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Road to everywhere
THERE?S prose, there?s poetry. In abundance. Intertwined, one imperfect without the other. Words surge. But abruptly, there?s silence. Kalpana Ghai, flipping over 10x12 glossy frames in her swish living room in Sector 3, Chandigarh, is suddenly bereft of words.
THERE’S prose, there’s poetry. In abundance. Intertwined, one imperfect without the other. Words surge. But abruptly, there’s silence. Kalpana Ghai, flipping over 10x12 glossy frames in her swish living room in Sector 3, Chandigarh, is suddenly bereft of words. One minute she's chatting nineteen-to-a-dozen, the next moment words escape her. “It happens when I talk of Mansarovar,” she says wryly of the 17-day journey where the now-languorous, now-treacherous topography left her gobsmacked. Temporarily, she’d thought — two years later, the situation persists. “Mansarovar was an astonishing experience. But the journey was overwhelming,” she repeats. Ghai, who’d staunchly believed Nicholas Roerich’s colourful rendition of the Himalayas was a figment of his feral imagination, couldn’t hide her delight. “There were purple, blue, red mountains en route,” she’s incredulous.
On mountains, Itinderjit Singh Kaleka, Mohali-based industrial consultant, could pen his own book of poetry. He’s drunk on Leh. “Paradise,” he shakes his head in amazement. A largely ochre landscape where the colour of the gushing river waters changes religiously with the change in the hues of the lofty mountains — auburn now, red then, blue now. Juxtaposed with a startling azure sky and an eerie quietude, the beauty of the landscape was etched in his memory. Forever.
Mohali to Leh: endless hours of navigating through craggy mountains, treacherous passes and routes where you make your own road — wouldn’t you rather fly, avoid the dust and the grime? “And miss all this? Nah,” he laughs in mock amazement.
Period.
Ordinary folk, perhaps, wouldn’t understand this strange wanderlust. Ask the Road People and they’ll burst into poetry — of roads and routes. They believe the journey is better than the destination. That’s why they take the road.
Call of the road
“Hell, I discovered myself.” This clear-cut one-liner comes from Jyotika Sharma, 27, Jalandhar-based software engineer. Till about five years ago — “or till I married Sharad,” she grins — the road was the road. Just that. Metalled at places, a dirt track at others but pot-holed mostly. In these years, she’s not only had her introduction to the road, she’s also discovered things about herself she wouldn’t have otherwise. “That I can stay without going to the loo for up to six hours,” and she bursts into a peel of laughter. That was three winters ago — on road to Nagpur, there came a stretch “where there were no dhabas, no bushes I could conveniently dive behind… just nothing.” She simply held herself and prayed.
On a serious note, she talks of “new facets, which come to fore when you are in a difficult situation”.
The road, you see, is a teacher too.
Let’s Go is Maruti Alto’s successful advertising punchline — it’s also, admittedly, the Kaleka family codeword for a trip. “I just have to say those words and my wife and son are ready,” says I.S. Kaleka, who gets a call from the road every couple of weeks. “Well, our son’s studying in Ajmer," explains wife Gurpreet Kaleka of the number of journeys to this Rajasthan town. Actually, they blame it all on their silver-grey Qualis, which has weathered all terrains. “It’s so comfy, so smooth on roads — driving is a pleasure,” sighs Kaleka.
Different people, different times, different situations — the road is the only connection. More than two decades ago, well-known Chandigarh-based rallyist Shashi Garcha took off for the unknown terrain of Europe on his bike. Dr Rahul Chauhan may not have steered his bike through this territory but ask him about Indian mountains, plateaus and plains and he'll tell you some stories. “When the road calls, car or bike, it doesn’t matter,” says this Shahzadpur, Ambala-based doctor, who's found a happy companion for the road in his wife. “All we take along are maps and lots of enthusiasm.”
They come back rejuvenated, ready to take life head-on. “Driving in areas where you are one with nature is a calming experience,” agrees Sanjay Midha, a Ludhiana businessman who takes off in his newly-acquired Travera “at least once a month”.
Discovery of India
Far from the snug confines of homes, the road takes you places. Some expected, some unexpected. “Discovery of India? You can say that again,” Manik Reikhy, Ludhiana-based rallyist, laughs a throaty one. Rallying with J-K Tyres may have kept him away from home for interminable periods of time but “I loved every minute on the road”. And he rewinds to the Cochin to Munnar drive — his dream sequence. “It starts from the ocean — deep blue, clear and placid. And you drive into the hills, the drive is punctuated with waterfalls… and then you drive into immaculately barbered tea-gardens.”
