Winter In North India

Laitonjam Valentina *

Winter woes across North India

So often I've heard of the dreaded cold of North India, I've read a lot about it in newspapers but never have I got the opportunity to experience it, or should I say, all this while I've tried to escape from it, I never tried to feel it, the bone-chilling cold or deadly icy wind that sweeps the poor as they say.

Well, I got to witness this dreaded facet of nature during my Masters in North India, Uttarkhand to be more precise. I was ordained by my Guide to visit Agricultural Universities at Ludhiana and Hisar for checking out references for my Master's thesis from the library of the said institutions.

At first I hesitated as I had to travel alone and I just wanted to escape the cold. An important realisation dawned on me during the entire episode of my journey – I've long lost the privilege to say "No" to certain things that I want to refrain from such as this. This came more like a duty and compulsion rather than an opportunity or learning experience. I, however, took it as the latter for the sake of my contentment.

So saying, I worked out a careful plan, made some important phone calls to make arrangements for my stay when I reach the destination. It isn't an easy task for a girl to travel alone in North India at night in the 1st week of January. Lucky for me that one of my friend's boyfriend was also travelling to the same place. I grabbed the opportunity and clung on to him. Better travel with him than travelling alone.

Throughout the entire journey we kept ourselves warm by drinking hot tea at every possible outlet. We were strangers until we met and travelled together. He and I kept chatting of irrelevant and unnecessary things as I thought that if I stay quite may be it is impolite and he may feel uncomfortable.

Perhaps he also felt the same and we chatted away nonchalantly just to keep the surrounding friendly and less tense. There we sat on the seat of the Inter-state bus, our legs folded to shield ourselves from the cold, wrapping ourselves with our respective blankets except for our eyes and nose and ridiculous Hindi movie songs on the background like Hum dono ke dosti pyar pyar me badal gaye, Jane jigar jane man tujko hai meri kasam…... That must have been quite a sight.

At that very moment I felt like "What the hell am I doing....having tea in a strange place with my friend's boyfriend?" Even when we wanted to use the restroom it was awful to talk about it. Even now as I pen down my experience, a smile caught my lips.

He held my rucksack when I went to bathroom and vice versa. I paid his share as well (for using the toilet of course). Imagine all this incidents in normal circumstances in broad daylight. But it felt so right then.

Finally we reached Ludhiana and bargained hard with the tempowala to take us till the University. He charged us 100 bucks at first till girl's hostel and finally agreed at 70 after a show. I don't understand why all this unnecessary drama when he had to finally agree.

After reaching girl's hostel the tempowala refused to take my friend till the boy's hostel as we didn't mentioned it when we bargained. He is a clever man I should say.

I felt bad as my friend had to walk another 300 metre to reach his hostel. I wished the Tempowala didn't get passenger for the rest of the week for all that he put us through and for deserting my friend.

I reached my friend's room and targeted her bed straight. It was blissful to stretch myself after such a tiring journey and I was lulled to sleep instantly.

I woke up 2 hours later and realised that my friends had already prepared lunch for me. How sweet of them!! The world is definitely a better place because of such wonderful friends or should I say friend's boyfriends!! :)