PILGRIMAGE TO DELHI

Delhi-the beautiful capital city of India-he had heard so much about it ! Delhi-the throbbing pulse of this great nation and the center of all political decisions ; the ultimate destination of artistes who have made it big in India!.......how much he loved to hear about it….
Being the youngest of a family of six, it had always been his place to hear all the accounts of his older brothers’ and sisters’. It was forever his lot to be at the receiving end of all their karate lessons as well as being the audience for his elder brothers’ and sisters’ recitation of their math tables or Sanskrit slokas……….To be precise ,the difference in age between Madhu and his brother was a cool twenty years. So he was hardly out of his cradle when his dada joined his first posting as a brilliant and promising young officer in New Delhi’s prestigious National Physical Laboratory. Vaguely he remembered excited discussions at home-a gold medal-and how his dada had been offered a scholarship to pursue research with Sir C.V.Raman; but eventually opted out, as times were hard, and a job was an absolute necessity.
New Delhi loomed up again as he grew up. Every now and then, his summer vacations and the weddings of all the older siblings would be punctuated with glowing descriptions of that city-a city hoary with age and splendor his dada used to describe the city minutely, and his impressionable young mind formed precise pictures of each spot, abetted with the occasional photographs of Delhi. It was rich with historical places and picturesque monument “as beautiful as ROME” they said .The descriptions of wide-lined avenues, green parks and vibrant –hued roundabouts fired his imagination and whetted with his fascination for the city.
Today, at the age of forty, standing at the New Delhi Railway station, there was thrill in his veins. His eyes glowed with anticipation. It seemed to him like a dream…….he had seen it all min his imagination a hundred times before! But here he was on a single day’s trip to Delhi, en route to another place. He had just enough time to make his “pilgrimage”. That evening, as Dada’s daughter, his niece, saw him off in the train, she asked him the question she asked to most of the visitors to Delhi-“Kaka, of all places you visited today, which did you like the most?” And he replied’ you know, I really only wanted to see 18A/1,W.E.A,- the house where Dada spent so many years. Actually, to visit that was the only reason for my pilgrimage to Delhi. Strange, you know, but it’s true.”
PUTTA