for over 5 years appearing pretty shabby, it was great to look at it after such a long time. The ruins of the broken boundary wall were still holding forte. We could also spot the Sector-3 Market and the “Rajesh Cycle Store” at its front.

For some strange reason, we did not press the driver to take us around E-3 and the Sector-2 market. Probably we were overflowing with gratitude for the guy for showing us around F-29, and requesting him for further deviations from his route would have been asking for too much. On our way back, we could also spot some yellow and brown St. Thomas buses just before the HEC Main Gate, dunno if they were the school-owned ones or HEC facilities.

The driver was also kind enough to pin-point MSD’s bungalow on the by-pass road. Other landmarks which we crossed on our way out were IIM Ranchi, BIT Mesra and Ormanjhi Zoo. It was quite pleasing to see how useful the by-pass road was, for taking people from the HEC Colony to once distant areas like Kadru, Morabadi, Bariatu etc.

An obvious change from my past visit was that majority of the vehicles on road carried the JH no. Plates, instead of the BR ones. Jharkhand was relatively a new state back in 2004, and majority of the vehicles still sported the Bihar reg. Plates. Also, for a place where the maximum spotted cars used to be Fiat, Ambassador and Maruti 800, there were quite a few SUVs to be seen. Government muscle, I suppose.

During the drive back, NH33 underwent a major transition as soon as we crossed the Jharkhand border. NH 33 in Jharkhand wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great either. The road throughout was narrow enough to be called single-lane, and overtaking always seemed to be a dangerous option. Also, the roads were undergoing construction in a few places, making travelling not the most convenient job around. As soon as we entered Bihar, NH 33 pleasingly widened and the road condition substantially improved. It remained so for quite a while, after which it narrowed down again to a single lane mode. Whatever, Nitish Kumar definitely seems to be doing a better job in this department when compared to his Jharkhand counterparts.

We finally reached Patna at midnight, a good 9 hours after we left Ranchi. Our visit to Ranchi was restricted to barely 30 minutes, but as some say, good surprises do come in small packages.
To add to it, as much as we enjoyed the short Ranchi visit, Jet Airways.... UP YOURS !!!

Good old Ranchi definitely requires an extended visit (hope you are listening Dhruba).... ,
till then... JOHAAR !!!