The backs of trucks are India’s longest-running open-air literature festival. Somewhere between Horn Please, Use Dipper at Night, and Maa Ka Ashirwad, you occasionally discover a line that deserves a literary award.
This one completely confused me-
Dilli ki rani, Haridwar ka raja, milna hai to Bambai aaja.
(Queen of Delhi, King of Haridwar, if you want to meet, come to Bombay.)
I stopped and stared at it, trying to make sense of it. Why should the Queen of Delhi and the King of Haridwar travel all the way to Bombay just to meet? Delhi and Haridwar are barely a few hours apart now, even less with the new expressway. Geography, I concluded, was not the slogan writer’s favourite subject.
I reconsidered. Perhaps it was a long-distance romance and the royal couple wanted to meet away from disapproving families. Delhi traffic could not have been the reason, Mumbai traffic is no better and may even be worse. Was the truck driver an aspiring Bollywood scriptwriter waiting to be discovered at a traffic signal?
None of these theories satisfied me.
Then came the Eureka moment. The sound of raindrops falling on leaves reminded me that it was Sawan, the holy month of the Hindu lunar calendar. During Sawan, the Delhi–Haridwar highway belongs to the Kanwariyas carrying holy Ganga water. Traffic does not merely slow down; it reorganises itself around faith.
Suddenly I was in awe of the wisdom of the slogan writer.
Why meet on the Delhi–Haridwar route in Sawan? Meet in Bombay. No endless diversions. No accidental participation in a controversy you never intended to join. And, most importantly, no risk of becoming viral on social media for the wrong reasons.
Mumbai in the monsoon has its own romance, Mumbaikars and Hindi films have assured us of that for decades. Marine Drive is certainly more cinematic than being stuck in a traffic jam outside Roorkee.
The slogan, I realised, is not just about romance. It is about choosing your battles wisely. Sometimes the smartest thing is not to argue with circumstances but to quietly change the meeting place.
“Dilli ki rani, Haridwar ka raja, milna hai to Bambai aaja.”
What looked like nonsense at first turned out to be the most sensible traffic advisory of the Sawan season.
Photos and story by Prerna Jain.
