Ma! Let Me Be Born...
The trip to Jhansi nearly didn’t happen. Relying on the self proclaimed largest radio taxi network in the country Meru cab, was not such a great idea I realized, as I stood waiting for the taxi to show itself, vacillating between the extremes of anger and nervousness and feeling the biting cold seep through all my insulations. It was 5:30 in the morning, and despite frequent calls to the cab’s control room, I didn’t see the cab anywhere in sight, until it arrived, tearing through the surreal fog like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie, with barely 20 minutes to departure time. But make it I did, thanks to the energy levels of two coolies who appropriated my rather small pieces of luggage between them as soon as my cab drove into the station ramp. They ran, like twin heroes in a Hindi film, undeterred by baggage checking machines or the crowds on the platform or even the inexorable tick tock of the clock ...