SUMMARY:In our busy life span, we meet persons, make friends, share our emotions and continue our travel as part of the so-called life-cycle. On 1st of October 2017, my schoolmates planned for a reunion of all friends who had cleared their 12th Std. Schooling in the year 1991-1992 and about 40 students gathered at Bhilai for re-cherishing our sweet memories of the school days. I too was fortunate enough to participate in this social gathering of “REUNION OF BSP HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL 1991-1992 BATCH”. I am herewith presenting my experience in this most memorable trip to Bhilai as a long story cum Travelogue. I do believe that – even though this reunion was very much limited to my school-mates and friends, the outcome of this trip would surely benefit the readers and will give them a positive energy. WHERE IS YOUR HOME-TOWN ? Quite often, I come across a very very common, yet a strange question all across our societal talks, i.e., “WHERE IS YOUR HOME-TOWN ?”. Let me explain first, why do I think this question as a strange question. The verbal meaning of this question is – where is your home ? Or, let us know the name of the town, where your parental home exists. But in my case (and probably in many of your case as well), I end up with strange answers. My father was born and brought up in Machillipatnam (Andhra Pradesh, mother tongue: Telugu) and migrated to Madhya Pradesh (Now, Chhattisagarh) in search of job in late 1960s. He got a decent job in Bhilai Steel Plant and preferred to settle down in Bhilai for pursuing his rest of the career and spend his whole life in Bhilai. It was also the place, where he took his last breath in 2004. My mother was a Telugu lady born and brought up in Jeypore (Orissa). Even though, my mother’s mother tongue was Telugu, but as she was born and brought up Orissa, she had reasonably good hold in Oriya language as well. She got married to my father and obviously both of them got well-settled in Bhilai. For both of them, Bhilai (and nearby cities of Chhattisagarh) was one place where they spent maximum proportion of their lifetime. Still, going by the definition of the so-called “HOME-TOWN”, their hometowns should be Machillipatnam and Jeypore respectively. Well, whatever may be the right or wrong answer, the first and foremost lesson that can be learnt from the above discussion is - “Will a person be having more love and affection to his/her home-town of a place, where they are destined for a longer period of life ?”. I leave this question to the readers to decide, what should be the answer. Having said that, now I will move ahead to describe the actual part of my story, i.e., a revisit to my home-town – DALLI RAJHARA. A SMALL TRAIN JOURNEY, WORTH MILLIONS ... Dalli Rajhara is a small township located at 20.58°N 81.08°E in District Balod of Chhattisagarh (earlier it was part of District Durg, Madhya Pradesh). This town is home of iron ore captive mines for Bhilai Steel Plant, the largest integrated steel plant in India. It is about 85 kms away from Durg/Bhilai twin cities and may be about 125 kms away from Raipur (the nearest airport, capictal city of Chhattisagarh). It is connected (I won’t say – well connected) to other cities of Chhattisagarh through road. Dalli Rajhara has a very small railway station (station code: DRZ) with just two platforms and lacks basic infrastructure. The only passenger train that connects this railway station to other big cities is Durg – Dalli Rajhara train. To the best of my knolwledge, there is still a single train from Durg to Dalli Rajhara. It goes up/down twice a day or so. And the name of small villages within this railway route are quite interesting. Let me recollect from my childhood memories: Dalli Rajhara → Chikhalkasa → Kusumkasa → Balod → Latabor → Sikosa → Gunderdehi → Risama → Maroda → Durg. These names may sound bit funny but let me assure you that the rail journey from Dalli Rajhara to Durg is probably one of the most interesting journeys, you may ever get to enjoy. During my childhood days, the rail engine in this route used to be a Coal Engine, and its black plume will turn your eyes red, and your good looking white dresses may end up as dirty brown/blackish after the completion of about 2.5 to 3 hours train journey. Overall, there used to be 4 bogies excluding the guard bogie. Balod was kind of intermittent station, where the Coal Engine used to fill water from the top. As a small child, I was always astonished to visit the Coal Engine from nearby, but always had fear that - the so-called black color Coal Engine is actually very hot. Or that is what was told to me by my parents, and I used to keep away from this engine. As its functional requirements, this Coal Engine used to release clutch or so, leaving a very scary and extremely noisy sound and smoke from its belly near the wheels and I was too scared to notice it from nearby. Balod…, the intermittent station, yes, it was very famous. Why ? There used to be a famous SAMOSA shop in this railway station. And the logic of the stay in this station was simple. The so-called station master/guard of this station will not show green signal, unless and until all the SAMOSAS are consumed by the passengers. Quite funny, right.....still it was the fact. Maroda station was again famous, because the engine used to change the direction here. So if you were moving in forward direction till this station, you will start moving backward from this station. All the bogies were almost uniform, without any reservations. Sometimes, the journey of about 85 kms will consume 2.5 hours and on the other odd days, it would take even 3.5 hours or more, but the passengers onboard were always patient, friendly and understanding. Probably, the speed of life cycle in small cities is not so fast as it is apparently felt in metropolitan cities like Mumbai or semi-metropolitan city like Thiruvananthapuram. In a rail bogie of about 72 seats capacity, almost all passengers were known to each other by some means or others. Now, the readers may be getting bored by my description of this train journey, but I have a point to make. Is the time of 24 hours is a day for us in different from the 24 hours of the passengers travelling in this train ? The passengers travelling in this train are habituated to share all the societal (necessary and unnecessary episodes) and happenings all around with each other. Probably, they prefer to give more weightage to sharing and caring of emotions, rather than bothering too much about time. Now, my question is – in the process of time-bound official/domestic activities, targets, achievements, earning, mobiles, facebook, whatsapp, twitter, so and so, are we also running away from the true emotions and relations, which is/must be an integral part of our own identity ? Let me, once again leave the answer of this question to the audience to decide. Nonetheless, I will surely put forward my own views at the end. MY PRIMARY SCHOOL, WHERE I STARTED MY STUDIES…. Even though, Dalli Rajhara has some basic necessary infrastructure, but it lacks very good medical facilities and hospitals. Bhilai Steel Plant, Sector – 9 Hospital was/is the nearest biggest hospital with reasonably good facilities to Dalli Rajhara. Myself and my two senior siblings were also born and brought up in this hospital. Since my birth, I was brought up in the small city of Dalli Rajhara, the Golden town. I call this city as the city of friends, city of friendship, city of togetherness. I started my primary education from this city and continued my studies till graduation in the same city. During my childhood, this small city had a heritage of good quality schools. There were so many schools in this district that once one of the local leaders even narrated that the acronym BSP (Bhilai Steel Plant) can be also used for Bhilai School Plant. Within my home-town, Dalli Rajhara, there were few renowned schools. To name a few: BSP HSS No. 1, BSP HSS No. 2, BSP HSS No. 3, BSP Primary School No. 6, BSP Primary School No. 28, Nirmala School and BSP Senior Secondary School. In each of these schools, there used to be two shifts - (1) Morning shift 0700 am - 1200 noon; (2) Noon shift 1200 noon - 0500 pm. Among the two famous primary schools, BSP PS No. 28 was close to Officers Colony, whereas BSP PS No. 6 was in the heart of the city. I am a proud student of BSP PS No. 28. We had a Ganesh Temple close to our school, where we were frequent visitors for grabbing Prasadam. During examination period, our frequency of visits were more often in anticipation of good results. This school was full of activities from morning 07 am to evening 05 pm with good amount of students in the early 1980s and even up to 1990s. I completed my primary eductation (Std. 5) in the year 1984 and left the BSP PS No. 28 forever, but the memories never left me. They stayed with me all the times. All sweet memories, and sweet memories alone. Almost after 33 years, I re-visited my BSP PS No. 28 in 2017. Those days, just at the entrace of our school, we used to have two ladies sitting on left and right entrance of the gate, selling some silly items such as: chana, murra, and even chewing-gum. These items used to be seasonal and the maximum price of any item was merely 5 to 10 paise. Alas, I could not find them any more now in front of our school. Our school is no more the same school now. With the passage of time, advancement in township management, rise and fall, this school is now converted as a Guest House. Now, we don’t have any school bell in front of the main gate, there is no more the famous black-board where our Principal used to address us during 15th August and 26th January kind of functions. This place is now merely a Guest House, and I may have to forcefully remind the residents of this Guest House that once upon a time, I studied here. A few tears fell down from my eyes by seeing my school being converted to a