The Summer Breeeze of Baripada

Growing up in Baripada was never an advantage but a high privilege. The thin line difference between advantage and privilege is that, advantage is what you are supposed to have and privilege is what you want to have. Somewhat like a highly longed relationship.

A town which one can go around in less than 45 mins is smaller than small.

Baripada by crow fly route is less than 50km from the sea and by road its 72km from the sea. But, the winds of the sea prefer to take the straight route crossing over the plains and collide against the high hills of the Simlipal National Park of Mayurbhanj district. Mayurbhanj is the largest district of the Odisha state and Baripada is its headquarter.

Baripada, due to its close proximity to the sea is sticky and humid for almost 6 months of the year. I hate this part, it makes the skin itch and personality irritating. The whole day is hot and moist, makes you lethargic and exhausted. Sometimes unwanted prickly heat make life more miserable. Cycling back from school and again setting your back on the same cycle seat in an one hour’s difference would even turn the rishi into a sinner. All bad on an Indian summer day.

But, days don't last forever, they subside when the sun sleeps calling all birds to accompany him. This is the time when the suburban Baripada resident knows life will have a reason to smile and say Aah! The breeze welcomes the sun down hours like a devoted wife waiting desperately for the tired husband to come back after a hard day’s work, to comfort the man.

The breeze starts slow like a sensuous love making scene from a Hollywood movie. The senses start approving of the soothing sensation. The heat, the prickly heat, the stink of the underarms, the sticky dust from the days work on the skin, everything is still there, still bothering. But, now they are less loud, less active and less present. Or may be fully present but just a little shy in the presence of the lady breeze.

Now she starts getting a little wilder and even more active, playing the senses to swoon of all the people in the suburbs. She does this for the next many hours until, the late night moon shines his silver glow, telling her to leave, saying that she has served her part, balmed the victims of the day, now the sun was on his way to scorch the sinners again.

She leaves a little before day break. Most wouldn’t ever know what she had done to lull all to sleep. She had caressed child and old alike. Slithered through stinky gullies and wiped the foul out. She just does her part and leaves without a trace.

Baripada wakes up to its daily chores and curses the sun. I wish sometimes Baripada stopped for a moment to think what made last night’s sleep, sleep.

I stood on the lane that stretched out to the exit gate of the Shanti kunj Gayatri Ashram, Haridwar. Unaware of a standard Indian height man right before her she ran into me and almost let my fone fall off my hands. I readily turned towards her to see who could be so stupid! She was all sorry and apologetic. I had no reason to be angry. I am generally not. She walked out, I too walked out.

I looked for an auto or a vikram to take me back to Har ki Paudi. In a five minute time I found a vikram who was all set to take me, provided all other seats were filled up. We gotta wait.

Look who’s come, there comes she again. Taking the seat before me, beaming right into my being, her eyes compassionate and demeanor homely. She had perhaps forgotten me in this gap of 20 mins. After all who cares to remember such a short stint in one of the epicenters of the great Indian crowd? But, she hadn't forgotten, I felt good. In fact attached, as if world was really small and all beings knew each other.

She was vocal, she asked me to confirm if I was the same guy who she had run in few minutes back. I nodded in agreement. My smile constant and unaffected by the honking vikrams passing by. She was remarkably inquisitive about me. She had many questions for me. I felt special. I answered all her queries. I told I had come from Delhi, bit didn't belong there. I enjoyed two days of week offs unlike most in India who had just a Sunday in the face of week off. So, I would pack my backpack with dirty clothes and wear even dirtier ones (why waste clean clothes in an unknown land when you can wear those for Monday morning office). I traveled because I liked travelling. Traveled alone because I liked it that way, when I didn't have the right companion or group. Traveled alone because the agenda of travel is not always to have fun. Traveled alone because sometimes all alone, it’s so much fun.

Now, it was my turn to shoot questions. She said she was from Chhattisgarh. Where in Chhattisgarh? Jagdalpur. By now my curiosity and joy was swelling. In life it’s interesting to note how places you have never been seem and sound like nectar to your ears. As if you always knew that land, as if you owned certain things there. As if there stayed people who revered you, loved you. The short and logical answer that explains the curiosity and joy upon hearing the names of these places is that you knew people who belonged to those places, those people who you loved and they loved you back.

I still enquired, where in Jagdalpur? Near to Moti talab para. This question somewhat sounded cheesy to her and she retorted with a top up of enquiry more than inquisitiveness in her voice. She asked, did I belong to Jagdalpur? No, my good friend is from Jagdalpur.

In the last two minutes I was thinking more about Jagdalpur and the people I knew from Jagadalpur. I realized I was barely appreciating the attention of this woman and almost engrossed imagining the streets and nooks and crannies of this small town. The school, where it would have been located, how kids would have conveyed to the school, by cycle, on foot, dads took them to schools on scooters or rickshaws? The days of rain and the wintry nights, how would all things be in that place, what sort of houses people had and what rituals and beliefs they followed. How school going girls tackled senior boys in the streets and how big brothers came to rescue. I wished I knew everything. 

By now our power packed Vikram had cruised its bumpy ride in to the city. I was out from my imaginary rummaging of Jagdalpur. She alighted a mile before Har ki Puadi. I wished to make a last eye contact. I avoided.

She made a slow movement out of the vikram, she was almost sixty and her husband who sat beside her was perhaps her age or a few years senior.

She left with him and I left with the vikram.