Patia Liberated

Bhubaneswar 1996

It was a beautiful evening at cuttack road, we just finished viewing a Hindi film at Ekkamara Film hall and crossed the Cuttack -Puri road and walked towards Rasulgarg where the NH 5 meets with Cuttack Puri road. I was enjoying the walk with the fresh memories from the film,along with me was my Tamil friend, who have not enjoyed the film much. He was talking about how films are made in Tamil and how the film halls are kept in Tamil Nadu. After a lot of comparitive study he concluded hindi films are nothing compared to films from south. He now bored of walking suggested to call an autorickshaw, I too agreed, he stopped one of them , and this one was a good one, neatly kept , and a front engine, he asked us where to go, before my friend could say something i said Patiaaaaaaaaa...., my tamil friend turned wild when he heard my reply to that autowalla, and the autowalla too vanished from the scene. I stood there stunned without knowing what was happening. "What you said " my friend yelled at me "Arey mei to Patia bola" thats why the autowalla vanished" I thought my friend needs some time to cool down from this heated up scene. I kept mum . He told now that i should shut my mouth till we reach our destination. Another autowalla came into sight, he talked with him and fixed the rate and we reached the destination at Patia, through out the bumpy ride in the back engine autorickshaw i kept silent. He never bothered to talk to me also .

The next day at office i met him , in anxiety to know what happened yesterday ,that made him wild and mad in the road. I approached him with a smile, but he just stood there with a frozen look at me. I understood that yesterday's hangover was still looming around him, i took some courage and asked him about it. "kal kya mem kuch galath bola". He looked at me as if iam a silly creature and said why you said Patia to that autowalla, you should have said Chandrashekharpur or maximum Dammana Junction , after that point no autowalla will dare to go in the evening.

Now 10 years later when i ride to patia with my old bike , i was over taken by speeding men in numerous Pulzars and the most expensive bikes with their girl friends clinging to their backs and move beyond patia to the numerous Engineering colleges and various IT companies in and around patia , freely during day and midnight..... Liberated Patia.......

Now my friend may be proud of saying Patia to new generation autowallas and they too enjoy their ride to the "liberated patia