~ That Night~
Mumbai has been one of my favorite cities I have stayed. Despite of its imperfect beaches and huge crowd, the city has a charm for which you can't stop loving. Yeah, travelling in Mumbai is the one which you will never forget. Though trains are over-packed in office hour, you will find train till 1 am and opting for autos and taxi are safer than other places of India. And if was the one who use to take full advantage of this option. Roaming in beach, visiting malls and back to home from friend's house at mid-night, they were my weekend habits, fearless, too much to enjoy!
I was aware this liberty won't work in other City. I was selected for 3 weeks long workshop on National Program on differential Equations by IIT Bombay as summer training in 2012 to be organized in Bhubaneswar. The organized venue Institute of Mathematical Applications (IMA) was in extreme rural side, 10 km far from the railway station with no public transportation available.
On one of the weekend, I had a plan to visit my friend in his city. While returning, it already got 8 pm at Bhubaneswar station. No auto driver agreed to take me to that place in reasonable price as they were compromising in not less than 500. I decided to take a share auto to half of the distance.
I had requested them to take IMA, which they mistaken it as Institute of Medical Association and took to that hospital. Nobody was aware about the institution I had to reach; neither auto drivers nor any local person. It was 10 pm already by that time and very few autos were available. My destination was so isolated that from the current point to IMA, there were hardly few houses near by the road.
I finally got one auto where 3 auto drivers were seating. They said me they know and they will drop the place. They were drunk and they were looking at things I have carried. I got trapped in deep dilemma regarding to leave this auto or go with it. I may not get the one if I leave this. I decided to go with it, But with a plan.
Before boarding the auto, I took the auto number and messaged it to my friend. They saw it and asked me what I was doing. I said them that I am messaging the auto number to my friend. To be more appealing, I made a call to him saying I have messaged auto number and I am going to Institute hostel.
That call brought me in safer side and I was not so fearful though there were always the chance when you go on with pessimistic thoughts. I took a breath of relief as I reached the institution.
That day, I might even have wrongly judged those auto drivers, but being on safer side is always the option as prevention is better than cure.
This is just something I wanted to share with my friends. Whichever city you go, if you at least make such effort to note down the vehicle numbers of public transport; especially by letting driver know about it, this can be helpful for us. If one small act can prevent many things, why not to be safe from our side?
Regards
Suraj
