Jajpur, Asia Pacific’s answer to New York

My job gives me the opportunity to travel to many places. Here's one such first-week experience... This was written in Nov/Dec 2005...

Jajpur, Asia Pacific’s answer to New York

The main intent of this document is to announce that APAC has finally found a reply to America’s Commercial capital. I figured this fact out this week, when I discovered India’s uncrowned jewel, Jajpur. Hidden in the hinterlands of Orissa, this sprawling metropolis is just a couple of hours drive from Bhubaneshwar.

Rewind to 14th November, 2005, 11 AM, I’m sitting at Delhi Airport, taking the Indian Airlines flight to Bhubaneshwar, on a 3 months assignment (if you are wondering why I’m traveling by IA, that’s because of the plethora of flying options to Bhubaneshwar from any city in India/World). My colleagues and I are having a chat about this new place and are wondering what would be in store @ Jajpur. As usual, the IA flight is late by an hour, and as usual, nobody (Other than the passengers) is unduly perturbed about it. After a never-ending wait, we board a flight where the average age of the air hostess is approximately 57.50 years. After we land from the slightly-more-sophisticated-bus, we see a building slightly smaller than a local town bus depot; we learn it is the airport. As we pick up our cabin baggage and go outside, the surroundings and automobiles around the “airport” remind us of the Delhi before independence. We board the car and are on the way through Bhubaneshwar city... all of us find the written form of Oriya language pretty awesome, everything is round, wish I had learnt Oriya before; at least I would have been good at drawing. Jajpur, here we come!

There are many indicators to the prosperity of a place, and the fact that throughout the 2 hour journey from Bhubaneshwar to Jajpur, I couldn’t find a single signboard mentioning “Jajpur” - which reassured me that this city isn’t exactly the epicentre of the global map. Just as we were nearing Jajpur, we were having a casual chat with the driver and enquiring about the place. On the way, as he was driving, he pointed his hand to the left side of the road, and casually said, “See that snake, it’s sleeping”. Needless to say, he was the only person who answered Nature’s call by the road side after 5 minutes. For us, clearly, irrespective of the need, control was not an option, it was imperative.


As we approached Jajpur, I saw the most number of contiguous trucks I’ve seen in my entire life (Other than some Tamil movies where a hero and heroine dance in front of such a huge line of trucks) lined up on both sides of the road. (If you already have got some inkling about the place, you would have realized that the road would not exactly have been as wide as a four lane express way). The line of trucks extends for a few kilometers, cutting across railway lines too (Pity the trains which would have to wait for the jam to clear!). I am told that such jams are the norm here and it took us around an hour to clear that place, thanks to the exploits of the driver, who went into the irrigation fields, and drove the Indica over a 30-35 degree elevation – Mr. Ratan Tata would have been proud to hear this about his product (Though for a moment I was thinking about my medical insurance policy). When my boss wanted to get down from the car to find out about the cause of the jam, he was warned by the driver that he might get beaten up as soon as he gets down by the truck drivers, who have a strong Truck Union here. We finally reached the guest house (where we were going to be put up) in the night. After dinner, when I enquired with the person at the guest house if it was safe enough to go for a walk, he recommended that we wear shoes. When I asked him why, he said that there are a few snakes around, and wearing shoes might be a good idea. Do I need to say that we went straight to the bed?

After we woke up the next day, we got to see the real “city” … many major cities in the country have problems with bad roads, but Jajpur doesn’t have this problem, as there aren’t any. There are many craters on the dusty path though, and I’m sure that these tracks could be used by the ARAI (Automotive Research Association of India) for testing purposes; the automobile service centres here have got to be doing roaring business here. Between the guest house and the office, we need to cross a small bridge – and if there is a trickle of rain, the water gushes above the bridge and you will be taken on a free ride on to the Mahanadi River, if you so wish. How exciting! In such scenarios, the not-so-adventurous will have to take a slightly roundabout route, which is only 80 Kms more.

Another peculiarity about this place is the red soil – no I’m not talking about the red soil on the ground, here whether you find love in the air or not, you will surely find red soil – everything around you would be red - red fans, red chairs, red computer monitors, red Xerox machines, and red tube lights (Giving red rays of light!). Since this place is rich with iron ore, Lorries carry this and distribute it (Pretty evenly, I thought) all around the place. I have seen smoke block visibility on city roads, but this is something else; with so much of iron in the air, its good business for ENT specialists here too!! As you might expect, this place is well wired on to the modern world too. Forget my Reliance connection not catching signals at most places, even the BSNL mobile connection given by the company cuts off at many places, the most prominent among them being right below the BSNL Telecom tower.

The daily newspaper at Jajpur arrives in the early afternoon, and there are around 20 cable channels which are detected (Out of which around 15 would be Doordarshan-related Channels). The remaining private channels are unavailable for most part of the time. (Forget about private channels - Believe it or not, even DD 1 signals were not there for around 2 hours yesterday evening when we were trying to watch the cricket match). Yet to check out the Radio AM scenario (I am not allowed to even dream about FM now).

There is a village 5 Kms from here, where there is no infrastructure for electricity, people there have -never- used electricity in their homes… I will definitely have to see this marvel with my own eyes before I leave Jajpur. In Jajpur, once in a while you may come across some streetlights, but you will never come across any policeman, at least I haven’t seen one thus far. I was going to crib about the guest house accommodation, but I shut up after somebody told me that the culture in Orissa is that for every 4 living rooms, there is one bathroom (We fondly call it the 4:1 Ratio). I also had a chance to see Jajpur’s main, biggest road, (Akin to Bangalore’s Brigade Road). It had approximately 10-15 small shops and I had a chance to see a total of around 20 human beings there.

The views mentioned above are purely based on what I have personally encountered in a mere one week’s time, and am looking forward to many more! Till then, you can continue to be jealous of my condition and MY place (Getting a little possessive now). I hope that after reading this document you are now convinced that Jajpur is Asia’s reply to America’s NY!