Day 4: Catching up with old friends

Today's drive included a stop over at Vedchi near Surat in Gujarat where our friends Umadi and Surendra live with their daughter Dua. We left Hill Zill a little before 9 am because they couldn't provide us breakfast before that. We drove back the way we came for some distance. At some point we quietly slipped in Gujarat. Then we merged back on to the Ahmedabad Mumbai Highway but a little further north from where we had left it last evening. In the morning the Highway was less cluttered with lumbering and thundering trucks weaving across the lanes so we were able to drive at a steady clip. This portion of the Highway was in better repair than what we had driven through yesterday. We drove for 75 km on this Highway. The next 35 kilometres was through rural Gujarat. First with mangoes and sugarcane. We drove through state highways, major district roads and some of the drive was through even smaller village roads. But I must admit even the village roads were in good shape. A little after 11.30 we reached Vedchhi. The last time we were here was in April 1989, exactly 36 years ago.

Road to Vedchi

Umadi was my first boss when I joined the Sanjivani Hospital in KFI Varanasi. She worked as a teacher of Nutrition at the Vasanta College for Women and was a part time MO and Superintendent of the Hospital. Umadi had trained at NRSMC in Kolkata and so there was sense of easy familiarity. Suren was a physicist and anti-nuclear activist. Dua was then 4 years old. Umadi's father was a well-known Gandhian and her grandfather was Gandhiji's personal secretary Mahadev Desai. The one and half years that we worked together was for us an initiation into the world of social action. Through them we learnt of the vast world of community development, environmental activism and rural healthcare practice that was already underway across the country. We had left Benaras (as it was called then) at the same time. They left to join Narayan Desai (her father) who worked out Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya at Vedchhi and we left for Kolkata to chalk the next course of our professional journey. This was in March 1989. The next month, while we were on our familiarisation tour of social action initiatives around India we had also visited Vedchhi. Jashodhara had been coordinating with Dua about our visit, and Umadi had recently suffered a second stroke, so we had opted for lunch, rather than staying over.

With Suren and Dua at Vedhchi

We spent the next four and half hours catching up on nearly 4 decades of our lives. We were mostly up to date with our life trajectory through our mutual friend Satish, but this was to catch up on many personal details. Umadi was as effervescent and despite some impaired mobility due to her stroke appeared as feisty. Suren's wry humour was intact. Dua was now an archeologist specialising in dating ancient tools. She had been working with several Harappan sites before she went for fellowship to Spain and then had taught at an Shiv Nadar University in NCR. From her we learnt both about the intricacies and politics of contemporary archeology. 

At 4pm sharp we left the Ashram for the next leg towards Vadodra. After negotiating some MDRs and SHs we were back on NH 48, and it's lumbering, chaotic traffic. At one point close to Ankaleshwar we left NH 48 and moved further west. A little beyond Bharuch we hived off towards the brand new NE4, part of the still under-construction Mumbai Delhi Expressway. For the next 75 kilometres we cruised at a 100 kph with very cars and trucks for company. We reached our Hampton Hotel at Vadodara at 7.40 pm, 6 mins earlier than our ETA when we had left Vedchhi.

Distance travelled -340 km

Time -6.21 hours

Fuel Ave -16.4 kpl

P.C.- Jashodhara