I had always wanted to make a trip back, both
as an academic interested in engaging with BITS students
and faculty, and as an alum easily given to nostalgia.
The idea for the trip took shape in December 2005
after meeting with some BITS faculty at at conference
in Goa, where in particular, I met my host-to-be,
the Chair of Computer Science.
The timeframe was to be approximately Feb or March 2006,
with the exact dates to be determined. Finally, after meeting
various commitments in Jan and Feb, I got around to seriously
considering the journey to Pilani. Many scheduling
stars had to align: availabilities of my host,
the BITS leadership whom I wanted to meet,
and accompanying friends. Finally, after the dust
settled, everything fell into place for a trip
March 10-12.
I took a bus from Jaipur, where I happened to be
staying at the time. At first, I thought I should take
the Rajasthan Roadways bus for old times sake, but I was
lured by the prospect of a more comfortable seat in a
modern private bus. I was surprised to discover that
privately operated buses left from Jaipur to Pilani
every 20 minutes. Who are all these people travelling
to Pilani, I wondered? I still don't know.
The bus itself was a surprise: one of those new sleeper
buses. The right side of the bus has comfortable, airplane-like
seats above which are tiny compartments for sleeping while
the left side has sleeper compartments both at the floor level and
above. Initially, I thought I would clamber up into one of
the sleepers and doze my way through the five hour ride.
But the sleeper space seemed a little cramped and so I
settled for a seat. Good thing I went for a seat, for
I discovered how the profit motive crammed the bus with
fare-paying passengers. By the time we reached Jhunjhunu,
each sleeper compartment, designed for a single person,
had squeezed in three or four. Only the seated folks
were spared the insistent "Hey, make space for me" nudge from
boarding passengers.
Unlike the state run buses, this bus didn't really stop anywhere
except to pick up passengers. Sadly, I couldn't get a chai
anywhere, much less the "matka" chai I remembered from my
very first ride in 1980. Outside, the landscape looked more or
less the same. Perhaps it was my imagination but the towns
seemed more prosperous. At least, there were more billboards,
many of which advertised the cellphones that are
now ubiquitous.
I was pleased to see both students and very traditional
looking villagers chattering into cellphones.
A small digression here. I've been impressed with the
higher quality of ads in India these days. Nothing
so underscores that impression as the "aam junta"
cellphone ads by Airtel. Each ad shows a scene from
rural or lower middle-class urban India in which a
phone rings and a group of people (aam junta) try
to figure out whose phone it is. The phone always
turns out to belong to the last person you'd think
would be able to afford one. The ads are very desi
and very funny. End of digression.
One big change
all over rural India is an unfortunate one: paper and plastic
litter just about every road, sometimes in astonishing amounts.
The civic infrastructure simply doesn't include trash removal.
It pained me to see picture-perfect farms along whose bordering roads
were strewn all manner of plastic rubbish, from paan-parag
(the most common) to milk packets (milk products are almost exclusively
distributed in plastic bags).
The quality of the road itself was reasonably good up to Chirawa.
Not your four-lane divided highway that connects Jaipur and Delhi,
but a single road wide enough to avoid
playing chicken with drivers coming from the opposite side.
After Chirawa it was atrocious, with some lagoon-sized
potholes that were fast filling up with the pouring rain.
Yes, returning after 20 years, I picked one of the
two days in a year that it rains in Pilani.
Next: Arrival