Safar-The beginning

bhaskar sinha as 'rahi' and author of the incident.
Day-1


A day before, I made my hair cut and shaved twice for the first time in history to pack and polish myself for the tour ahead,” The Japan Tour.” This tour in my eyes was for sparkling few gems of memorable experience with the shower of happiness. And among them, few were neophytes like my first flight, first visa on my brand new passport and a 11-day consecutive ‘stay’ at 5-star hotel. Visit is not an appropriate word over here coz, i had been once to Park for Lunch, which is a famous 5star hotel in Kolkata.
I was picked by Shruti to the airport. After reaching, i with my luggage and Shruti came to the entrance. Three MaPoSe Jawan demanded ticket copy from us. I showed them mine. After two minutes of Goggling he asked my name,”Kya naam hai aapka”. Then he said “ticket mein naam kahaan likha hai.” Then I realised why he was searching something into my ticket copy.
I showed him my name in the copy, which was there next to the ticket number. He said,” naam likne se pehle name nahi likha hai, hum kaise pataa kare ge .“.Then after a breath he said again,”bolo main sahi bol raha hu na.” I said, “haan ji” and gave him a look of approval and arrived inside the airport.
There I went through every necessary check and finally got my boarding pass. The gate number as well as my seat number was 5B. The concept of gate 5B is extremely hilarious. The gate their had two panel. For more specialization they have named one panel A and another one B. They used to open only one panel of a gate for a time and announce like “boarding for Kingfisher flight no. XYZ has started, kindly reach Gate no. 5B.”
Our flight was damm 2 hrs late. There I realized that this problem not only resides in Indian railways but, it has few more homes and Domestic airlines was one among them. Kingfisher airlines - my first flight was 2 hrs late.
We made our self-comfortable and started a discussion on a topic “ Future of our batch mates ”.
Amid our discussion, a family came for a seat beside me, husband, his wife and me with five small children.
The No. 5 was too much into my life that day. Till now, I have mentioned it 3 times and
truly speaking, I thought that the eldest child of the family was not more than 5 year. Whole family members were going to Indore.
Shouting of kids gathered our attention then what I saw was unforgettable.
Mother of the 5 kids was pouring the content of a gutka kind sachet into her children in order to calm them. I looked at them nonplussed. Their Mother was in tees and jeans having no brand label on it and surely she was thinking herself to be like Zeenat Aman. Her husband was looking uncultured but confident about the money they were possessing.
Then my eyes went to the long thread of gutka type packs, twice a dozen packs were attached with each other, and their mother were distributing one or two among their children. Most importantly the parents were also enjoying the taste that the sachet contained. Both of them were chewing that stuff and accentuating in a tone like Amitabh Bachan produced after eating paan banarsi in the movie called “DON”. At that moment, I was filled with the tsunami of pride that my family, not as rich as them but have given me sets of discipline and memories, that guides my conduct, that defines my class.
I was irritated as they were throwing the wrappers here and there, despite the distance of use-bin being in inches.
I kept my self-busy and started our old topic of endless conversation.
After they went I saw the condition of the seats. It was as if I have entered Gaurav’s room.
Finally two added hours of waiting came to an end. And we started our journey, The Journey to Japan.

But, before boarding I checked the packs. In English it was written ”Kashmiri meetha”. The wrapper was empty so I was unable to gather an informative view of the material inside.

If any body has ever tasted that stuff, Please let me know what stuff is that all about.
bhaskrs@gmail.com