One Enemy

The king was pacing up and down in his private chamber when the minister came in.

"Your Highness! I disagree with your idea of forging an alliance with the company men", the minister said.

Ours is the best army in the world. We have several lakh skillful infantry who can fight with swords and spears. 

Our cavalry is the best in the world. We have thousands of cavalrymen, each of them an expert at wielding swords when the horses' race at lightning speed. Some of them can also shoot arrows, or throw spears with precision and accuracy that are second to none! 

"We have enough of the army to protect our boundary from all the sides," the minister's voice beamed with pride for his command and their collective abilities.

"My friend, thank you for updating me on the strength of our army. I am sure we can win all the battles, should we need to face a threat in the future. But then, let's have a great vision, my friend. You will then appreciate that I made my decision in the great interest of our kingdom,", the king replied.

Portuguese are marching towards us from the south-west, while French recently captured Pondicherry. We have a constant threat from Mughals in the north. Though the company men (East India Company, or the British) are not interested in politics, they spread all over. 

I do bet that we have the best army in the world, but should we always have to live with a constant fear of battles?

The question, my friend, is who our enemies are? The entire Bharat has been divided into several kingdoms; each of the rulers is fighting for his own power. While we are busy fighting against each other, the foreigners are coming in large numbers, enslaving us, and forcing us to trade with them.

"I am sure, with our army, we can win the battle for our kingdom. But, what we need is to think of winning the battle for all the kingdoms of Bharat", the king said in a reverberating voice. The minister absorbed the king's message and asked, "What do you see in Robert Clive? Of all the company men, why him?"

The king was happy that his minister understood his point of view. With a smile on his face, he replied, "While the other company men are trying to get our trade rights with them, it is only Clive who appears to have a vision of uniting the whole kingdom under one rule. Giving away the Cuddalore fort to him will help him achieve that goal"

"But what do we get in return, your highness?", the minister asked.

"One enemy! Clive has the potential to lead an army and fight with other foreigners."

"But, the United Bharat will come under foreign rule. How can we let that happen my lord", the minister asked the king.

"True my friend! We cannot do anything about this. For centuries, we have had a lot of infighting and some of our own rulers are responsible for letting the foreigners come in and involve them in our politics. If we unite our nation under one foreign rule, we can identify that one enemy, who is common to all.

"But the one nation will be the most divisive one, my lord. Am afraid we may fall into a deep pit from which we can never come out again", the minister said in a grieved tone.

"I wish a Mahatma be born who will have the charisma to unite the whole nation and fight against the common enemy. But for now, we need to do this as our duty, irrespective of whether a Mahatma will be born or not", the king said.

"This is how Robert Clive captured the Cuddalore fort, and the rest is history," I finished telling the story to Deepak.

"Those who want to get down at Jipmer or Ashram, please come forward," the conductor was calling out to the passengers. "Should we get down here?" Deepak asked me.

"Let us get down at the Pondicherry bus stand, and roam around the city for a while before we take the connecting bus," I replied.

"I thought the same too," Deepak said. "Let us say "hi" to the French before we go to see the British."

Troubled Beginnings

Murphy was proving his law one more time while we were waiting for an MTC bus that would take us to the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT), from where we could take a Cuddalore-bound bus. 

The MTC buses from CMBT were running towards Velachery, while the ones that depart from Velachery were heading towards T.Nagar. After what looked like eternity, an M70 arrived at our bus stop which Deepak and I, along with a small crowd boarded.

The driver stopped the bus a few meters away from the bus stop to allow the conductor to finish distributing the tickets to all on board, or so I thought! It became clear to me soon when the driver tried frantically to start the ignition that the bus was never going to start!

The conductor went to a nearby tea shop, talked about the problem with the shop owner, brought a pot of water and filled the radiator. Some of the passengers were inquiring from the driver to see if pushing the bus would work. But, the driver's facial expression gave me a feeling that he already knew the bus wasn't going to start again.

