I left home at about nine and went to pick up Dr.Asif and after he loaded a whole bunch of food and soft drinks we headed to Gurgaon.
Here we met up with Sanjay who insisted that we have breakfast with him. Sanjay’s home is a castle. And the breakfast was naturally fit for kings and so we had coffee (option of cold milk shakes but I stuck to my hot and black one), sausages almost a foot long, cheese omelets, toasts and backed beans. But it all began with a healthy heaping of fruit
.After that we set of in Sanjay's Honda Crv, driving almost a hundred km through very bad roads to hit the pump house . We also stopped on the way to pick up the local guide and all this took about two and a half hours. We got our rods in action by one o'clock. Unfortunately, the pumps were running and so the situation wasn't ideal but we cast away .
I first tried a few casts and slow retrieve with a spoon, gifted to me by Asif for my birthday. Then I realised that I would probably have better luck with Asif's magic bait. While we were casting we saw little fish doing something that the salmon do near a water fall. They were shooting out of the water like little silver darts and going under the water near the pipes of the pump house. It was amazing to watch as I had never seen this before.
As I was taking in this little miracle I saw my line twitching and I don't know how I knew there was something at the end of the line. And so I began to reel it in and saw my rod really bending, I looked at Asif and Sanjay in panic and Asif gestured to me to keep reeling it in. For a while I felt that the beast down there would break the rod. But then the line suddenly went slack. I screamed,” it broke the line.”
Asif looked up and said," Nah, it’s your cross of not tying your hook correctly..." Damn that hurt...since I was the only one who got a bite. So we all decide to move to another location-a jodh which is normally a sure thing. We still had a few hours left to fish so were confident that our luck would improve.
We moved to the jodh(basically a pond) and here the harayana cowboys waited till we got our lines in the water and then let a flock of buffaloes in. Nothing really surprising if you have followed jat logic for as long as I have.
I was amazed that they hadn’t bent a few bamboo poles on our heads for daring to be in the same place as their prize buffaloes.
So that made us struggle in vain for about half an hour. After which Asif and I branched off to another side of the pool. Here we could see big fish jumping, stealing our bait and making our floats bob but nothing else would happen. This went on till six pm after which we had to unglue Asif from his spot cause both Sanjay and I had to rush home for dinner guests.
Bidding farewell to the guide we rode towards the castle again. The good Doctor was worried that our antics in the heat may have burned of more than the three thousand calorie breakfast that we had ingested. And like good patients we decided to tuck into his kebab parantha, kebab and egg parantha. And since I had messed up on the first hook-up he punished me more ( a very agreeable form of torture, I should have been water boarded) with…a whole roasted chicken. I stopped after the delicious leg piece cause I was trying to still make an impression with my manners (after all I was the least educated of the trio). Then we reached Sanjay's place after three hours (the roads weren’t repaired after the rains in spite of the Chauthala fund)and rushed back home.
I was now getting less than tolerant calls from the wife as her voice slowly changed over the hours. From the dulcet,” ohh you poor boy you no catch fishie…” to the menacing ,”you know we have people over for dinner…” to the grinding of teeth “They have arrived you know.” At this point I finally broke under the pressure and had to sacrifice the poor Doc. He elected to take an auto home from my place to his. Reminds me of that old song,” That’s what friends are for”. Ah… anything to justify my yellow streak
Well it was super day as I saw a lot of new stuff and heard a new sound…fish laughing.
