It’s a wonderful spring morning. Getting up from bed early had never felt this sweet. Something must be terribly wrong somewhere. That’s the only thing that can explain such a strange behavior from me being happy to wake early. It’s more unusual than a cat enjoying the first monsoon drizzle.
Wondering about these, I began yet another day of my office life. Brushing, bathing, freshening, dressing and finally getting off for office. I had hardly started my pc in office when my phone rang. I answered with utmost carelessness and ease. What I heard made me alert and disbelieve my ears. Jesus! Is it possible? The said, “you have been selected, for the duty of micro observer in the state election phase of your district.”
It hit me like a bolt of lightning. “Election duty amidst such political turmoil going on in my state!” thought I. “Could my HOD not resist this much pressure from top?” All these thoughts made me go crazy but there was nothing I could possibly do. The list of selected officers has come from the election commission and district magistrate. There’s no changing it. In brief, there’s no escape.
The schedule handed over to me was as below:
· Day 1: training at P.K. College Contai.
· Day 2, 3: micro observer duty at south Contai.
So like an old devil fearing approaching doom, I waited for day 1 until it finally approached. It was a splendid April morning. Eight friends including me had hired an innova car for the trip. We started off at 9:30 hrs sharp from our estate. The journey began quite casually except that the driver was a roadside biker boy who hardly knew the difference between a gearless scooter and a big car like innova. He was keener on overtaking bumpers from sideways than on slowing down at speed breakers and indeed got us into a very uncomfortable ride. That aside, we didn’t have much problem in reaching the destination.
On reaching there, we knew what crowd could be like. There was no place to put foot on and they said we’re supposed to cross this crowd and reach the stage in the centre for getting the ids stamped. Cross the crowd! I mean come on; we’d be in a stampede our selves before getting ids stamped. But again, listeners are so few indeed. So we, with loads of efforts, managed to cross this ocean of people to reach the central stage and got our ids stamped. So far I felt proud of the huge population of my country. But now, all of a sudden I so regretted that huge number and disregarded them like my worst enemies. “What are so many people doing here? Who knows?”
Finally, the jostle ended and we were asked to assemble in different class rooms for training. We did so. A trainer approached and started shooting his entire election knowledge data base at us. I don’t know what we were supposed to do with so much knowledge. What does he think? We’re to continue in administrative service and election process forever! But the exasperation was interrupted by the intrusion of a very hot tempered IAS officer who’ supposed to be heading the procedure. He was seemingly very dissatisfied with the training imparted to us by the instructors and hence decided, instead of training us himself, to rebuke and yell at the instructors for half an hour. Apart from wasting time, this gesture had other ill effects too. After the training was over, the instructors were afraid and reluctant to release us, thinking the man would return again and yell back. So this wasted even more time.
Finally, after all this hustle bustle and its and bits, the training program ended. And it was lunch time. Such an amazing place we were in, at 13:30 hours, all local shops and hotels had closed and after about an hour and half of wandering all around, all we could locate was a small stall with few chapattis and lentils. We had that and set off for a nearby sea tourist spot about 30 kms away, more out of frustration and disgust than for excitement. The place is called mandarmani (although there’s nothing mani or money about that place).
It took us about 40 minutes to reach mandarmani from Contai. One unique thing about this place is that, there’s road only up to the point we reach there. After that there’s only beach and car needs to drive on the beach for few kms to get to the hotel. Now, for all people who managed to find free time to read this blog of mine, any place with any peculiarity has people finding ways to exploit that peculiarity for selfish gains or profit (in professional language). Mandarmani is no exception. There are a whole bunch of local people who dig considerable portion of the beach sand and fill them with loose sand, so that it isn’t recognizable as a pit or trap unless scrutinized carefully. When passing vehicles fall into these created pits they charge huge amounts of money to pull the heavy vehicles out of the pits and thus make a handsome profit. So we carefully drove across the beach to avoid such traps and managed to reach a nearby restaurant.
The restaurant was a decent one. We sat in the lawn and had chicken fry, mutton kabab, fried pomfret and other snacks for the evening. We were so full. Finally, it was post twilight, darkness fell. And thus we headed back home. Oh no. Not so fast. We first must drive back safely across the beach and what’s that? Roll, slip and thud. There we were, in our innova, fallen in one of those trick pits on the beach. Now what? What the hell now? Eight of us, with all our might and toil, pushed the vehicle as hard as we could but only to see it wouldn’t move an inch. And to add to our honour, we were head to toe in mud and beach sand.
Head to toe in mud and knee deep into trouble and to add to the situation, it was high tide. So we had to negotiate with local people. They asked for 5000 bucks. Helpless, we pretended being college students on picnic. I understand their difficulty in believing that but we could make them drop down to 2000 after 1 hr of negotiation. Then about 20 people pulled the innova out and we got into it, all laden and battered with mud. This way we headed home. Only to realize few mins later that our driver had drunk and his driving skills showed new colours every second.
With our eyes closed and prayers for survival in mind, finally, we reached our place at about 9:30 at night. We were not hungry and so directly headed to our quarters. On reaching there, I was in no mood for doing anything else. It was a hard day and I retired on bed. Tired and tensed about day 2 and 3. Lets see what they have in store for us.
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