FROM GUYS TO MENS!!!!...... Part3

Continued from FROM GUYS TO MENS!!!!........Part2

I saw the city. It is a part of the National Capital Region, so I expected the city to be green and clean, nicely managed traffic and roads as good as an airport's runway. But, they all turned out to be Mungeri lal ke haseen sapne. Actually, it turned out to be a typical Haryanwi city. It had all the usual Indian elements like packed state transport buses, autos, hassled traffic cops, tiny road side paanwalaas selling bidis or cigrattes etc, broken roads (no points for guessing that they were filled with muddy water and presented a home to all type of insects and mosquitoes), and of-course quite a number of malls (a feature typical of the NCR cities). The walls were plastered with a lot of film posters, mostly Haryanwi. The heroines of which were ravishing beauties, good enough to cause inferiority complex to miss worlds and universes (being devoid of them during my stay at college :(, I noticed them first ;) ). On the contrary, the heroes standing beside them gave me the feeling that even my uncles and cousins have a brighter career in film industry. All in all, however I had traveled less than 200 k.m. from my home town, it all felt different.

Just then, when I was busy noticing the city, the bike came to a sudden halt. I looked around to find a lot of vehicles waiting, thus assumed it to be a red light junction. Unlike my expectation, the automatic red light system was not present. Of it, what remained were 3 broken or bent pillars painted in discoloring yellow. The remaining components had been taken away and utilized as dustbins or water containers by the road side chaiwalaas and dwelling needies. Then I thought of the traffic hawaldaar and stared around to locate him. I eventually found him standing on an elevated platform covered with jaalis on all sides in the center of the crossing and giving directions. The platform was surrounded by restless drivers and riders who have come that far from the stopping lines. They were so restless that it felt to me that if not allowed to go at the very moment, they would pull the innocucous traffic hawaldaar down and beat him to death. Anyways, we were then allowed to move on. We turned right and got on the life-line of the city, NH-2, The Mathura Road.

My company (nothing like that I own any, it refers to the one was to join), was also located on the Mathura Road too. I, with the help of jiyaji, no doubt, started to locate the very few land-marks that led to the company. The red light we turned from was Bata-Mod. Then came one of the most famous college of the state, YMCA. It was a huge campus with boundary wall itself lasting for around 100 meters.

I had seen on Google maps that the company was very near to the college. I felt excited and nervous too, I dunno why. My heart beat started to rise. In less than a minute, we were in front of the company gates. I asked jiyaji to stop for a moment. I carefully got down from the bike, saw the fairly large building. It was partially hid by a thick row of trees planted along the front boundary of the premises. I crossed the road and reached near one of the company gates. Then i dunno what came to my mind, I bent down to touch the road leading to the company with my right hand and then my forehead. May be I wanted the eternal onlooker of the company since its beginning to bless me for my stay there and make my decision of joining there to come out good. Then I came back to the bike and we moved on, to reach didi's home within 10 minutes. We unloaded the bags. I took a light shower and had some refreshment.

I was provided a room in a hotel for the time I could find some suitable place to stay in the city, but on the urges of didi and jiyaji decided to stay there for the night. However the next day's schedule was to be discovered so we decided to visit the hotel to find out whether any other fellow trainee had come to join with me.

We went to the allocated hotel, Hotel Mahalaxmi and met two more of the fellow trainees. They were K.Karthik from MIT Manipal and Akash Gupta from NIT Surathkal. They both seemed to be South Indians to me. Later on I discovered that my perception about the former was correct however the second one turned out to be a Bengali.

We were to be at the Delhi based Head Office the following day by 09:00 A.M. And also a pick up had been facilitated by the company for the same.Estimating to take around 1 Hr. to reach Delhi from there we decided to meet at around 07:30 A.M. the following morning, bade each other good night and dispersed. On getting back to didi's home, I made a mental note to get up at 05:30 the following morning to avoid inconvenience caused due to getting late and went off to rest after a tiring day.