The man who knew where Sitapur was!

Back in Pune during my college, I had 2 roomies, who were a native of Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh (Real place not a fiction). As expected almost everyone I knew, ridiculed it, to the extent that the poor sitapuris were as conscious as a teenager would be with a pimple!

Taatha made his first surprise visit (later many followed) to see me in Pune. There was a pretty big crowd in my apartment as was customary for most evenings prior to a party. Either Taatha did not see anything that he was not supposed to or did not simply make a big deal of it. As the introductions followed, my roomies sheepishly introduced their native town as “U.P.”. The bullies in the room got the chance they always look for and SITAPUR once again became the laughing stock of the crowd. Unaffected by the giggles, Taatha began speaking as a matter of fact about Sitapur; Its location & surrounding towns; Railway lines that pass through Sitapur, & how despite being so close, the best train from Bombay to get to Lucknow was Pushpak Express, however Gorakhpur Exp was more covenient for Sitapur due to its time of arrival; Next listed was Sitapur’s famous hospital and the name of the politician who inaugurated it and how they have the best technology for cataract operation.

Needless to say every student in that room was spellbound, the Sitapuris were vindicated and I was beaming with pride. He went on to speak with mechanical engineers about machine design and drawing and computer engineers about how much he would love to learn computers! Every person in that room remembered the encounter at least for the next 4 years!