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THE ROHTANG SURPRISE


On one bright, sunny, early April afternoon, began the road drive from Delhi to Shimla. In a car, whose driver was supposed to be our guide also. The weather was pleasant and it was our first trip together as a couple and expectedly, excitement and emotions were bit on a higher side.

The National Highway NH 44 soon opened up into the  towns. One after other….smaller towns with their distinct names.  First came Panipat and then we passed through Kurukshetra…. names almost synonymous with ruthless battles of Indian history and mythology.  Peace is indeed a privilege!!!

Into the journey, I didn’t know when I had dozed off. So had EM.

By the time I was back to my senses, I noticed a very familiar name on the small white milestones located near the edge of the fast moving highway. ..PANCHKULA… By then NH44 had given way to NH5.

A few years back, while I was working in the South Korean city of Ulsan, I had a colleague, whose name was KB… a friendly person with lots of stories to say about his home town, which was Panchkula. A day would not pass without a mention of Panchkula, his home and family there and his friends and well wishers. At times, we had to tune his frequency back to Ulsan, and more precisely into our office.  

It’s often surprising how memories get real with the mention of a single name of a place or an individual. All the hidden dots open up and so many moments of the past get enlivened.
I was excited with my suddenly recovered memories and EM had all the patience to hear them out while we moved through Panchkula. Somewhere within this town, I knew, there would be the home of KB, which he so passionately used to remember from Ulsan.
Years had passed and I was not exactly on a regular touch with KB; nor did I have his contact details. For a moment, I wondered if the guy would be in Panchkula then. May be, may not be. The kind of profession he was in, the probability of he being in Panchkula during early April was remote. 

Anyways…like the earlier towns which came and went past us, Panchkula too gave way to the open farmlands. Beautiful it was, the rural India between the towns.  And in the midst of this, at times I thought about the life in Ulsan and at times I spoke about it, more from the perspectives of KB.  

Then came Solan and after sometime we reached Shimla.

A few days after this drive, one fine morning we were on our way to the Rohtang Pass from Manali. The Leh-Manali Highway was irresistibly beautiful with snow capped Himalayan peaks all around. It was a beautiful day and we were lucky as the highway remained open with dozens of tourist vehicles on it. We reached Rohtang Pass by noon and as we got out of our car, I saw someone trying to get into his car. Our eyes connected almost instantaneously. And there he was…KB…it was almost magical to meet KB there at the Rohtang Pass and I introduced him to EM. He was on his return journey from Rohtang and his car had to move out soon  and all we could say each other after the introduction was “Milte Hain, break ke baad”….exactly the way we used to say goodbye after the end of a regular office day in Ulsan.

Back to hotel, that day evening, I tried to feel the minuscule probability of an unplanned meeting with KB on the Rohtang Pass and recollected the random feelings I had when we were driving through Panchkula a few days back. That was the first time in my life when I experienced that there are more to thoughts than what it appears to.

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