Jab we met (my version)…

I ran from the ticket reservation counter at Nizamuddin towards the train shoving people aside and yelling, “hato. Train chhut jayega”. This dramatic Jab We Met scenario was because I had exactly 3 minutes to catch my train to Punjab. And why was I off to the Poonjab?

To look for dead fish. Dead fish in sewage to be precise. My first trip to the Poonjab was all about dead fish that had popped up dead (obviously) in the canals taking water from the Sutlej river. The canals are a source of drinking water for a bunch of villages and towns in two states. So at the confluence of the Beas and Sutlej the river is dammed and water siphoned off into 2 canals. The confluence is also an important wetland and is a wildlife sanctuary (one of the few in the state of no forests). The wetland is called Harike, marked on the map by a hamlet of dhabas.

Now that you have the geography clear (if you are anal about it, you could google), I was off to Amritsar and Harike because this Times of India guy had reported the dead fish from nearby Faridkot town (which drinks the canal water). So off I went to check this out. Since it was all last minute I left early one morning at 5 in the morning for the railway station, reached there with 45 minutes to spare, hoping to get a general ticket, only to find two very long queues. With no prospect of getting a ticket in time, I contemplated just jumping into the train and paying the extra fine for traveling without a ticket. Then I found out that the fine was 10 times the ticket cost. I didn’t think my office would appreciate reimbursing that – certainly the accounts guy would not find dead fish worth it. So instead I tried that age old Indian trick of jumping the line with the added twist of looking like a lost female. That didn’t work either. Then my luck changed…this guy in front of me created a third queue and then suddenly barged into the first queue and got tickets. He had promised to get my ticket too – he was trying for the same train as me. So the next thing I know, he’s turning around and saying run, I’ve got them. And so that started my ‘Jab we met’ moment.

The train journey to Amritsar ranks as one of the worst ones ever. It was blazing hot and the coach was packed and I didn’t eat anything so I was little crazy with the heat and lack of food. Not to mention the fat Punju lady who kindly made space for me on her reserved seat, but insisted on talking to me in Punjabi which I only half understood (the Punjus in the family can take a bow, obviously the proximity has had effect). The journey was so bad that I couldn’t muster the energy to check out the Golden Temple or anything else in the city for that matter. It was all I could do to drag myself to the PCO and call all my contacts.