The passengers got down from the bus and started to push it from behind. But with the collective muscle power, the driver could only manage to steer the vehicle to the edge of the road, thereby not causing a traffic jam.

We waited for ten additional minutes before the conductor flagged a D70, authorized our tickets with his signatures, for us to travel in that bus. We boarded to find that it was already packed to saturation level. After a tiring journey which took about 45 minutes, we reached the CMBT.

We had a cup of coffee each, and were walking towards a bay for the Cuddalore-bound busses when we heard a loud boom followed by shattering of glass from a nearby platform.

"This is my bay. How dare you park your bus here?", the driver of the bus who accidentally crashed his vehicle with the other one, started to yell at a conductor, who was rushing towards the scene to inspect the crash.

When  we reached the platform, an air conditioned bus was about to depart from there. We located the conductor and asked him if we could buy two tickets to Cuddalore. "This one goes only up to Pondicherry. But you will get a connecting bus from Pondicherry to Cuddalore every five minutes", he assured us.

We did not mind boarding the bus and taking the last two seats, since it was an air conditioned volvo model. But soon, we regretted our decision when we found that the ac outlet was spewing hot air instead.

Moments later, we raised this issue to the conductor. He inspected all the other outlets and said "other outlets are working fine. This one alone seems to have some problem. I will ask the mechanic to service it (after the trip)"!

Just like seeing the sun finally come out after gloomy days, a slow and bumpy ride from the terminus to the outskirts of the city with all the troubled starts changed to a pleasant drive the moment our bus hit the East Coast Road (ECR).

At a stretch in ECR where the road narrowed for some distance, an auto was parked in the middle of the road. The driver of the auto was bargaining with his client for some extra money to strike a deal. Though there was enough space between the auto and the median, our driver decided to choose this particular stretch to overtake a tanker lorry.

A sudden brake was followed by an exchange of few angry words between the two drivers. Our driver parked the bus across the road blocking all traffic, turned off the ignition, got down and engaged in physical fight with the auto driver. It took a conductor and a few bike riders to stop the fight and bring them to their senses and steering wheels!

I asked Deepak "What do you think about all this?", referring to the development of situations since morning.

"We have a lot of stories to tell our readers", he said.

A "Gadget free" Trip in Search of Robert Clive's Fort

Today, 10 AM:

I woke up with a yawn and picked up my cell phone. The notifications tab said I had received 12 missed calls, 17 texts, 9 gmails, 7 facebook messages, 1 poke, and a like. A saintly calmness overtook all negative feelings within me. With a great sense of accomplishment, I texted Deepak "We did it :)"

About two week ago:

"I would like to go on a trip to some place we do not know of. We would talk to the local people and find things there, without using our smart phones", Deepak said.

"Nice idea! How about a gadget-free trip?", I asked him in reply, with a place to go to in my mind.

"Yes! That is the kind of trip I was looking forward to go to"

A week ago:

I recollected a historical fiction that I read a few years ago titled Raja Perigai written by Sandilyan. The story is based on a political situation that let Robert Clive to form an alliance with the then Maratha ruler of Senji to capture the Cuddalore fort.

"Fort St. David is the first fort to be captured by the British (East India Company) in India. The fort is historically significant since it gave the much needed political base to Robert Clive. Lets take our backpacks, leave all gadgets behind, explore and find more about this fort next weekend" I mailed Deepak.

"Sure!Done!", came the reply.

The day before yesterday:

In order to ensure that ours would be a gadget free trip, we framed the following rules to be strictly adhered to.

1. No cell phone.
2. No GPS, GPRS, 2G, 3G, internet, Google maps, etc
3. No watch.
4. No bank cards/ID cards etc
5. No laptops or ipods/mp3 players

We decided to take one camera to record our findings.

Yesterday:

We packed our backpacks with some fruits, a change of clothes, my camera and a water bottle. We withdrew Rs.1000/- each, and left the cards behind in our respective rooms. At 5 AM, we met in front of the Cauvery hostel, high five'd "Let's do this", and walked to the MTC bus stop and started our trip.