RABHA-DA IN THE DOWN UNDER…. I do not intend to call myself a globetrotter nor I am one of those fabulous bands of people. Sometimes, my work takes me across continents. Not used to the modern mores of travel, such travels become treasure troves of belly rocking laughter. With one foot across the imaginary line separating the terra firma of Bhutan from Assam, and the other foot firmly on our side of India, I had become an international traveller on daily basis. That was during the time I served in the Manas National Park. Came the year 2002, and I was forced to travel to some place called the Blue Mountains near Sydney in Australia. I knew Australia by its worldwide popularity for harboring the soft footed Marsupials like the Kangaroos, the leaf eating Koalas, the wonder called the Platypus and so on. What I did not know was the aerial jump to the Down Under would be fraught with some bizarre happenings: doggone funny. I did not look at the ticket very inquisitively. I got a shock at the airport gate when the gate security looked at the ticket with a smirk on the face and told me smartly, “Sir, your plane took off twelve hours ago……” Egged on by my wife, I decided on a damage control plan. I retired to a budget hotel close to the airport and started hobnobbing with the carrier company, which was Thai, already not so smooth as silk. In two days’ flat, I was allowed to fly in a better aircraft with the same ticket, revalidated. “Sawaat dee Kaa!” A bevy of beauties welcomed me aboard the three-engined McDonnell Douglas Aircraft. ‘You look Thai, you even have spoken some words of our language, but you say you are Indian’, said one of them while pouring some wonderful appetizers. For me, there is nothing called forbidden food. I consider anything digestible by system as food. So, I hogged through the entire food menu. The plane was half full. And the flight attendants were too happy with a guy like me. Slowly, I was elevated from the economy section to the ones I would never be able to afford in this lifetime. I deplaned from the comfort of the something like ‘Business’ Class at the Dong Mong Airport and caught the connecting flight to Australia. In between I got a fright from somebody from ‘Intelligence Office’. He told me to come over to his office. Every conceivable radio communication with call and roger beeps were making merry over the numerous radio receivers. There, he handed me a photograph, of a notorious man, who duped the lady crying her heart out sitting three tables away. I gasped. Beads of sweat almost started lining up on my forehead. The photograph was that of mine. I now understood, why my identification was verified thoroughly. The next moments saw three of the handsome officers laughing their bellies off. I was frightened and puzzled. Then, I noticed something. The fella on the photograph had metal frames for his spectacles. But, my spectacle frames were just rimless ones; always abhorring the metallic ones. I was let go with an apology and a good cup of strong espresso coffee. The coffee tasted very bitter indeed. The Sydney airport was bereft of any taxis by the time I got out with the baggage trolley. But my savior was there, standing with a placard. It said, “ For a hundred USD, anywhere!” He demanded to see the greenback. Once he was satisfied, he led me to a small bus, a larger cousin of what is now called a ‘Winger’. I was the only passenger in that 20-seater affair.. About midnight, we reached the destination: the most beautiful lodge, I only could dream about .. The lady tapped the keyboard and whispered in dismay; ‘Sir, I am so sorry, your name’s not listed, only one Abhijit Raha Is being expected….” Once the barb was sorted out, I went to an uneasy sleep. The jet lag, along with the superb, on board, breakfast, made the vengeance of the Goddess of Sleep break through during the morning and the midday sessions. Therefore, the organizers got poorer by some dozens of coffee sachets, as I used them as a chemical countermeasure for the sound sleep. So, in few years time, I would be actually snoring away from the shadows of the Rockies to the Shades of Eucalypti in the Down Under. The news had gotten around about how I managed to reach Australia despite the failure to board the plane at the first attempt without much ado. Some of the younger people liked to share their ideas with mine. Most of them were leggy beauties and my heart suffered arrhythmia when they used to flash that ‘come hither look’. One of our Indian delegates, representing a very famous national park, had sleepless nights… the hormones insinuated him too badly. He told something awful to one of those beauties, and they all scampered. The six feet tall ‘gentleman’ was considered ‘too virile’ to be of any ‘good’. Towards the end of our stay up there in the Blue Mountains, we went out for a round of early dinner charged AUD15.00 per head. The place was an old golf club, where one lived with the passion for golf and drowning one’s sorrows for losing golf balls in the hazards. Around the dinner table, the Thai and the Vietnamese beauties were facing each other. The drunken Vietnamese gentleman smiled lecherously and commented very ruefully about the geographical status of the bodily constitution of the modern day beauties. Anyway, the whole thing snowballed into fistfights of all the oriental style of close quarter fighting styles. I started to bet and collected money. Suddenly, the ‘Drunken Monk’ attacked me with a flurry of chain punches. I gained distance for safety and poked the man with a billiard cue. It almost made him useless for the ladies back home. Anyway, I won the bets hands down. And had enough money for some good shopping. I flew back to India, then to Guwahati in Assam and the story, perhaps, will continue over times. Dr Abhijit Rabha, IFS, Diphu. Karbi Anglong.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 05:28:59 +0000
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