I am working as a freelance BPO contractor from past three years and due to some professional requirements and circumstances like better Internet connectivity and lesser power cuts in night than day, I have worked for almost every single day, sorry night in the past three years and here are some interesting details of Udaipur’s graveyard shifts.

11 PM is local bed time, unofficially the city shutdown time. You will not find many people or services active after this time. If your equipment breaks down like PC or Laptop or internet (more or less there is no help in the internet area after 5 PM) or if furniture or electrical wiring is damaged, then you have to wait for the next 12 hours for someone to appear and help you out.

I had to rush to my friends’ houses after 11 PM (luckily they were awake at that time) to get a back up CPU, PC power cables or any other sort of cable or disc. And later realized it is better to have two sets of everything like Computers, monitors, chairs, modem etc.

No normal medical aid. In winter of December 2013, I had my wisdom tooth extracted and was prescribed some antibiotics with a common side effect of loose motions. Unfortunately, one night around 1 AM I felt the need of medicine to counter the loose motions. To make the matter worse, it was absent in domestic first aid kit.

I have literally raced to every imaginable place in town to find the medicine and guess what; all medicine shops were closed, rushed to a hospital where people were awake but the chemist forgot to handover the keys of medicine section to next person on the job and I was again helpless.

Finally, I was guided by someone to check GBH American, reached there, got the sleeping attendant woke up which was again a difficult task as sleep in winters is very deep and sweet, got the medicine gulped in car itself. Yes! I always keep a water bottle in my car, otherwise it is again a tough ordeal to find packaged drinking water at that hour and the day was saved.

Hunger is your worst enemy. These days few food joints are providing midnight meal delivery but couple of years back the scenario was different. For tea or refreshment you had to rely on yourself. Luckily, I work from home so I always find something to manage otherwise you have to wait till 3:30 AM for food stalls to become operational at Udiapol or one shop in Sector 5 where they only serve Poha.

Some of the shops and vendors at Udiapol are selling packaged chips, but your heart will long for something else after a few days, therefore hunger is your worst enemy before 3:30.

You are pretty much alone and it is awfully quiet. Nights of the town are very quiet and peaceful. The only sound you can hear is a rock concert of stray dogs or different insects. During wedding season, 31st December or Navratri you can easily hear the loudspeakers playing almost 1.75 Km away.

Not many establishments are having people working in night so your social life is almost Zero. It has become a daily ritual to go to out at 3:30 -04:00 AM and have refreshment but for last 18 months the only people I could  talk with were the tea and poha vendors at above mentioned places.

Finally I managed to find 4 more people who are doing graveyard shifts and have same nature of work as mine otherwise you are going to find the home guards or police constables and travelers getting on/off the buses in dawn.

On a comical note I would like to mention that I have roamed in the city at almost every and any hour of night but disappointed to tell the readers believing in supernatural stuff that I was unable to find a single, ghost, witch or phantom mentioned in some of the popular stories.

Written by: Aditya Joshi