VASTICHI GADI

Vasthichi Gadi ki 12chi gadi; naytar dandavaran chalat !!!

If I look fifteen to twenty years back in my life, these words had very special meaning for me.(now a days we prefer to take our own vehicles). Moment I realise my exams are coming closer, means its high time. But one thing was always there. My vacations are going to start after exam. And our destination for enjoying vacation was my native home at Rembavli. Salubrious beauty of this place had allured me to spend vacations there only.

Those days my native home was connected via a kacha road. And there were only two ST buses available in a day- BARACHI GADI ani VASTHICHI GADI. Traveling to home by these buses was unique especially by vasthichi gadi.

If you got to catch this bus, then you should reach shirgaon ST stand by 7:30PM. but there was one interlock of Panji gadi. All the way travelling from salshi, kuvle , tarphevadi; it would reach finally to Rembavli. My stop was one stop before last stop and just in front my home. Travelling by these village buses is slightly different compared with mumbai best buses. Once you are in the bus, you will not be provided any safety belt which you are going to need the most.And your whole journey will be full of dust inhalation.Road connected to these village passes through a  hilly terrain. Though you will not be charged more and  there will be no problem of rush at all. But still it will be ensure that you will feel like travelling aroud 100 km in just in journey of half an hour.

Whenever I used to stay there, and its 8:00 PM in clock, all family memebers used to patiently wait for this bus, since this was the only communation medium for villagers. In other words, their mobile, land line, email, facebook, twitter was this bus only. And if you are sure that someone is going to come by bus, then we all used to analyze all possible sounds sitting in varanda, So that we could find the one which would match with the sound of bus. After  repeating this exercise for many time, victory was fixed. There will be one sound which match which will resemble with sound of bus and it will grow larger means the bus is coming closer. Now next question was whether this bus is going to stop or not at our bus stop, ( bus stop was very close to my home and it was clearly visible from our varanda). But normally we used to get deceived, because there was one small canel made on road to take water from one side of road to other. Due to which bus driver was forced to slow down the bus to cross it. Thus bus would reach last stop, then driver and conductor would take halt at one of villager's home. In fact I had heard that prior to that they used to take halt at my place.

Return journey of the bus would start in the morning at 5:45 hrs. When i was a kid, getting early in morning to catch the bus was not my  responsible at all, just ten minute before bus time my father will lift me and I will be in the bus without any efforts. Normally it used to be dark outside. I had habit of observing bus shadow outside the window which used to jump up and down continuously and whenever I see in window glasses, there was one more bus travelling in exactly parallel to us with same passengers, same interior and same ticket conductor also. Thus after 5 to 10 mins my eyes would close automatically.

ST( bus) aftering reaching final stop at shirgaon, it would go to few more villages And at 12:00 hrs, 'Chowkewadi Shirgaon' board will be replaced by 'Shirgaon Rembavli' means Barachi Gadi. Whole activity list for for us sitting at home was same for both the buses,  except this bus was little bit more crowded than vasthichi Gadi.

If you could not catch any of these buses, then there was one more option available for us but this journey had one more add on feature. There were three to four buses available in a day but they used to drop us at stop called DAND and from there two kilometers walking. This walking journey could be divided into three sections. First was crossing a small hill and then a river bridge which was called as SAKAV. followed by kachha road. thus after walking for around fifteen to twenty minutes, we used to reach our home.

Now time has changed, vehicle are speeded about 3o km/hr more than earlier ones, since old kacha road has been converted into Tar road. Many villagers have started using there own vehicles. Overall life is moving forward but fun of those old childhood days will never come back. 


NOV 20TH, 2012