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yesterday while casually browsing my orkut account, i noticed my cousin, Biki, had posted some photographs from Darjeeling … his old days .. while browsing through his photo stream, i was feeling nostalgic.. those pictures are very familiar to me, those places are close to my heart … just by seeing i could feel i am virtually there …
there was a photo of chowrasta ( mall people call it as well ) … he wrote a caption … anything changes chowrasta doesn’t change … so very true …

i remember my days when i used to visit darjeeling … that was their home then… recent political unrest had made the place less tourist friendly … hardly we see seasonal tourists over there … it is a shame for a place like that … i hope people of that place would understand someday that more than a land they need food, they need their earning for a day… tourism and tea industry is mostly depends on outsiders … they need to have interaction with all …

it is such a place that people can’t help but love … but now, it is more of a fear in tourists mind about visiting the place … last time when i went there , i found the place had become even dirty… nobody takes care to clean the place … administration is not so interested to keep this with its highest standard…

i remember visiting Ooty, they have made the place as a plastic free zone … they started taking actions to make the face of the city clean…

i would expect the similar kind of measures for darjeeling as well… it is a heaven for me … one of the fav most place in the world for me … i don’t want it to loose its charm just by involving political issues and conflicts … i believe it is after all people ( locale ) of a place who makes the first and last impression of a place … they are so friendly and humble that, nobody can choose to ignore ….

may be a larger solution is required for this situations… may be several action plan to raise it standard to its highest level so that, people from all over the world come and visit the place … and makes a permanent impression in their mind as to love this place …

many bengali people would know the song by Anjan Dutta ” khader dharer sei reilling ta …”

i would wait for the day when this feeling come true again for all of us …

surmala … that’s her name i had learnt from her uncle and confirmed from the reservation list …
when i saw her first time, there was no light inside the train compartment … from a sodium vapor lamp light and shadow i could recognize her sitting at my seat ! later we become friend … she offered me lays and i gave her chocolate …
she was going to meet her mom at manipur … after long time on her summer vacation …

it was horribly hot when we were passing through the eastern belt of andhara pradesh… the whole day we suffered from heat waves …i could see from her face, how difficult for her to go through this heat waves… we were all making our towel wet with water and cover our face with that … she was to travel 5 days to reach to her home, i came to know from her uncle …
… and this summer season it is very difficult to travel continuously 5 days… only joy i saw from her is that she was going to meet her mom…
finally on the third day, somewhere at bardhhamaan district in west bengal, it started raining… rather i would say it was storming … we all relieved from the heat wave … from the running train, we were enjoying the storm… suddenly the temperature went down… the whole scene got changed … i took my camera out of my bag… i knew i had to capture this moment… i need to freeze her happiness seeing rain…

what a wonderful afternoon we had while on move … did you enjoy storm anytime while moving on rain ? if you do, let me know how did you feel …