Guest House. But, it taught me a very famous and hard lesson of the Bhagavath Geetha - “YOU CAME HERE EMPTY HANDED, AND YOU WILL LEAVE EMPTY HANDED. WHAT IS YOURS TODAY BELONGED TO SOMEONE ELSE YESTERDAY, AND WILL BELONG TO SOMEONE ELSE TOMORROW”. STUDY AND CRICKET: THAT WAS MY LIFE THOSE DAYS…. There was another primary school, namely – BSP Primary School No. 6, quite close to my residence, and also in the heart of city. I have very strong affection to this school as well, but for somewhat different reasons. I never studied in this school, but this school had a very big cricket ground. The plain and sturdy ground was available for play in all the seasons, whether it is raining or dry, we used to play cricket in this ground al the twelve months. Through out my stay in Dalli Rajhara, I enjoyed playing cricket in this ground. We had pretty big team with more than 20 active members. At sharp 04 PM, we used to start our cricket match and it used to continue till evening 0630 PM or so, or till the sunlight is not good enough to continue the match. A very disciplined cricket team indeed. Our team was famous for discipline and sharp throws, the famous – Great Progressive Group (GPG) Team. I was almost a founder member of this team and have lot of memories from this ground. There are still a few members of this GPG team in and around Dalli Rajhara. When my school-mates planned for a reunion almost after 26 years after our schooling, I was quite excited that I will be able to visit my school, cricket ground and re-cherish my old memories. But the BSP PS No. 6 is also changed a lot now. It is taken over by some other authorities and the cricket matches don’t take place in our ground any more. I could not even go inside my favourite cricket ground. Just, I managed to take a snapshot of this cricket ground from the gate of this school in night. In a time-frame of about 30 years, so many things have changed. During our schooling, if any teammate was delayed even by one minute after the first match is started, he had to wait till the completion of full match as a disciplinary punishment. But now, there is no such rule. The ground itself is closed, and none of my teammates could make it to this ground to play cricket once again. A kind of expected outcome. Though, I was excited to see my cricket ground once again after 3 decades, but it taught me yet another hard lesson - “WE ALL ARE TRAVELING IN THIS LIFE. NEITHER THE BOGIE IS PERMANENTLY YOURS, NOR THE CO-PASSENGERS WILL CONTINUE THEIR JOURNEY WITH YOU TILL THE END OF LIFE. ONCE THE RIGHT TIME AND PROPER STOP COMES, YOU WILL HAVE TO DERAIL FROM THE BOGIE AND YOU MAY HAVE LEAVE YOUR CO-PASSENGERS AS SUCH. SOMETIMES, SOME CO-PASSENGERS MAY DEPART BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE BOGIE. JUST BE THE PART OF JOURNEY, AND ENJOY THE JOURNEY. LET’S REMEMBER THAT DESTINATION IS IN GOD’S HAND, AND WE CAN ONLY TRAVEL….SO TRAVEL AS LONG AS DESTINATION IS NOT REACHED”. IMPACT OF THREE DECADES ON MY PAST RESIDENCE... While, I mentioned about my primary education, let me also add up here about my two residences where I spent more than 90% of my stay in Dalli Rajhara. One residence was BSP Quarters, just opposite to Hospital while the second residence was behind Cooperative Society. In my early childhood, I spent my maximum time in first residence. The stair-case steps were the noisy play ground for all the kids residing in this block. During summer holidays, we used to have a good collection of hindi comics and we used to read these comics just sitting in the staircase. The mango trees in the ground floor was the boon to us in sunny noontime. But, now the so-called homes have turned to be merely a building. Situation was no more different for my second residence either. In total, there were a total of 10 shopping cum residential plots in our complex. Starting from my residence in one corner to the extreme last shop in the other corner, we all were just one single family. All societal functions such as Deepavali, Holi and other events were conducted in unity by taking all the ten residents as a single entity. But almost after two and half decades, when I revisited this complex, I could not recognize my own residence. The time-frame of 25 years has changed the shopping complex completely. In those days, no two adjoining shops had any boundary walls. There was just a virtual wall, called the wall of understanding. Whether its my residence or my neighbour, we were escorting all residenents in an united fashion. There were good interactions of sweets and food items during festive season. But, the present status of this shopping complex is quite different. All the shops have got their own individual boundary walls. They have good lock escorting their own shops. Apparently, the mutual interactions between two adjoining neighbours can be well-understood from the boundary walls. The status of my two past residences have posed few strong questions to me – Has the