Azamgarh Mail..

‘What’s famous about Azamgarh?’ Asked one of my fellow passengers to another.
‘Crime’ he replied. Almost impromptu.
Indeed, it was kind of a predictable answer. Even I would have said the same.
I was going to Azamgarh to attend my friend-from-college’s marriage. More so, because these marriages invariably serve as an opportunity to reunite with few friends cum erstwhile batchmates.

Coincidentally the Maulana of Jama Masjid had also planned to visit the same place and had boarded the same train as well. And because of that we were being treated with variety of eatables by Railway pantry (may be just the maulana’s leftovers). On the flip side, The train was being stopped at several stations on the way as per the convenience of Maulana’s disciples.

Around 100 kms from Azamgarh lies Ayodhya. Few of us felt apprehensive for a possible religious rift since everybody around were chanting about how all the Muslim-youth are not terrorists.I dreaded another Godhra. Fortunately, nothing of that sort happened. And even the chants that appeared to be getting aggressive with time, subsided too.

Ayodhya was all the same. Station premise full of monkeys with headcount as many as the human’s. This reminded me of an interesting monkey story that I have penned and re-told several times. It goes like once I was coming out of a hanuman temple carrying the prasad bowl in my palm. And suddenly a monkey jumped over from no where and quite surprisingly pulled my glasses from the pocket and climbed the branch of tree where it belonged. One of the pandit advised me to keep the prasad over the embankment around the tree trunk and recede couple of steps backwards. I did exactly as told to me. Within couple of mins the monkey obliged by coming down. It ate the banana and left the remaining stuffs plus my glasses and went back. All in a jiffy! ‘Hanuman ji ne bhog laga diya… You are so lucky!’
I heard somebody say this.

The train finally reached Azamgarh . Delayed by 3 hrs. I had to muscle my way out since the whole platform was filled up by maulana men. I realized later that I had reached earlier than anybody from the groom’s side personifying the phrase ‘begani shadi me abdulla deewana’ After unpacking my stuffs and settling down for one hr, I decided to go out and check what was Azamgarh all about.

To start with, I was amazed to see all the decent roads and more than decent houses on both sides of streets. Even the hotel I stayed in was quite good one. Comparable to any pahadganj hotel (at least in terms of tarrif) I checked few nearby liquor shops since the booze session was inevitable within few hours. And I was told to do the initial arrangements. I liked one beer-bar and went inside for some beer. I felt good as after so many years I got this opportunity to converse in bhojpuri. And was astonished to realise that even vodafone too had a bhojpuri call centre line.
‘Gulf se paisa awata bhaiya , kheti badi se kahan hoyit aisan’ The bar tender answered my query regarding existence of several good looking Kothis.
The marriage was all the same and then I got the first hint of one thing that could be attributed to the prodigy Azamgarh had become in last few decades during the period when several Mirza Dilshad Begs graduated from this place. Very few of the females wore any jewelry. Whoever dared that, made a point to pack them safe before they left in the morning.

I left for the railway station at the wee hours when it was still semi dark. I noted almost every biker had a pillion who carried a rifle. Hardly any public transport was anywhere to be seen until it was fully bright. After waiting for almost 1 hr and cursing myself for not obliging to the offer of a drop at station, I took the first shared auto that appeared. On the way to the station too , I noticed few more gunmen who rode around looking so casual as if they were carrying sugarcanes over their shoulders. Perhaps they were the men responsible for the peaceful and impressive ambience I enjoyed a day before.

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