Existential

The Ganga Canal flows with more water. The lassi shop is still there but the lassi has become more costly.The grey hornbill is still hanging around the white cedar, not acknowledging that the winter is over and the fruits are finished. Flowers start blooming on the mango tree and the squirrels wait anxiously.

As I move my rose-tinted glasses with which I was looking for so many years I see that this is not the place I love. The vague thought of the extreme summer approaching fast discomforts me. I walk long distances to find a path forward and I see none.

I go and sit at the steps of Ganga Canal and the mosquitoes surround me.I go to the Solani aquaduct and the loneliness frightens me.I bargain with the book-seller for a copy of Faiz-Ahmed’s translated poetry and my Hindi fails.I walk through the narrow alleys and I feel it as an endless maze.

Man is condemned to be free and that freedom to make choices disconcerts me. For cities as well as men, existence precedes the essence. The essence of Roorkee’s existence has changed in course of time and so is it for most of the men.

The Unaesthetic

At this place where six roads meet, there, in a triangular island with a dysfunctional fountain, Maharana Pratap Singh can be seen at an awkward angle, holding a spear or a staff almost vertical, looking neither towards Haridwar nor towards Delhi, seeing neither the Shatabdi Gate nor the Ganges Canal, pretending as if he is planning to charge towards crowd in the Civil Lines; but he is fooling you, I know, because he is only looking towards the royal palace and I have seen him drooling when the dinner is served there!

His Chetak is puny,it is unlikely that you may connect it to the steed you may have heard of, his legs are stodgy and hardly evoke the image of the valiant ruler of Mewar, rider of the blue horse.Curiously the closed concrete space where he rides his horse is named as a park, Maharana Pratap Singh Park.

Winter begins in Roorkee

 The most beautiful thing about this place is the winter.It is beautiful because it allows you to lie on the bed or sit inside the rajai the whole day without feeling guilty about it.It is beautiful because there is something about the winter; the mist , the chill or the warmth of the sweater that makes you feel content with the surroundings, the people and the world.

 Here winter starts with the Diwali.That is a good thing.Diwali brings those sweets,the sweets that are made in milk and the winter associates itself with those sweets.Besides the Kunthan sweets and Prakash sweets near the IIT, makeshift shops are set up along the corners that give sweets packed in sharp rectangular boxes.If I go to old Roorkee which is on the other side of the Ganga Canal the red and yellow laddus, white agra peddas, milk pedas and its varieties with  variety of colours set in the open, give a visual treat to the eyes.The Patiala lassi shop at one end of civil lines is active with the garam milk with cream topping.Chats at Maheshwari chat bhandar is better because chat tastes better in the cold.

 Roorkee seems to look inward in the cold.Or perhaps she is not looking anywhere and is hibernating like a black bear. She  may be looking  in the direction of  the Himalayas in search of her soul or she may be just ruminating on her past watching the  heavy ten tyred carrier trucks that occasionally move past the place seeming to travel from nowhere to nowhere.

About the first locomotive of Roorkee

I wouldn't have written about Roorkee this time.A trekking tour was planned from Mcleod Ganj  in Himachal Pradesh.Even before making that trip I had an idea of what I would have seen and enjoyed there.Disappointingly I missed the trip.Depressed I lie on my bed and type this out.

    My gateway to Roorkee  was the railway station and I would start from the railway station.A town starts from the railway station or bus station. Atleast, in the minds of visitors the town  starts from there.Meanwhile the start of civilization in the area, that is river banks or ports may now be on the outskirts of  the city and the minds.This is true of Roorkee as well.Nobody remembers the hamlet on the banks of Solani. Nothing reminds of its existence.Once you go towards Haridwar  the buildings stop appearing on either side after crossing the bridge across Solani, marking the end of a  lively town.

    As you now get down at  Roorkee railway station and get into the town through the main entrance, a railway engine welcomes you.It is a model of an engine set up there in 2005 and there is a story behind it.

  Early in 2002 ,Roorkee appeared in national newspapers neither because of academic or army matters.A document was found out from the library of IIT Roorkee in which it was written that a locomotive was used for carrying material during the construction of Solani aqueduct. The importance of this piece of information was that this could replace the historical position of Boribunder Thane train which is considered as the first one to have ran in the country.Historical document tells that the Roorkee locomotive was a six wheeled tank engine and it is inferred that it  ran only for nine months before exploding.

    However it is now said that locomotives ran at two other places before Roorkee ,one near Chennai and another near Rajahmundry.Both were for carrying materials for construction and so in the end the position of 1853 Bombay- Thane train remains uncontested as the first  passenger train to have ran in India.

    Roorkee will never let go an opportunity to mention its umbilical connection with the past . Despite not knowing much  about the original locomotive that ran to Roorkee, physical manifestation of that past had to be  made  to etch it in the minds of the people. Several assumptions were made before deciding on the kind of locomotive.The assumption that it was a used  Jenny Lind class of locomotive is fiercely contested.

    The town runs by its own sense of right and wrong.It creates its own memories of the past and lives by it.

First time in Roorkee

I fell in love with her the first time I saw her.She has the beauty of a village belle and the charm of a princess.She gave me a place when I had nowhere else to go.My Roorkee, Iam in eternal love with you.
Like my discovery of Khasak,my discovery of Malgudi, my discovery of Kittur, I have been discovering Roorkee. Only but,  this time the place turned out to be more fictional.

After a four hour airplane journey and after allowing myself a glimpse of Delhi I set out to Roorkee, the gateway to Himalayas.As the Shatabdi moved towards the mountains leaving behind Yamuna ,the cantonment station of Meerut and the green sugar cane fields I could feel the chill in the air.At the railway station when I first saw the cycle rickshaws, the only vehicle that can be hired for a short distance travel, I felt  I have moved backwards in time.

Roorkee is a young town.Progress has not gone to her heads.She has maintained her looks.The green serene campus of IIT Roorkee may make you want to stay here the rest of your life.She values her heritage and the adminstrative building stands as a monument to this.

Roorkee has been mentioned in Ain-i-Akbari, the 16th century document on Akbar's administration.It has been headquarters to a paragana. When  the 19th century  English engineer Sir Proby Cautley was thinking of building a canal by diverting the waters of river Ganga, Roorkee was just a hamlet on the banks of Solani.The  governor of North West province of British India decided to build an engineering college in Roorkee for the natives so that the construction of the canal goes unhindered.Later Roorkee became headquarters of the Bengal Sappers and Miners as well.The engineering college of 1847 evolved into the modern Indian Institute of Technology.

Roorkee has compensated for its relatively short history by refusing to part away with whatever old buildings it has.The red bricked methodist churches and the instrument weather station are not the only things that mark Roorkee.The proportion of people living in dialipidated old grand houses as compared to the new ones should be higher than in any other town I have ever visited.

Roorkee has its own sense of time.It has carefully set to move itself at a  leisure pace.