A Stroll at Singhu

I remember waking up twice during the night. Though there were mosquitoes too, but I was feeling cold, thanks to the fans combined with the cooler combined with the cold weather that night. I was too lazy in my sleep to go and get something to cover myself with, and hence spent a part of the night shivering.

But apart from that, it was an easy night. I woke up next morning, fresh and satisfied, around 4.30 am. My other two companions were still sleeping, and I had woken up just like that, without an alarm. Sometimes your excitement is the alarm enough to get you up. Later I would learn that when the first alarm had gone off, one of us had turned off all the subsequent alarms.

Woken up alone in that big hall, I felt slightly weird. I could not make too much noise, lest I should disturb many sleeps, and so I decided to take a stroll and see if there were any toilets nearby.

Outside the hall-like massive tent, I found a different scene: I was not the first one to wake up on Singhu. People were going here and people were going there, some with towels on their arms, others with toothbrushes in their mouths, some of them talking quietly, others reciting their morning prayers. Some Hindu hymns were playing on the main stage – I recognised them as I had learned one in my primary school.

Two random old men passed by me – I stopped them and asked if they knew of any bathrooms nearby. They said they were already going that way, and I could accompany them.

Along a makeshift gurdwara, there was a little path heading towards a street parallel to the highway. There was a factory, sort of, which had been converted to a bathroom by installing a tall cuboidal box, and placing some tubs. A few men were taking bath in open.

After this memorable bathroom visit in that converted factory, I embarked again upon the highway and started heading not towards the hall-like tent but the other way. I wanted to have a glimpse of how Singhu functioned in a morning, from the waking up of man to waking up of the sun.

I reached till the KFC (where the first two incidents mentioned in this series took place), and took a return journey from there.

Another interesting thing ensued on this return journey. As I was on way, I spotted from some distance a hose supported into a massive tub to fill water in it. Water was filled to the brim, and had started spilling out. The man who had put up the hose had maybe forgotten about it. I wondered if I should do something to save water. I could spot, at least from there, no tap to which the hose was attached, or anything else that could stop the flow.

I was still wondering when a man passing by, just like me, stopped and stooped near that tub. He was a passerby, I was sure, as he seemed to be as confused as me, and was checking how he could turn off the flow of water.

I smiled ear to ear and learnt another secret of the success of this protest: care for a stranger as much as for an acquaintance.