monday of the backup plans

It was the night of Monday the 21st, the town hall clock had already struck 12 times and the day had technically begun-while all the citizens of the sleepy town of behror slept-and the denizens of the night prepared to leave their lairs in search of prey-a shrill bell broke the silence of the room in the Motel midway where three bedraggled travelers lay fast asleep to rest their strained muscles. He got up and rushed to the phone and was horrified to see the time,” at this time of the night? ” he muttered under his breath as he heard the voice at the other end say- “Sir, I am Ajay Singh brother of Suresh Singh, driver – our father has suffered a serious heart attack , can you please send him back immediately?”

Thus began Mondays walk at 1-15 am as we rushed to the dormitory to wake Suresh and hand him some money to head back home. It could have been a tragedy of massive proportions- many questions could have arisen like “who will now ferry us back and forth from starting points? Who will ferry Sarry over with the breakfast or send her back when she is tired.? Who will pick us up at night or take us to the next destination?” It could have caused any number of problems – except that it did not- a backup plan B immediately got formed as Aakanksha sleepily got up and told her mom “go off to sleep mum don’t worry tomorrow I will drive and then we will look for something” and we all went back to sleep.

One of the Kulkarni family strong points we are totally proud of is- we are masters of the back up plan- it is almost instinct by now- have a problem, assess damage , calculate possibilities, and act on the new plan!!! We all slept off peacefully.

But it was one of those days and the plan had to be again recast in the morning since another complication came in-Aakanksha who had been suffering from a very bad cold for the last three days found she could hardly breathe and had chest pain too and found she could not even walk.- let alone drive. The toss up was between walking or giving up on the day and taking her to hospital. Aakanksha was obviously more important but yet we thought we might give her some time to rest since she had been pretty badly drained the last day by setting too scorching a pace when the heat was getting to us. She had done right because that pace had kept me and Mangesh going but it had taken too heavy a toll of her. We decided I would walk for an hour and Sarry would stay behind , Aakanksha would sleep for some more time-and we would assess the position after an hour – if Aakanksha was worse we would take her to hospital- if she was sleeping Sarry would bring us the breakfast- and after 4-5 hours she would pick us up and drive back to the hotel to settle the bills and check out.

So we began that day with Aakanksha missing and Swati taking up the mantle to carry on the fight. We walked on from Behror to the next halt Kotputli which the signboard outside out motel was only 22 kms away though google earth thought it was 26. the idea was to walk this 22 kms at a stretch in about 5 hours. Since we had again got delayed at the start it would mean walking till 11-00 am at least- and believe you me the heat on the highway is scorching at that time. It drains you so much that the energy required to finish the last 5 kms is more than what is required for almost twice the distance in the morning.

We were very fortunate that day that the rest made Aakanksha better and we did not have to rush her to hospital. We were also fortunate that we discovered that we could actually cut a few kilometers off by walking through the fields and villages around the highway. We took a first detour which cut a good 6 kilometers from our walk and then took another one that cut on more stretch of 3 kilometers and made it a little ahead of where we would have been had we gone by the highway.

Then we lost another wicket- Mangesh had sever pain in the right leg and could not go on- so we put the next back up plan in action. We sent Mangesh back to settle the bills, pack the stuff with Sarry and get the car to pick us up on route to the next stop-Shahpura. Swati and I blundered on and though we knew in the heat there was not much we cold add to the tally yet every kilometer added is one weight off the evening and hence worth the trouble. The last 5 km was pure torture and we had to stop almost every kilometer to sip from the bottle of water we carried and yet could not resist the temptation to enter the first roadside motel we saw. Twenty minutes sipping a lassi each, washing our faces with soap and water and we were rejuvenated enough to get the next three kilometers under our belt till we had had enough and dumped ourselves on the first roadside culvert we found. They picked us up an hour alter they told us we had been sitting with our feet dangling into a dry roadside drain!!!!

The motel at shahpura had no electricity that time and just as I came out of the bath Sarry was getting upset with the manager- I don’t know what I said to her but don’t remember anything except that within seconds just having a bed under me was heaven- no fan, no a/c and yet I slept like a log for two hours. Swati dropped out of the last session at shahpura too and it was only Sarry and me who surprisingly chipped in with a neat 12kms to bring my days tally to 40 kilometers and the distance traveled because of shortcuts to 50 kilometers .Enough for the day – I cannot keep my self up any longer.

I regret my posts are getting boring- but I cannot help it – it is like being in some kind of boot camp- getup walk- sleep get up walk and collapse !!!!!! but I will try and think up of some nice one liners tomorrow.