Hunt for Abhishek Bachhan in Rann of Kutch....

Hmmmm… after loooooooooooong first blog and receiving plenty of comments for that I am inspired to try my hands on to make my second blog as short as possibleJ. Hope I succeed this time.

After 1 year of Gujarat earth quake -2001 all my hostel roomies decided to visit Bhuj city, Main city of Kutch district of the Indian state of Gujarat. Bhuj was the nearest city to the epicenter of Earth quake which devastated entire city like anything. We all Ghanchakkars Uravashi, Nidhi, Dolly, Shilvana, Dhara and me were champions in showing our very own ‘Ghanchakkar’ characteristics on outings. Due to this ability of all we were very sure that we will enjoy our trip to the fullest. Amongst us Dolly and Dhara were from Bhuj city itself so we had all local support there to make our journey smooth and easy.

We started our bus journey from Surendranagar to Bhuj in crowded bus where we couldn’t find place to sit. We were all exhausted by tiresome journey due to that. When we reached Bhuj, Dolly’s mom welcomed us with delicious food which was enough to bring smile back on our tired. Next day morning we went for local site seeing. A very strange thing we noticed on roads was a cart which was pulled by donkeys. We were very amazed by seeing that strange Donkey Cart as none of us who were not from Bhuj had seen this kind of cart ever.

We all wanted to stop that Donkey Cart owner so that we could take one photo. But our dear friend Dhara stopped us to do so. She strictly like a school teacher told us: “Stop behaving like a foreigner here in between the market. I promise we will have a photo with this kind of cart but not here. This fellow will ask money from you girls for taking photo of his dearest donkey. After earthquake so many foreigners are visiting this city so now localities here have become smarter enough to charge tourist who wants to take their photos!!!! “ . A smart way of making side income don’t you think so?

Being students in those days we were not having that much extra money to spend on this kind of tips for clicking photos. We all kept quiet and forced to obey Dhara’s instructions. Yes Dhara still our pose with one of donkey cart is pending and you promised us you will give us chance to have one, we all are still waiting for that.

On the way back Dhara showed us the place where her old house was located before earthquake. I still remember her sentence when she was pointing to one of the corner of a playground: “Look Hetal here there was a residential colony with almost 500 houses 1 year ago. On that unfortunate day of 26th January 2001, close to 500 people lost their lives in this particular place and all houses got collapsed like flash cards.” How miserable it would have been for all those who had their sweet homes in that area.

Truly nature has its own mechanism of reengineering. But I salute people of Kutch for their never dying spirit of bouncing back to life within no time. Truly life should keep on moving and with this kind of fighting spirit it becomes easier to execute the same.

Next day we hired a taxi to visit Mandavi which is nearby to Bhuj and a very good tourist location to visit. Those days a Bollywood movie ‘Refugee’ got released which was having story based on People of Kutch. The hero of that movie Abhishek Bachhan had wore local Kutch traditional costumes in entire movie. Being a big fan of Abhishek Bachhan that time, we all tried to visualize him in each and every person dressed up in traditional costumes who used to come across on our way. Their traditional costumes and jwellary used to remind us look of Abhishek Bachhan.

We all Ghanchakkars ordered our driver to find one good handsome Local ‘Abhishek Bachhan’ so that we can click one group photo with him. Driver couldn’t control his laughter after listening to our desire of course. He started stopping taxi whenever he used to see any person on road wearing traditional cloths and asking us to take picture with him. We all at the same time started denying taking photo in hope of getting a real look alike of Abhishek Bachhan. Our score of denial of photo reached to 10, enough count for making driver annoyed.

Suddenly Dhara asked driver to stop the taxi and spoke in kutchi language something to one person passing by our car. She told us in humorous tone, “Girls we will enter in Bhuj city in a while now. There you will not get any Local people wearing tribal attire. I have talked to this young man and he is ready to click a photo with you all. Now it’s your decision whether you want to click a photo with him or we should go ahead? I again remind you, once we enter Bhuj city you will not get any Local Abhishek Bachhan there J so your desire of clicking a photo will not get fulfilled.” We all looked at that young man. Yes indeed from no angle he was looking like Abhishek BachhanL . But we wanted to cherish our Ghanchakkar stunt of the trip so we clicked a photo with him and laughed like anything on our madness.