The Big 'B'

Have you ever felt a desperate feeling to reach the land ?
Like when you are in an aeroplane for more than the time you expected or in a river cruise not able to reach the shore. I get such feeling while crossing really long river bridges for first time and somedays back the feeling surfaced again.

I was in the bus to tezpur, a city in assam. Between the trees on both sides the bus just entered the bridge that is guarded at both ends by army jawans. I saw the river below and felt the height at which the bridge stands. The distant boats were looking like a stick and the man in it like an ant. It was an early morning bus, the visibility was low. After soemtime when I tried to find out how much of the bridge is left to be covered, the fog was blocked my vision. It almost took 6-8 minutes to cover the bridge. I usually get scared after 3 minutes.

The 3 minute stats came from my first experience with a really long river bridge. I used to be a kid then.While going to my village, our bus enters the mahanadi river bridge in the city cuttack.The height at which the bridge stands scares me. The height was meant to protect the bridge from regular floods. The bumpy road shakes me a lot. If I fall doen from the bridge, there is a less than 2% chance of survival.Still 2% because, some year before a bus had fallen down from the bridge and 1 guy survived out of 50. Everytime i cross the bridge, i cross check the milestone that indicates the length to be 1.7 km.

For a long time I had the feeling that mahanadi bridge is "the one long bridge" and then I saw the second one.

On a beautiful august morning my train was stopping at rajmundry station.I remembered my mom's instruction to throw a coin at the river godavari that was about to come. The train left the station and moments later I heard the sound of the train moving over the bridge.When I saw the scenic view of the river, I was lost. So big and beautiful. Unlike mahanadi, the river was filled with water and the distant view of the city, the fishemarn catching the fish was amazing. Then I relaized we have not yet crossed the bridge. My heart missed a bit and I became restless in search of the the land. It took some more time for the 2.7 km bridge to end and I reached the land safely.

And then few days back I saw that third river bridge over mighty brahmaputra.

The sense fear shaked my heart while crossing over the Big 'B'. The 3.5 km bridge is really an enginnering master piece and a long standing symbol of victory of human over branhmaputra. I was happy to see the bridge.

Later, someone told me that there is a 5.5 km bridge over ganga connecting hazipur to patna. Man , is it so !