You Know What I Did This Summer

Summer Internship. Sales. FMCG. Jharkhand.

For the uninitiated, this means that the two months are NOT being spent in any cozy air-conditioned office with transparent walls and free internet. Instead, I’m living out of a suitcase ‘touring’ all of Jharkhand. This also includes the interiors with terrestrial connectivity worse than the jungles of Amazon. Anyway, it’s an experience of a lifetime. An account follows.

• Every address has ‘Near Hanuman Mandir’ on it. I wonder how many fans does the H-Man have in Jharkhand!
• I’ve come across incredibly innovative spellings and grammar. “Please your on laggage”!!!!!
• I have been sneezed and coughed upon in the face so many times now that I’m looking forward to being spitted upon – the Holy Grail.
• I have peed in the most unhygienic of places, sometimes after climbing hillocks of garbage!
• I have travelled in the most ‘rocking’ of vehicles – the desi version of Disneyland swings. My spinal cord seems wrecked for eternity.
• I met a person called ‘Birbal’ for the first time in my life.
• I have grown fond of Sattu – the desi Gatorade.
• The dust on the roads and places named Telmocho, Chas and Tipudana give me the feel of Latin America.
• I have pissed off a sales officer so bad that he has asked me not to call him up ever again.
• I have travelled in an auto-rickshaw without headlights on streets with no light whatsoever at eight in the evening in thunder, storm and rain. Talk about blind trust!
• I have come across a dilapidated hut named ‘Indian School of Learning’ that guarantees ‘100% placement’.

Half of this period has been spent in Ranchi. For people never been to the place, it is merely a newfangled capital of a newfangled underdeveloped tribal state. But the exponential rate of “development” has led to explosions – of population, traffic, pollution and noise. An account follows.

You know you are in Ranchi when:

• The roads are narrower than Keira Knightley’s waist: far worse than the by-lanes of Jamshedpur.
• You find no traffic lights but traffic police on squares in 2010!
• The traffic is excruciating for the size of the roads.
• All school buses are yellow in colour and are the biggest culprits in traffic jams.
• Stuck in a jam, if A is behind B and B is behind C, all three are honking at the same time.
• In a jam, if you don’t stick the nose of your vehicle up the ass of the one ahead, some vehicle is bound to cross the road from the gap in between.
• The rickshaws turn at ninety degrees without a whisker of a signal.
• Bumpers and potholes included, there are more speed breakers on the road than the rest of India combined.
• There is no civic sense – AT ALL!!!!
• There are no dustbins – AT ALL!!!!
• You find a lassi hawker everywhere. Fortunately, the town is a sucker for it.
• The favourite evening snack is Chinese food, especially rolls and momos. The extent of craze makes one wonder if it was once a Chinese colony!
• If you are on the opposite side of the road to Big Bazaar, you have to drive for 2 kilometres to come back to mall’s side of the road.
• Big Bazaar is a big big sham. It takes less time to shop there than to cross the road at 10 in the morning.
• The service in restaurants is abysmal and is not a function of prices charged.

Anyway, its just a matter of 20 odd days and it gets over for good! Pray to God that I get strength enough to survive through all of this!