DESI DISCOVERY QUIZ 23

The bouncing phenomenon of the earth is seen  in Jaljali, Manipat near, Ambikapur – Chattisgarh. Appreciate Venkat  & Murugan fort their attempts.

It was those days when I had my project at Renukoot  in UP.  I was always eager to get back home & the forest route via Ambikapur (Chattisgarh) to Bilaspur( Chattisgarh)  to Nagpur (Maha)  was a shorter one to connect Pune/Chennai. All but one of my crossings of Ambikapur  used to be past 10 PM. The bus from UP stops in the middle of the night & all the passengers get down & board another waiting bus to continue their journey into Chattisgarh.   Same bus never completes the entire journey through the 2 states. It was during the one day visit that I saw Jaljali.

Renukoot, otherwise  is a 4 hour boring ghat drive from Varanasi  which is the regular route. Mughal Sarai Station (currently in the eye of the renaming storm) is nearby Varanasis & is the main station where most Kolkatta-Delhi bound trains pass through. After a quick dip in the Ganges & an even quick darshan,  I would board the bus to Renukoot. When I see HP, Pujab & Harayana Buses in Varanasi, I realise as if India has suddenly shrunk.

Hindalco’s Aluminium plant is the only major industry at Renukoot which is why the town came up. A little further away  from the plant on the   main road starts what was once easily the power capital.

At every bus stop, there is a power plant – NTPC Rihand, Shaktinagar, Sigrauli, Birla’s Renusagar, UP Govts Anapara, Lanco & so on. The Sone river silently & lazily flows,  a little away from the road in this unpopulated area feeding all these power plants.  While seeing a river with water is  rare in TN, here it flows throught out the year as if unwanted, with no one but the power plants to use them.

Each power plant has a self contained small township ( about 60 to 80 houses)  because of which there  is not an auto or  a decent hotel anywhere beyond Renukoot. The entire area is remote & life in the small townships are a peaceful bore. A NTPC  executive is  well paid, but there is nothing to spend on or to while away. The nearest big market could be 3 hours away & a mall 10 hours away.  The nearest theatre could by 8 hours away. Their kids in general  are away at a school or college hostel in Delhi /Kolkatta or Lucknow.

It’s an irony – those who have all the time in the world for everything, cannot actually do anything .Lot of talents in the housewives of these execs get confined to homes in these sparsley inhabited mountains .

Despite the numerous power plants, even the trucks are rare as the coal supply to these numerous power plants are supplied by overhead  wagons  through a system that goes by the interesting name of “merry go round”  -referred world over as the “MGR System”

Renukoot  which is in Sonhe bhadra  district is the only Indian place/district to share its borders with 4 states. Don’t ever ask if it is worth to know this trivia. It was the KBC question for clearing the 5 Mil level.  Its also the only city in any state to have greatest distances to any other cities in any state.