The Trip to Vizag and Beyond

The problem with traveling, even if it is to smaller places, is that one soon begins to compare the places one visits with one’s place. I am no exception and as a Hyderabadi, it is perhaps expected of me. However, Vizag is hardly the place to compare with Hyderabad especially since it doesn’t have anything even remotely resembling the Charminar to begin with nor does one get Irani chai though I have seen boards advertising Hyderabad biryani on offer. But then, you don’t get the same sort of feeling eating Biryani just about anywhere other than in a dirty Irani hotel staffed by surly waiters.

The only thing I liked about Vizag was the fact that if one felt like taking a dip in the ocean one needn’t catch a plane and travel thousands of miles to the nearest beach. The beach was so close one only has to gather a towel and stroll towards it. Apart from that, the other thing I envied about Vizag was that there wasn’t even a single pothole on the roads. I looked and looked hoping to find even a small pothole but I was terribly disappointed. On the other hand I was glad, proud in fact, that I come from a city whose municipal engineers have no peers when it comes to laying roads with the maximum number of potholes per square metre.

As earlier planned I was at the beach at the crack of dawn though not on the last day of the year, to catch the sunrise. I had thought I’d be alone but there were several other citizens of Vizag some of whom were walking briskly, jogging or simply sitting on the parapets waiting for the sunrise. The sea was calm and in the light of the dawn had a magical quality to it. There were ships in the distance their lights twinkling and closer, fishermen sailed by rowing their country boat. Then the sun appeared, just a slice of it from behind the clouds and then it came out whole, shining brightly, lighting up the day. That sight alone was worth the visit to Vizag.

The rest of the trip was uneventful as I traveled along with other officers to villages to meet farmers. The farmers here seem to be a meek lot pouring out their litany of woes. Somehow I feel no has done enough for the farmers of our country since they are always in problems- if it is the drought one year, then it is unremunerative prices another year and so on. There is just no end to the travails of the Indian farmer, especially the small farmer who doesn’t have the capacity to withstand risk of any kind. I was reminded of something I had read in a book I had bought a couple of weeks ago.

Somerset Maugham wrote this in ‘A Writer’s Notebook’: ‘When I was leaving India people asked me which of all the sights I had seen had most impressed me. I answered as they expected me to answer. But it wasn’t the Taj Mahal, the ghats of Benares, the temple at Madura or the mountains of Travancore that most moved me; it was the peasant, terribly emaciated, with nothing to cover his nakedness but a rag around his middle the color of the sun-baked earth he tilled, the peasant shivering in the cold of dawn, sweating in the heat of noon, working still as the sun set red over the parched fields, the starveling peasant toiling without cease in the north, in the south, in the east, in the west, toiling all over the vastness of India, toiling as he had toiled from father to son back to back for three thousand years when the Aryans had first descended upon the country, toiling for a scant subsistence, his only hope to keep body and soul together. This was the sight that had given me the most poignant emotion in India.’

Things are no different now.

Vizag wasn’t the only place I went. We were at a border village from where I noticed that Vizianagaram was only twenty kilometers away. It was close to lunch time and when I expressed a desire to have lunch at Vizianagaram no one refused. So off we went to Vizianagaram. Half hour later when we were taken to a rather swank hotel I was surprised and a bit embarrassed. I was surprised to find such a good hotel in a place like Vizianagaram. I had said we’d have lunch at some simple hotel but our hosts would have none of it and I was practially led me by my hands inside. They insisted that we have lunch at that hotel and fed me fish curry. Maybe they wanted to show off to us that they have hotels like we do in apna Hyderabad.

It was embarrassing because we were coming straight from the fields, caked with dust from head to toe. But then, in Vizianagaram one hardly expects anyone to notice such things so we had lunch without getting stared at. Later we did a whirlwind sightseeing tour checking out the fort of the Gajapathi rulers, the Music college where, I was told, the giants of Telugu background singers learnt their basics. I paid a quick obeisance at the Pydi Thalli temple which I am told holds a powerful sway over the three north coastal districts. I prayed all potholes in Hyderabad be made to disappear overnight but when I landed the next morning I saw my prayers went unanswered. I should have asked for a less impossible wish.