I'm a stranger here myself *

Dark clouds. A spate of black thunder with grease lightening. Power cut. The first drops of rain. The smell of wet earth. The red gulmohar in all its glory. Am I back to where I belong? Back to the city of Ranchi where I was born and brought up and spent the first twenty two years of my life.

Till about a decade back the first rains would have had me getting out of the house to get wet with my friends or to play football while it rained. My heart still wants to do the same but my mind prevails. At five kilograms less than a quintal, playing football while it rains is a pretty risky proposition.

And more than that who do I play football with? Everybody I knew in this city has moved on to a bigger city to earn a living. This is a city of people who are either under 18 or over 30. Everybody who could, has moved out.

The rains continue and the music playing on the satellite radio World Space more than makes up for lack of football. Kishore Kumar is singing “ Rim Jhim Girre Sawan”, the best ode ever composed for the rains. Just to deviate a little, the Farishta channel on World Space seems to be the only place in the world, where one does not run the risk of running into Himmesh Rishemmiya every five minutes. And that I tell you can be a big relief. As in how many times a day can you see a capless Himmesh bhai saying “ When there is faith there is no fear”. Whatever that is supposed to mean.

The rains stop. And my mother wants me to get some vegetables from Reliance Fresh. The local sabzi waala will not do for her any longer.

In the city I realise that telecom and insurance companies are the new Sachdeva PT college. They have taken over all the billboards in the city promising the world to the people. The time when Sachdeva PT College ruled the roost with its shoddy advertisements, promising graduation within one year seem to have long gone.

I deviate from the route and cross one of my two almamaters, in the city, St. Xavier’s College. It is here where I spent most of my time from 1993-1999, after leaving school, having practically disowned my parents during the period. After passing out in 1999, I have gone back to the college just once. I have great memories of the place and would like them to stay the way they are, unspoiled.

The college during my days was affiliated to the Ranchi University, which took four years to complete a three year graduation degree just because the exams were never held on time. The old timers told us that four years was really an improvement. The story goes that 1986-89 of Ranchi University passed out in December 1991, which was almost 2.5 years late.

Now Xavier’s I am told, is an independent entity which is allowed to conduct exams on its own. As a result, students enrolling for a three year course, pass out in three years. Good for them. But if you ask me now, with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight, whether the extra year in college was really worth it? I would say yes. The fun that I had for the time spent there had to come with some cost attached to it. The extra year was that cost.

One of the high points of studying ( or at least pretending to) at Xavier’s was the fact that 9 out of the 11 cinema halls in Ranchi were within a radius of two and a half kilometres (Shree Vishnu, Vasundra, Sandhya, Ratan, Welfare, Sujata, Mini Sujata, Plaza and Meenakshi). Back then 8 of these cinema halls were fully functional. Ratan had closed down in the late eighties and it still hasn’t opened after all these years. And the fact that a lot of good college time was spent there can be gauged from the fact that in the first two years I watched 42 movies during the time I should have been college listening to what the professors had to say. The fact that college was open 90 days a year meant that one averaged a movie every four days. The fact that ticket prices ranged from a minimum of Rs 3 to a maximum of Rs 7.25, did help. The choice is now severely limited for those studying at Xavier’s. Out of the eight theatres that were operational three ( Shree Vishnu, Welfare and Vasundra) have closed down. Single screen theatres are closing down and multiplexes are still to set in.

My thought process in broken as I see the red board of Reliance Fresh. Reliance Fresh has taken over this place. As I write this, I am told that there are eight stores already and a total of twenty stores have been planned. What it has done, other than ensuring that people get fresh fruits and vegetables at a less price, is put the middle men totally out of business. Someone out there was making loads of money because the supply chain wasn’t efficient. Now he is not.

As I go around the store, I realise that most vegetables cost less than Rs 10. My first impression is that the prices mentioned must be for 250 grams. So I look very carefully and see that all prices are for one kg. In Mumbai I pay the same price but for 250 grams. So you can very well imagine that a few middlemen in Mumbai must be making a lot of money. This makes me pray: Reliance Fresh come soon to Mumbai.

