Trips around Kolkata

A new vehicle always seems to make the owner open to suggestions involving long rides. Same was the case with me when I agreed to suggestion from a colleague of mine, that I should visit a temple close to his home, which is around 20 - 25 km from the place I stay, to do the pooja for new bike, so I promptly kept logic on side table and agreed as if there were no temple in the locality I am staying in.

Anyway it wasn't such a bad decision after all, the route to his place, unlike most of kolkata roads, have good broad roads, where I can actually reach the speeds this "mean machine" is actually made for. Although this being a new bike and as advised by the showroom mechanic, should not cross the 40 kmph mark till the first service, I was restraining myself and driving at just 60.

Crossing second hoogly bridge for the first time was a great feeling, its connected to roads through some crisscross of flyovers and have a good height which makes the crossing this bridge even better, feels like you are on top of some tall building. The cable stayed structure adds to the thrill.

the next day was also off and as usual I had nothing to do, so mullah went to masjid I mean city centre; there again got bored. At this point there was one spark in my tubelight with a pop-up saying "why not explore some new markets in kolkata" . Now the only route I know was to reach gariahat . After going off the route for about 1 -2 kms and then coming back I finally reached the place. The boring feeling still not leaving me, I decided to explore more. A few more turns later I found myself standing close to the rabindra sadan metro station. After this I took a left turn and an incident* later I was at park street. Now this was unbelievable for me; here I was thinking I'll have to tag along a friend who knows the route to this place and will have to plead with him to come with me here for atleast n times before I could remember the route, and now here I am actually at park street and all I had to do to reach here was loose myself on the road and just keep going with the flow/traffic.

*Leaders don't follow the crowd they make their own roads. This quote have one exception "Kolkata traffic". One must always follow the crowd never take a turn that no one else is taking as that might lead into the long arms of law ie the traffic police. So as I was just flowing with the flow, got another spark in my tubelight to take some turn other than the usual flow of traffic and no later than when I realized my fault and stood there wondering what to do next; a dark tall and not handsome man dressed in white uniform just appeared from nowhere and grabbed me by the hand. He said something in Bengali first, waited for a reply, looked at my confused face and said "yaha kaha ja rahe ho dikhta nahi ki no entry hai" and pointed me to a board which was all messed up, some heman or any other big bang man must have played with it in a show of strength, anyways there was this board which in its previous life must read "no entry". Next thing I know I was handling over my driving license to this new guy, who again seemed to have appeared from thin air. Next the two guys were explaining the process to me, which according to them you get a traffic ticket, your vehicle will be taken to nearest police station and you need to pay up a hefty fine before you could go. This is very painfull and lengthy process and you end up paying a lot for that to happen to you. In the whole explanation the emphasis was on a fine of Rs 2000/-. All along that I was just going through the drill of being an innocent idiot making repeated use of phrases/words like "sir" , "pehli galti samajhkar maaf kar deejiye" , "nayi bike" etc etc. So finally after a lot of bargaining I was able to convince them to leave me for a fine of Rs100, which I was asked to submit under a hat that was lying on a table (to give it a dramatic feel I guess).

I feel I did not get the good bargain in the end, my doubts were first aroused when one of the guys instead of looking at me like some kind of plague to the society while I was leaving after making the "payment", actually thanked me and told me that his brother has same name as me. May be this was one of his ways to get back at his brother, while he cant afford to be another praveen mahajan.