time imposed a selfish mentality in our liveliwood ? Have we all turned too much self-centered over the years ? Why the neighbours in our society are turning to be a group of people who should not mingle with our understanding and way of life ? Living in a semi-metropolitan city like Thiruvananthapuram, that too in an apartment for the past six to seven years, I don’t think the situation is too different in my present place either. Neighbours don’t know the names of adjoining apartment owners. Kids don’t have a united field games like cricket or football or kites or goti or gilli danda. I can still recollect that there was hardly a single black and white Television in the entire block of my first residence, and on Sundays, almost 30 to 40 residents used to gather altogher in front of that B/W TV for witnessing an old hindi movie. That was only the entertainment available to us, that too only once a week. And now, some of us have more than one TV in our residence, with more than 100s of channels to search for entertainment, and still we are confused to choose a proper one. A commercial break of less than 2 minutes has become intolerable now. We don’t have time. We can’t waste our time any more, and are in process of searching for the proper entertainment. During the commercial breaks of TV, our eyes will be consistently looking for the new whatsapp/facebook messages on our mobiles, as we really don’t have time. Quite strange, right ? A strange question pops up right in front of my eyes: Are we chasing the time, Or is the time chasing us ? Fact is: we are runing, running and continuosly running…., sometimes even without knowing the destiny. Isn’t it ? OUR VICE-PRINCIPAL, THE CHIEF GUEST OF OUR REUNION ... Myself, Our Vice-Principal Shri Gani Sir, and my colleagues Nasiruddin Malik and Arun Kumar Bera in Sector 9 Hospital, Bhilai. Though our Sir could not recognize us by our names, but was proud that we remember him till date and our visit to him surely gave him pathway for speedy recovery. A teacher is not merely a person, but a root of a tree, and plays a pivotal role in building of a career of not only a single student, but the entire society. We are very proud of having a discipline-loving Sir. May God give him enough strength to recover at the earliest. Well, that was something about my residential places. Moving to my next destiny, i.e., my higher secondary school. I was admitted to BSP Higher Secondary School No. 2 in 1985 and I stayed in this school for 7 years starting from Std. XI to Std. XII. It was indeed a temple for us. A U-shape, three-storied big building, a memorable place for all the students who completed their education here. We had a very strict Principal and equally tough Vice-Principal, known for their Discipline, Rules and Regulations. Almost after a period of 25 years, when I reached Bhilai for my schoolmates reunion, I was told that my Vice-Principal of BSP HSS No. 2 is not maintaining good health is now admitted in Sector 9 Hospital, the very same hospital where I was born. I felt quite sad, and rushed directly to Sector 9 Hospital with my school-mates who had come to receive me from Raipur Airport. We met our Vice Principal in the Sector 9 Hospital. It was quite emotional moment for all of us. Our Sir has surely become quite weak in health and is undergoing treatment in the Chest Ward. We paid our sincere gratitude to our Sir and wished for a speedy recovery for him. My entire journey to my home-town was centered around the school-mates reunion, and our Vice-Principal was supposed to be the Chief Guest, but given his physical conditions, we had to compromise and manage with rest of the available teachers. While I was leaving the hospital, it was clear to me that – Time is one element in life, which will never come back. It goes at its own pace and teaches us several lessons. Our teachers are probably the best mentors who spend all their life in making their students a good human. Some of us follow them, while others don’t …. For many of us, there will be a single teacher, but for them, we are many. Despite that, they spend their valuable time in assessing each one of us individually and trying their level best to improve our standards. It may be true that, not all the teachers are good, but the profession of teachership is probably the best and God-gifted profession, which is directly linked with the development of an honest and pure society. My kudos to all the teachers. MY BSP HSS SCHOOL NO. 2: A REVISIT TO TEMPLE Having met our Vice-Principal in Hospital, we subsequently proceeded to our own school, i.e., BSP HSS No. 2, Dalli Rajhara. It was a holiday - 2nd October 2017. But my friends have taken aprior permission from the Principal of this School to let us enter the school on holiday. Thanks to my friends and also to the current Principal for his positive gestures by allowing us to enter our school premises on a holiday. Our higher secondary school was looking more glamorous than actually it used to be in early 1990s. However, the walls have started showing few cracks. Even the number of students studying this school have drastically come down. May be three decades back, there was a tough competition to get entrance to this school, and we had two shifts (morning and noon) to accommodate all the students. Morning prayers were done in the middle of the U-shaped building and during the rainy days, we were not given any relaxation, and the prayers were conducted in the long corridoors of the school. Surely, I felt sad that – my school is loosing charm, and I asked a question to myself - “Why is it that – my school is turning OLD and loosing its charm ?”