But I am happy for one thing. Just across my room, there is Room No.1. In the
very same room, over one hundred+ years ago, there stayed Kingsford, an
infamous British magistrate. He had come on transfer from Bengal. I am happy I
am not put up in his room. (Though it might actually turn out that much worse
gentlemen and ladies spent nights in the room where I am now.) It's not that I
will be tormented by his spirit or something like that, it's just that it is good I did not end up in his room. Kingsford, during his stint in Calcutta, was
pretty notorious in the way he gave sentences that the Bengal group of
revolutionaries decided to knock him off. Khudiram Bose (all of 18 years-8
months of age) and Prafulla Chaki (19) were the chosen ones to execute the magistrate.
Just like the case of mistaken identity that would be repeating itself in
Punjab after two decades, the teenage revolutionaries hurled bombs in a
carriage that had in it, instead of that lucky fellow Kingsford, the wife and
the daughter of a lawyer. The incident happened just outside the European Club,
Muzaffarpur. They both were killed. A servant also got killed. All hell broke
loose. It was April, 1908. While Chaki shot himself dead, after a speedy trial
Bose was hanged in Muzaffarpur (August, 1908). The cell in Muzaffarpur
prison where Bose was lodged before he was sent to the gallows (see photo) has been converted into
a memorial and the feeling you get as you enter the memorial-cell - has to be
experienced.
But my journey to the district was not an easy one. I was bogged down by
barotitis media. Well, this is not some kind of social or antisocial media that
gets activated around the election time here. It is the doctor's term for the
ear-lock thing you feel when you are unlucky enough during a flight's descent
from the heights of say, about 10km, to the narrow stretch of the runway at the
near sea level. The term is more relevant in the lives of aircrew, though.
Ear-lock and the likely drum rupture are easily avoidable, unless you have very
serious nasal block and yet you decide to fly anyway. For grown-ups there is something
called the Valsalva maneuver,
though it may sound like a weird training session taken out of the Navy SEALs
manual and worse, when you actually do it you may look like some amateur yogic
practitioner trying to impress a foreigner passenger by performing a magical
breathing exercise mid-air, Valsalva is really a cool workout to prevent your
ear drum rupture. Though the damage by itself is not as dangerous as it sounds,
for the simple fact that the ear drum is a membrane that can heal like it
happens with a minor damage to the skin, it definitely irritates you - as the
ear with the damaged membrane turns you half-deaf for some time; while you also
lose the perception of orientation and depth to an extent. Other easier
techniques to avoid such a plight are chewing a gum, yawning, or with the
children it is about stuffing their mouths with candies. I'm sure all of us are
painfully used to the horrible and helpless cries of small kids during the time
of landing. I wish the airlines had started handing out lollipops to kids
flying.
But with certain airlines you cannot wish anything more than a safe
landing. Though Air India is generous enough to provide you with decent meals
on board, and 4-5 movies to choose from your personal entertainment system, it
was a rude shock when a hostess pulled me out of the engrossing Chak de India with the
announcement, 'We will be landing in Hyderabad in a few minutes'. Man! I got the tickets for Bangalore-Delhi. And now - Hyderabad?! Luckily, it was just a mistake on
her part. Nice. (Was she already missing her home?) Sad that unlike with buses
and trains, you do not have the possibility of peeping out of the window and
being assured that you are on the right path. You can't take chances these
days, you see. Some kind of balloons with neon displays at the upper reaches of
the troposphere might be just the need of the hour. Else you feel so left out
and kind of scared too, amidst the unending stretch of blueness with those
bubbly white clouds jumping around pointlessly. At least, I get scared.
And every time you use the flush (kind of air suction or something) in a flight,
the noise it generates gives you a chilling feeling that something has gone
awfully wrong and the flight is about to explode into flying pieces any moment.
Again, luckily, things are okay soon and you walk out of the in-flight washroom
a much relieved person - if not of anything else, at least due to the fact that
the flight is still in tact and you have not messed it up by mistakenly
pressing some emergency button or something instead of the flush. Thank God! And, I am not sure about the other
carriers, but these days, Indigo, has started announcing the home towns of the
pilots and cabin crew flying with you. I don't know how this extra, personal
information about the flight's people is going to help me as a passenger. Say
even if someone gets really worked up about a particular pilot's domicile,
there is no way he can jump out of the flight or throw the pilot out. He
has to live with it, fly with it. I cannot as well say 'No, I don't want a
Delhi pilot, get me a Japanese.' Same with the flight attendants too. So what
is this hometown business all about? Perhaps, given our busy schedules,
announcing the horoscopes of the eligible pilots and cabin crew will be a more
useful thing to do - a flight in the right direction.
On the way to Darbhanga, about 70km from
Muzaffarpur, I made a detour to the Research Centre for Makhana (Near Delhi
More, Darbhanga) that was bang on one of those highways of the famed golden
quadrilateral network that ran across the state of Bihar. The campus is a part
of the ICAR Research Complex for the Eastern Region. I had known makhana (fox nut/gorgon nut) only about a
month ago, though I remember savouring something like makhana kheer long, long ago.
Surprisingly, these spongy pops are from nuts taken from an aquatic plant that
is similar to lotus or say, water lily. With broad leaves that are of the size
of the royal meal plates in Chokhi Dhani and serious thorns all over, makhana plant is not particularly inviting. Don't you mess with me! But, I would have ended up a totally
different opinion had I been here around in summer when they would have been in
full bloom - attractive purple flowers all over the pond. Romantic, but
thorns attached.
Soon, the flowers turn into fruits that burst
open under water, leaving the seeds to be painstakingly picked up from the
bottom of the ponds, around September. Fishermen, not necessarily farmers, do
all this. After some cumbersome processing the seeds pop out to give out
the spongy, white, tiny balls of makhana. Lots of
work is happening to bring about more and more efficient automation to make the
seeds pop up effortlessly, and to usher in ways to plant makhana in farmlands with about
just 1-2 feet of water, as against in deeper ponds. With a good water source,
these plants are ideal for an integrated pond system that can give you year
round returns: makhana-fish-poultry-fruits trees on the bund. The pop has good
medicinal value; pooja value; and being gifted with the trait
of low fat-high protein this kind of pop is an enviable creation - though we
can do much better with thornless makhana plants. And for that matter, even with
thornless rose plants or seedless seethaphal. Wow!