Another of Manik’s favourite drive is to Dalhousie and Manali. “I’ve been there so many times, yet the landscape never fails to overwhelm me,” he says.
The Kalekas, interestingly, take pride on making roads and finding new routes en route to a destination. “Name one town in Rajasthan and I'll tell you five different approach routes,” says Kaleka, whose tryst with the road has left him richer in experiences. “We like to believe we're discovering India by ourselves — the road is only a metaphor.”
The road’s a metaphor — but what do you say when there is no road, when you have to make your own road. Kalpana Ghai, appropriately bestowed with the sobriquet of ‘woman on wheels’ for driving a trailer from Chicago to Florida during her student days in US, besides other road-related exploits, still believes the Mansarovar odyssey “was truly extraordinary”.
The drive, from Kodari on the border of Nepal and Tibet, was hazardous — interspersed with huge landslides, bridges caving in and raging snow-storms. The landscape was as incredible: “One minute, there were sand-dunes, miles away mountains loomed, with bursts of azure in water bodies. You had to touch to see whether they were for real.”
For Kalpana, an Army officer’s daughter who happily traipsed across India, has seen people and places. But nothing prepared her for first sighting of Mansarovar. “This huge ocean of blue water, placid now, wavy next second and surrounded by snow-peaks of the Kailash range — it was a profound experience,” she says quietly. She still quotes William Blake: “To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.”
The quiet magnificence of the rugged terrain humbled her. “The road took me there.”
Prof Birinder Pal Singh of Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Punjabi University, Patiala, loves the road for another reason: for introducing him to new people, new cultures. The gypsy-feet professor frequently takes the ribbon-road road to the mountains of HP. “As a sociologist, the whole idea is to meet people, understand their culture and their lifestyle. You fly and you miss out on all that.”
Sense of freedom
The road, unlike other modes of travel, is flexible - drive at will, change the course at will and stop at will. As the Kalekas, ever-ready for an adventure, tell: “Planned itinerary is not for us. If we’re driving through a certain area, we like to comb it with a fine toothcomb.”
In short, the highway is not for them. “The road is,” they grin. They’ve had some memorable experiences: like the time near Jaislamer when the Qualis tyres sunk into a sand-dune. “People came from nowhere to help us out,” they remember. Later, they provided a guide “to help us locate a fort in the vicinity”.
In India, where train reservations need to be made much in advance while flying still remains an option for the privileged, it's easy to understand why the road is so popular. “It’s the flexibility that the road provides that I love,” say Amrita and Aman Khanna — their sleek, black Scorpio has traversed across sand-dunes, mountains and driven next to the mighty sea also.
In the car, on the road, a holiday begins as soon as you vroom out from the driveway. “There’s an inexplicable feeling of gay abandon when on the road,” exults Jyotika, already drawing up a plan to drive to Srinagar-Kargil. “There are no deadlines to meet — it’s you and the road.”
Downslides of the road?
Like roads, experiences are sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy. However, therein lies the addiction. “It’s the challenge,” says Manik, who’s Hyundai Accent, he sincerely believes, has gone through more pot-holed roads than any other vehicle. But a frown creases his forehead when he talks about the “driving sense of Indians. Drivers, here, have no respect for others”.
Aman Khanna agrees with him in toto. “On highways, especially, speeding seems to be a game with people — there’s no respect for life.” Wife Amrita, however, disagrees. “I think the highways and the mountain roads are much safer than the city roads.”
For her, the downslide of frequent road trips is worrying about a “decent place to sleep over at night”. Sleep is a problem with I.S. Kaleka too. But in a totally different context. “Driving on the quadrilateral is a pleasure — it’s so smooth I’m scared it’ll lull me to sleep.” His road-grouse is for toll-tax barriers. “Too many,” he complains, “and you get caught in traffic snarls. Getting mugged en route? It only happens in movies,” he assures. He’s been warned enough times on the safety aspect “but there’s never been a problem,” he assures.
Kalpana Ghai, once again, gives a ‘true’ perspective to the downslide. “Washrooms,” she announces, “when I came back from Mansarovar, I wanted to hug my washroom — I missed it so much.”
Otherwise, it’s the road to take.