What these eight stores of Reliance Fresh have ensured is that all the local bazaars in the city have suddenly gone empty. When you can buy better vegetables at half the price in an air conditioned environment, why would anyone want to go to the local bazaar, trying to avoid muck and cow droppings, hoping not to be bitten by the stray dogs roaming all around the place, looking into the sky to ensure that the crow has not chosen your white shirt today to shit on and negotiating for a lower price, with the vegetable vendor, all at the same time. So Reliance Fresh has become a great leveller. Everybody is buying from Reliance Fresh. Right from the rickshawalla on the street to my parents. The commies should all love this. This just leaves me wondering what will happen, once Walmart comes.

Shopping done, I am back home and see my younger sister making a telephone call to book tickets in advance for a new movie. Now that’s progress. A city which never had any concept of advance booking now has tele-booking in place. The thrill of standing in a line before the movie started, not knowing whether you will get tickets is all over.

Back in the mid 90s the most expensive ticket used to cost a royal sum of seven rupees and twenty five paisa. The rule of the game back then was, you either saw the first day first show or you did not see the movie at all. And tickets always had to be bought from the ticket window and never in black because it wasn’t much fun.

Some of us would usually take responsibility to buy tickets and would queue up. Now queues, like promises, were meant to be broken because if one decided to follow the queue one would never get the ticket. People would keep breaking in and by the time you reached the ticket window, that is if at all you did, tickets would be over. And then the blackers would come in.

Given this one had to make way for oneself by whatever it took. There were times when I used to have a belt in my hand, just in case a fight broke out. And through all the agony and the pain once one reached the ticket window and got the tickets, it was an amazing feeling. Nothing can beat it. Unless until I decide and am able to climb the Everest.

We enter the theatre, and the movie plays, first time during my stay I get an impression that I am in familiar territory. The ticket prices may have gone up nearly five fold, but the seats are still the same. The promised air conditioning isn’t working as there is a power cut. The DTS-Dolby system is only switched on when a song plays. For the rest of the movie they seem to be using the four track stereophonic sound system that was put in place when Sholay was first released in 1975 and last overhauled when Maine Pyar Kiya played way back in 1989. Fifteen minutes into the movie and I still cannot make out what the characters are saying. Now that’s like the good old days. After half an hour of work like concentration, what the characters are saying becomes very clear.

During the course of the movie I realise that bed bugs are having a good time with my back. Now what is a movie without a few bed bugs biting. I get out of the cinema hall scratching my back once the movie is over. Ma does not recognise me. “Is that you?” she asks.

Only when she tells me do I realise that the bed bugs have had a great time with my neck as well. Parts of my face have also been experimented with. I was so busy concentrating on what the hero and the heroine were saying, I did not realise that I was being experimented on.

This also made me realise an answer to a bigger question that I have wondered about all these years. “How could people continue watching the movie when they were being bit by bed bugs?”. The answer as must have become clear to you by now, is that they were busy trying to figure out what the heroine and heroine were saying, that they just don’t realise that bed bugs were feeding on their blood.

We take long route back home, trying to go through all that I consider to be my landmarks in the city. I cross the Plaza theatre where I spent many afternoons, bunking college and watching adult movies.

The theatre has remained true to its spirit, all these years. It is playing Rickshewaali - sab ko lift dene waali and I need not tell you, for adults only. This makes me really nostalgic. Thank God for small mercies. Not everything in this city has changed. Some things have been preserved just the way I like it.

* The title of this blog is the same as Bill Bryson’s book “ I’m a stranger here myself”. Bryson wrote the book in 1998 after coming back to America having lived in the United Kingdom for 20 years. The idea for this piece came to me after reading Bryson’s book sometime back. Given that there was no better title for this blog.

Bill if you happen to read this, I hope you don’t mind.