Day XVI and XVII in Bhubaneswar- India trip 2022

 After finishing my dinner the other night at a well known hotel-cum-restaurant in the city I suddenly stumbled upon an old friend at the lobby. He introduced me to someone accompanying him - "He is my friend Sambeet". His companion who seemed inebriated asked me in a slurry voice, "Where do you live ?" I replied, "in USA". "Oh, I see. There must be one lakh (100,000) Odias in America" - he queried.

I found one lakh a gross overestimation of the population of Odias living in the United States and concluded it as a perfect calculation of a drunk mind. Before I could correct his exaggerated figure he dropped another bombshell - "America re jou Lakhye Odia Achhanti sabu mo B***a B*la" (All those Odias living in USA are my pubic hairs).

"How could you count your pubic hairs so accurately and arrive at the exact figure of one lakh ?", I somehow blurted out. I went further - "How do you manage to count and groom your 100,000 pubic hairs ! Do you count them by hand or use a machine, the kind of which they use at bank to count cash with a whirring sound" ?

He was too drunk to get my joke, but told me - "I will see you around". He never came back. My friends were still laughing at my response. No sooner I turned around than I heard a loud thud. I looked back to see our drunk friend fall down at the doorstep of the hotel lobby and farted loudly enough to be audible over a distance as his friends struggled to pull him up. He staggered a few feet and suddenly leaned on a car parked close by and vomited on the tyre, belching out in waves. It was a long day and I thought it was time to bid goodbye.

During this trip I found many small, nondescript restaurants who supply great food at a reasonable price while the reputed ones have started faltering. Once they get name and fame and sense lack of competition, they start taking their customers for a ride and dilute the quality - literally in case of Lingaraj Lassi.

Yesterday evening was quite pleasant. I was standing on our balcony enjoying the hitherto missing gusts of Southernly sea breeze, overlooking the street near our house. Over the years the volume of the traffic on the street has considerably gone up. Nowadays it's lot more chaotic and cacophonous. The vehicles big and small horn their way all the day spraying clouds of dust into the sky.

One day my son was waiting for his turn to cross the street, expecting incoming traffic to stop for him as he thought Pedestrians always have the right of way. So he thought. He stood for several minutes as not a single vehicle stopped for him. I told him - "If you expect the incoming traffic to stop for you to cross over you will be waiting forever". Finally I held his hand and helped him maneuver to the other side of the road.

I was observing the neighborhood kids playing closer to the street close to  twilight hours as coconut, betelnut, mango, Jackfruit, Sajana (Moringa) trees happily swayed in the cool breeze, enjoying their swing ride in the middle of Raja festival. A boy was busy chasing a Chameleon who was hopping fast on the dusty road and jumped on our flower tree clinging on to the fence. He shouted with pure, unadulterated excitement on top of his voice - "ENDUA, ENDUA" (Chameleon, Chameleon). His mother chastised him - "ENDUA NUHE GIRGIT KAHA" (Don't call Endua, as in Odia, tell Girgit, as in Hindi).

I have no reason to believe the family had ever lived outside Odisha at any point of time in their life. Forcing a child whose mother tongue is Odia to say "Girgit" substituting "Endua" didn't make any sense. Endua is so old fashion, Girgit sounds so cool. As I was pondering over my thoughts the good old "Endua" startled by the commotion melted away inside the dusty, green foliage.

I constantly keep on hearing that Raja didn't bring any rain this year as it normally does. The monsoon doesn't depend on Raja, rather Raja is tied to it.
The festival has hardly anything to do with monsoon other than coinciding with its arrival. The festival is set around the arrival of monsoon, not the other way round. Monsoon doesn't depend on Raja, rather on several Geographic factors like El Nino and La Nina, the unusual heating or cooling of the Pacific Ocean located thousands of miles away can make the monsoon very freaky. So delay in the arrival of monsoon isn't something new or unusual. More later...