My Perfect Road Trip with Time Machine
Let me go back in time for some time, by pressing some knobs and levers on the time machine.
Great! The knobs and levers worked fine and here I am back in the days when we were a few years in our career and joined evening classes to do an MBA. Although secretly each one of us was hoping that we will have some girls in the class, not realizing that the sex ration in evening classes in those days was worse than day time Haryana.
Slowly the 5 of us started bonding and the bonds became so strong that Webster’s dictionary decided to change the definition of Chuddy Buddy and give our group as an example. I think it will be prudent to introduce you to the group.
- HARRY: Our self-styled policemen, by virtue of his grandfather retiring from CBI, he considered it to be his birthright to flaunt his CBI connection to anybody who was willing to listen. ( Do I need to tell you he is a typical Delhi Walla)
- MOTA: The geek of the group, with single-minded goal of going to America, with MBA just being a stepping stone for his ample body to fly to greener pastures with a green card.
- AJ: A the self-styled Romeo, who could barely walk as he kept on falling in love with every seventh girl he saw.
- BANSI: Mr. Moneybags of the group, in whose open back jeep we crisscrossed north India when we had time from job and classes.
- ME: I was in Sales in those days, hoping to jump to management once the course was over.
But the boring topics of MBA were too much for us, and almost every other day we will plan our next road trip, that totally depended on Bansi’s ability to smuggle the topless jeep from his dad’s factory. The jeep was used to ferry construction material in the remote village, and on weekend when his father was busy he would smuggle it out.
We made a lot of last-minute trips, when suddenly Bansi will call that he has the jeep and we can go to. These were times when we left everything, because Bansi could arrange the jeep. That rickety jeep covered a lot of roads with us, the palace in Alwar, the lake in Nainital, rock garden in Chandigarh and many other places. There was no agenda, and I remember once reaching Kaudiyala beyond Rishikesh, when we have started for Dehradun, but it did not matter as Kaudiyala was as good for us as Dehradun. Till date there is no consensus which wrong turn we took to reach Kaudiyala in place of Dehradun. We loved every part of Himalayas and visited some very remote places, and could easily have been one of the first few outsiders visiting those villages. We slept in the jeep or in temple verandas, took bath in streams and ate with locals in their homes or fields depending on time of day.
Ok it seems my coins in the time machine are all gone and I am back to present. But can anybody stop me to put more coins in the time machine and go to future? I want to bring back all 5 of us Chuddy Buddies together once again and take a road trip of life time.
No, it is not going to be a coming of age road trip like Dil Chahta hai as that, we did more than a decade ago, now it will be more of a time to reflect back. Talk about our success, failures, new friends that we have made and old girlfriends with whom we had one-sided affairs. I want to have a magic wand and bring all 5 of us in our customized Jugaad and go on a road trip deep into Himalayas. We will pack our Jugaad with relief material for Uttarakhand devastated by floods, and continue our journey till the road ends. We will not stop once the road vanishes and continue on Kuccha roads, as the Jugaad will continue on this apology of a road where the best of the SUV will fail. We will continue till our Jugaad will take us and the cell phones stop working. Then we will truly in our good old days, when each one of us wanted to do something for the world and save the planet. We never got to do it, and all our dreams of doing something for this world were restricted to write that annual check to save some tax, but now is our chance, now each one of us has a chance (and I just don’t mean me and my friends) to do something. This village where even the Jugaad will refuse to go further will be our destination and we will camp there for a few days. What will we do there? May be we will rebuild a school? Or help putting a roof back on some homes, yes planting some trees will sure be on our agenda. We may rebuild the washed terraced fields, and help to sow the seeds again. The possibilities are endless and we will know only once we reach there. I will ask Bansi to bring wholesale packs of medicines from his pharma factory, that we can stock the village with. We will continue to live in the village till our bodies exhaust, and our spirits soar. Our Jugaad will be our gift to our host village, which they can use later to take their produce to the town when their fields become productive again. Yes this is the road trip I want to take with my long-lost friends, spread across India and abroad.
Would it happen? I am not very optimistic as all of us are busy with our lives and have barely exchanged emails in last many years. But if I do get that magic wand this is the road trip I want to take, catch up with my old friends and rebuild a school in a remote Uttrakhand Village. That dear readers will be my way of returning something to the Hills that gave me some of my best memories in life and in the process we will have a road trip of a life time reliving our long gone past while building the future for a small hamlet in Himalayas.
This is my entry for ” The Perfect Road Trip” contest organized by Indiblogger and Ambipur check here for more: https://www.facebook.com/AmbiPurIndia
I hope you liked my perfect road trip down the memory lane as well as in future. Even if I can not collect all my friends from the past how about we teaming and doing this trip? Get in touch with me and we can make this trip for real!
Loved the idea of the magic wand and going back in time. And the trip sounds not only exciting but also one that talks of making a difference. Wish you could have this come true one day. All the best, desi 🙂
Thanks Arti
That’s a good one! Going back in time was always a dream to me even now! Even now I dream about going back to my childhood memories.. Nice article Prasad 🙂
Thanks Swathi.