This ages back to some 10-12 years ago (if I not wrong). We had just shifted to our house in Gomti Nagar, Lucknow. The colony had just started to flourish and there were a lot of vacant plots and empty houses (made and left by LDA). I had soon made friends and when not playing cricket, we would discover the area on our cycles.
What we had discovered, the farms in a near by countryside were the most fascinating. I enjoyed it as I had never seen any farms. It was not far from my home just 5-8 minutes of cycling. This was the edge of the colony; marked by a ‘
teela’, which was made by the farmers to protect their crop from the excess of rainwater, which might run down from the city. Beyond this ‘
teela’ was a patch open land, probably owned by the Indian Railways, as it didn’t have any vegetation. Railway tracks and then the farms of wheat and other vegetables followed this. During the summer vacations we used to visit the place everyday to play in the sand and the wilderness. Apart from our morning visits, it was our favourite place for general time pass and cycling (especially up and down that ‘
teela’).
This place would bloom up in the rains. A pond of rainwater formed in every monsoon that would last for a many a month. This was one of the source of water for the farmers apart from there tube wells etc. This would also become temporary home for birds like swans and wild cranes. And many a time we saw them hunting for snakes and fish. Also we discovered many new things like snake colonies, sometimes deadly snakes like the cobras as well. A few times the villagers shove us from that place as it was home for many poisonous snakes. But we would always go to that place to enjoy the calm serene atmosphere, greenery, cool wind and the sound of train. The rail tracks had been laid so as to avoid the farms and they took an unusual steep turn, all the trains would slow down there and it just seemed to add beauty to the place watching the slow trains passing by. Soon we started to cross the pond, using a mud-paved path made by the farmers and the villagers and would sit beside the tracks. The surroundings looked more beautiful from this place as it was higher than the ‘
teela’. Sometimes we would place ballast stones on the track and they turned into powder when the train ran over them.
This place was most enjoyable in the monsoon mornings, one morning I went to the place with a couple of friends. It had rained very heavily since a couple of days, and the pond was larger than how we had seen it. We were on the side of the tracks and a friend had found a skin of a snake and wanted to show us. We all ran towards him me and a friend Vishal was on one track and another friend Ajay on the other track. To get to the calling friend we had to cross the bridge and that bridge hardly had any space to move along the tracks. The only way was to cross them on the tracks. As we ran on the bridge I saw a train coming towards us. We had hardly gone 10 meters, so we turned back But Ajay felt that train is on the other track, he kept running until he was in the middle of the bridge he found that the train was on his track. Meanwhile, a goods train came on our tracks and we could not see where Ajay was. We both kept shouting but our voices would not reach Ajay in the rattle of the two trains. The slow goods train took an eternity to cross us. And when it passed, we didn’t see Ajay! We felt that he would have jumped in the pond to save himself. But when we got there we saw him on the pillar of the bridge. He had jumped upon it just in the nick of time.
After this incident we did not go there again. Even the monsoons could not entice us to take the courage to see the place. But we all miss the place so much; also hope that it’s in the same shape we left it last time.
