Asansol Diaries: Return from GarhPanchkot and the case of the hanging car!

“No….No…..NO”, I screamed at the top of my voice.

Joy Da, who was sitting on the front passenger seat, raised his hand reassuringly, a signal for me to chill. At the same moment, I felt a pinch on my left leg. I realised Alok Da who was sitting left to me, pinched me to keep quiet.

It was 15th July, 2017 and we were returning from Garhpanchkot which is located in the eastern part of India at the foothills of Panchet Hill in the district of Purulia, West Bengal.

We had been to Asansol a couple of days back to attend the AGM of SVAAA (Alumni association of our school). Our gang of 4 from Kolkata (Joy Da, Alok Da, Anuj Da and myself) met at Anandalok Hospital located at Karunamoyee, SaltLake on the evening of 13th July from where Anuj Da picked us up in his Maruti Suzuki Ertiga. The car was driven by Anuj Da’s young and eccentric driver, Raju. It was close to 6.30 PM when we started. By the time we reached Belghoria Express Way, the clock was past 7.30 PM. With the usual evening traffic congestion it was not very unexpected. But if you have Anuj Da for company, time can pass like a breeze. Anyways, we reached our usual stop over on NH 2, Azad Hind Dhaba at around 8.30 PM. We knew, that it won’t be possible to reach Asansol before 11 PM, so decided to have early dinner. We reached Asansol a little before 11 PM, thanks to our driver Raju who loves speed. We generally stay at the Hotel Meera International whenever we are at Asansol and it was no different this time as well. Next day, we got up nice and early, finished our break fast and reached our school (St. Vincent’s High & Technical School) before the scheduled start of the AGM. After the AGM got over at 1 PM, we left for Garhpanchkot. We stopped for lunch at Kamal Family Restaurant at Neamatpur. My friend Sanjeev also joined us for lunch. We ordered pure Bengali food and the food served was pretty good. While we were ordering one of our juniors, Sachin reached the place and he too joined us for lunch. Sachin stays at Neamatpur and being a regular visitor of the restaurant, got us the best of the cuisine. He didn’t even allow us to pay for the lunch. After lunch, Sanjeev bid us good bye since he had some urgent business work to be accomplished. Sachin then took us to a nearby Paan shop to treat us to some special paan. Thereafter, we bid him goodbye as we restarted our journey towards Garhpanchkot.

This was our first visit to this place. Alok Da had pre-booked Panchet Residency. For proper directions to our destination, I opened Google Maps and followed the instructions. My past experiences with Google Maps have shown that if you follow blindly specially in odd locations, you can land in trouble. This time also it was no different. We should have reached our destination in half an hour but even after 45 minutes we didn’t reach the resort. We had a never ending narrow road in front of us and a thin forrest line on both sides. Finally we reached a crossing and asked a localite (Thank God that there were people around) about Panchet Residency and he told that we need to go back 10 KMs and need to take a detour. After a bit of difficulty we spotted the place from where we needed to take a left turn to reach the resort. The resort layout was very nice with a cottage set up and good open spaces. The greenery surrounding the resort was very pleasant to the eye. The resort is situated right at the foothills of the Panchet Hill and the hill looks majestic while sitting on the spawned lawns.

After checking in and freshening up, we left for the Garhpanchkot fort which was about a 5 KM drive from our resort. Garhpanchkot fort was a part of the Singh Deo dynasty of Panchkot located at the southern foothills and a group of temples are still standing as mute spectators of the rise and fall of the dynasty. The ruins of the fort are a silent testimony to the Bargi attack during the 18th century. The temples are of different architectural styles, the principal one being a ‘Pancharatna’ temple accompanied by ‘Jor-Bangla’ type and more than one ‘Pirha’ type temples made of stone. The Pancharatna temple still carries some depleted but exquisite piece of pre-muslim period terracotta work on its arches and pillars.

We found some nice open spaces there, where the tea stall person arranged some chairs and table for us to sit. With a nice breeze blowing (and no rains thank fully) we enjoyed our outing with 2 rounds of tea and some hot pakoras.

