Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Bewitching Bhubaneswar..

I've been doing my training in Bhubaneswar for almost three months now...and have started having a total different perspective of this place.. As a place, Bhubaneswar is not new to me...you can say that I'm partly brought up in here...when I was young, I used to stay with my Grandma for around 2 years....and after that, every year we used to visit my Grandma's place for around 4-5 weeks...

Bhubaneswar as a city does not qualifies into the list of metros in India...but for someone like me prevailing from a small town in Orissa, it surely is enough...I've been to many other big cities in the country, and like any other outsider, have admired them too... but never before had I looked at this city through the eyes of an outsider..But in these three months, I've been wandering extensively on the streets of Bhubaneswar...admiring the lush green avenues....the ladies wearing beautiful Sambalpuri sarees with large maroon bindis, the sweet language of orissa, the exquisite Odissi dance performed in the the theaters of Rabindra Mandap...the culture this place displays....everything.....

When I was young, my uncle would take me to the Indira Gandhi park, and I would ogle anxiously at the Mickey-Mouse shaped dustbins and the hedges trimmed in the shape of an elephant...I grew up and I was no longer interested in the Mickey-Mouse shaped dustbins and hence stopped paying a visit to the park...and eventually I even forgot the way...... last week, while returning from office, I went to eat Gole-Guppas at the Master-Canteen chowk...thats where you get the most delicious Gole-Guppas in Bhubaneswar...I would advise, the next time you pay a visit to Bhubaneswar,take out some time and go there and you gonna remember the taste for a lifetime....So as I was saying...I went there to have Gole-Guppas...and after I was done there, I chose to walk home rather than taking an auto...As I was walking, I passed the Indira Gandhi park...now they have a fast food center named 'butter n biriyani' and a 'Nescafe' coffee stall in front of the premises.... I decided to have a cuppa coffee there and have a look at the park from the outside...I wanted to go inside...to check if the park still felt the same...check out if the Mickey-Mouse shaped dustbins and the elephant hedges are still there...but decided that it was too late and would not be safe...and my practical mind somehow managed to suppress my emotional mind and I went back home...I decided to visit the park in the coming weekend...

As I was walking back home, the days when my uncle would take me for a ride to the IG park flashed before me...on a Sunday morning, when my uncle would be home, the first thing I would do after getting up was to make him promise that he would take me to the IG park...and he would never protest..I have always been the darling of the family...Even now, someone would always come up with some incident or other from my childhood days which would leave them all smiling... Every time they do such a thing...I feel like I'm precious...and I love that feeling...:P

Bhubaneswar as a place has always been close to the emotional part of me...unfortunately as I've grown up, I've ever since locked the emotional part in the deep dungeons of my heart...But one cannot keep anything locked for ever...it has to come out one day...and spending three months in this place seem to have done it...Its like rediscovering myself..the more I walk on the roads of Bhubaneswar...the more I feel like getting connected to myself...The Real Me.....The True Me......and it definitely feels good...:)


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