At Home in East ~ Agartala, Tripura
Having
finished the recruitment process at a college, I was getting ready to leave for
home. It was about 7 in the evening. When I saw a message blinking on my cell
phone from my colleague and friend, Mr. Pai asking me to call back immediately,
I knew I should start packing. I called him up and he said that I need to
travel to Agartala the next day morning. To be honest, it took me sometime to place
the state on the map. All I knew was that it is in the East.
The next day, one of the connecting
flights got delayed and I had to stay the night in Calcutta. When the hotel
manager gave me the same room that I had stayed in, the last couple of times, I
knew that Calcutta was slowly becoming a friend from an acquaintance. On board
the flight to Agartala, I couldn’t stop admiring the landscape. There were little
water bodies strewn all over amidst lush green patches. The moment I landed, I
got a call from a spirited young student, Gangu who was to surprise me time and
again over the next two days with his wisdom beyond his age. Enroute the
campus, we talked about almost anything and everything under the sun. How
Agartala has a large Bengali population to How people tend to think of it as a
much smaller city than it actually is to How your phone can go on International
roaming due to the Bangladesh border which is about 3 kms away to how sparsely
populated the city is!
The roads and the landscape reminded
me so much of my home, Kerala. The similarities were striking. Vast fields,
little streams, winding roads in between, cattle roaming about and the tress
that lined parts of roads – all of it reminded me of Kerala. The moment I
reached the institute(NIT Agartala), I knew I was to stand corrected about many
of my stereotypes. To begin with, the infrastructure of the institute was really
robust. The college was on an expansion spree to the extent that one of its
buildings was turning out to be the largest in the city. What interested me was
the fact that local labor wasn’t easily available. They were few in number and they were mostly
interested in Agriculture and fishing. Every home had a small pond in their
backyard.
The next day, I woke up with a
start. It was as bright as if it were 10 in the morning, thanks to the proximity
to Arunachal Pradesh. It was only 7 o clock and I stepped out to the balcony of
the guest house where I stayed in. A spectacular back water view welcomed me.
The picture here doesn’t even begin to do justice to its beauty when seen live.
What did not quite go as per my expectations was the weather in Agartala. It
was quite humid. But I hear it was pouring the days before and the days after I
left. May be it was East’s way of making me feel at home. I must say it did make
me feel like I were in Chennai of March J.
Once the drive was over, I retired
to the guest house. The placement coordinators joined me for dinner. A bunch of
bright young guys – Alam, Nipun, Gaurav and Gangu. Their clarity of how to go
about life reminded me of how much in contrast how I was when compared to them.
To say I was clueless at that age would be an understatement. I think their sensibility
and sensitivity came from the situations that they were brought up in. Gaurav’s
father was in BSF due to which he has travelled far and wide. Nipun lives in a
joint family and the kind of learning he has had from that ecosystem is
tremendous. Alam who comes from a large family with many elder brothers and
sisters would have understood the meaning of selflessness from that upbringing.
Gangu had his way with words and getting things done which reminded me time and
again that this guy like three of his friends is going to do really well in
Life.
Alam and I talked over dinner and he
said how happy his family was with his job. His elder brother called from
Sharjah and talked for almost an hour and how emotional all of them were. When
he said that he wished if his father were there to see this achievement of his,
I also had to fight my eyes from getting moist. Then I realized yet again that
I was doing a job which had the power to change people’s lives. At the same
time, I reminded myself that it was not I who was changing their lives, I am
just a miniscule part of it.
We went on a walk around the campus.
It was close to midnight. The night there was so refreshingly different from
what I am used to. The silence was strikingly conspicuous. The moonlight was indulgently
doing graffiti with the huge trees on the lush lawns. The lake resembled a
canvas when it reflected the moon in all its glory. For as far as my eyes could
see, it was nature at its best.
The next day morning, Alam and I
started for airport. The number of cars on the road was countable. It was so
relieving to not having to manoeuver through clogged traffic. I badly wanted to
take a piece of Agartala with me. We chanced up on an art gallery on the way
and I picked up a statuette which looked like a woman at work from that part of
our country. When I reached the airport and was about to board, I found myself
strangely going to miss Agartala. In two
days, I had grown fond of this place and its people. It is for a reason that
they say one cannot help but fall in love with East once you visit that place.
Arun
Babu.