As the Sun started moving further west, we made our move towards Panchet Dam which was about 10 KMs from there. We roamed around the dam area for more than half an hour enjoying the serene environment before driving back to the resort. Sanjeev joined us later in the evening and stayed with us till late in the night. He had dinner with us before returning back to Asansol. We still don’t know the secret reason of why he doesn’t stay back with us ever. That mystery needs to be resolved some day soon.

Anyways, we remained awake for a long time chit chatting among ourselves and slept quite late in the night. One can never get bored when Anuj Da is around because he has a lot of experiences which he shares in his own unique style. Next day, quite predictably we woke up late and after finishing our break fast, we checked out and started our journey back to Kolkata.

We decided to have our lunch at Azad Hind Dhaba. We reached around 1 PM. Our driver, Raju was in full flow and wanted to reach home early and infact persuaded us to not break for lunch. But we being we (Living for food) had the final say and we stopped at the Dhaba. While we ordered, Raju didn’t order anything. Looked like he had some real urgent work and it was his way of protesting!

After lunch as we started back for Kolkata, Raju for some inexplicable reason decided to cross the NH2 through short cut. Now, whoever have been through this stretch of NH2 will know that there is no barricade or divider between the UP and Down lanes and hence many people crossover to the other side without taking the pain of driving another 5 KMs for the designated U-Turn. Its even more risky during rainy season because the divider portion gets muddy and the land shrinks by more than 6 inches and passenger cars with low ground clearance can get stuck.

As I screamed, my worst fears came true. The car got stuck. As much as Raju tried to press the accelerator, the car remained stand still. A few localities who were passing by nodded their heads in either direction, implementing that the car is stuck for good. This prompted Anuj Da, who was sitting on my right to get down from the car. Instantaneously, Joy Da also got down from the front passenger seat. Both of them went in front of the car to check where has it got stuck. Sitting inside and watching their facial expression gave me the impression that all is not good. Joy Da came back to inform that the front bumper of the car is stuck in the mud and hence there is no chance of the car moving forward. Since the land has shrunk, for us to go to the other side of the road meant the car has to go up and with the bumper stuck there was no chance of moving up. Me and Alok Da then promptly got down.  As we got down, we could see that the front portion of the car jack up. I went to the front of the car and was bewildered to see that the front wheels are hanging in the air and the car was basically standing on the rear wheels and that also mostly on the right rear wheel. In this position it was very difficult to reverse the car as well. We had a double whammy on our hands now. We not only had to get the front portion of the car down from the hanging position, we also needed a way to get it back on the road.

By now, Raju was sweating profusely and the impatient Anuj Da was making his life more difficult. An icy cool Alok Da was trying his best to calm down his friend. I saw a motley crowd of 6-7 people already gathering around our vehicle. To bring the car back from the hanging position, it was decided that we need to load the car. So Joy Da went back to his front passenger seat as me and Anuj Da sat in the second row leaning our body weights towards the left. This ensured the car to be brought back to the ground level. But there was no way that the car can move forward because the front bumper was getting stuck to the mud. So we needed the car to jack up a bit so that people can push the car from the front without harming the front bumper. Alok Da asked Joy Da to come down from the car as me and Anuj Da remained seated in our left leaning position. As Joy Da came out of the car, we could feel that the car jacked up a bit. The front left portion was still hanging in air but it was just off the ground. Now Alok Da along with a few localites (thank God there were some people around) pushed the car from the front to bring it up on the road. With me and Anuj Da sitting inside, I can assure you that it was no easy task plus it was a highway, so any speeding vehicle could have rammed us as well if the car was not manoeuvred correctly. Thank fully, 2 proactive guys from the crowd, kept displaying a red cloth so that any vehicle thats coming from the other side would notice and slow down. Fortunately for us, nothing untoward happened and after thanking our God sent fellow citizens, Joy Da and Alok Da got back into the car.

Anuj Da got his mojo back and gave a mouthful to Raju who was still reeling from this shock. We went back another 5 KMs and took the designated U-Turn from Gurap and continued our journey back home to Kolkata.

The notional thinking that by taking a short cut, one can reach his or her destination faster was demystified on this trip. Our future trips with Raju on the driving wheel proved that he has learnt the lesson well.

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