. After a careful thinking, I came to a conclusion that – Dalli Rajhara is a township and a majority of youngsters (including me) have preferred to migrate to better places in search of higher education and better jobs, and have left beyond the so-called schools and their fate to their own destiny. We are proud students of this school, but we also need to admit that – no school, city or society can remain untouched with the disease of betterment. And in such scenario, an inclusive growth is only the probable solution. FROM SCHOOLING TO COLLEGE DAYS... Entrance Gate of Govt. Nemi Chand Jain Arts, Commerce and Science College, Dalli Rajhara. In the early 1990s, this college never had any gate, and we were just free birds to roam around its premises. With good investment in the infrastructure, now my graduation college has got a good-looking gate and also a security guard. With my school-mates, finally I decided to pay a flying visit to my graduation college, namely – Govt. Nemi Chand Jain Arts, Commerece and Science College. Its name was/is so big that, we often used to ask the exact name of our own college to juniors during the jovial ragging. It was quite a small college with average strength of about 300 students or so. This college was situated quite away from the main city, probably to keep the college life away from city life. The college had quite interesting elevated topography and three different blocks for science, arts and commerce respectively. It has no entrance gate at all, and we used to roam around our campus without any fear or affair. The concept of love-affairs was not so popular those days, and the so-called co-ed college had pretty decent students. Moreover, this was only the available college within the city, so majority of students who preferred to stay in the city, would join this college. It was limited to graduation studies in the science stream, whereas post-graduation course were available for Arts stream. I happen to visit this college on a holiday, so I could not even enter the college premises, and took few snapshots of my college. Even though, I have/had good affinity to this college, but I did not miss too much in this complex. I spent just three years in this college and shared good amount of my time in studies and studies. It was also the place where I started interacting with my fellow colleagues (boys as well as girls). Even during the college days, cricket remained as one of my favourite hobbies. The closed entrance gate of this college left a few questions on my face: If you have changed, I too have changed a bit ? You have gone away from me, so I too have made my own boundaries. Its a hard fact that, none of the schools, colleges, offices or residential places are our permanent owned places. But, we make relations with the so-called in-animate objects. The blackboard, the benches, the cycle stand, the TEA shop, the owner of the shops, our well-behaved old peon, and so on. The list will go on, but none of them stays with us forever. All are bound to their own destinies. We too are not permanent in this life. One day, we all will have to go. From my revisit to my home-town, I learned many important lessons of the life. I could re-cherish my childhood memories, and the bottom line is - In the process of this long journey, if we can help anybody at any juncture, those emotions will be stored once and for all in permanent memory. The buildings, roads, trees will come and go, but your value in this life will never be weighed by the capital that you earn or save, but it would be measured by the good deeds you do to the society. If somebody can still recognize you in a city after a period of 25 years, surely those activities will fetch your name and fame. And probably the best way to receive is to give. Give whatever you have, and you will receive whatever you need.
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2 Comments
Matanya Kumar Manohare
28/7/2018 22:37:28
Abe ! Rulayega kya?? Missing all.....very much...
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Sabyasachi Chattaraj
4/3/2020 21:46:16
I used to stay in 3/A hospital sector in the early 80s. Used to go to Nirmala English medium school. Thanks for sharing the photos.
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