Nandankanan Road in Bhubaneswar on Monday. Pictures by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar / Cuttack, Sept. 10: Rajesh Parida, 21, changed three trains and finally hitchhiked to his destination today. Rita Ghose, 33, a patient with spinal cord injury, went looking for food and water after her check-up, but in vain. Both were sufferers caught in the dawn-to-dusk Odisha strike called by the Congress.

Ghose, a homemaker from Gopivallabhpur in Bengal, reached SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack along with two other patients this morning for a routine check-up. But it proved to be an uncomfortable day. After her medical examination, she went out of the hospital looking for food and water, but couldn’t find either, as all shops in the vicinity were closed and the streets were deserted. Finally, she booked a room in a lodge, hoping to find at least a packet of biscuits or a bottle of water.

“We had no idea about the bandh. Though the check-up was over before noon, we could not return home immediately for the fear of being attacked during the strike. I ended up spending Rs 800 to book a room at a lodge for barely four hours. But thankfully, I got a cup of tea there,” she said, wiping the sweat off her sunburnt face.

The day was equally bad for Sunil Swain of Kakatpur, who was suffering from severe abdominal pain and had to hitch a 60-km odd bumpy ride on his relative’s two-wheeler to make it to Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar.

“The public transport system was completely paralysed. Not a single autorickshaw or taxi driver was willing to come to Bhubaneswar, fearing violence on the streets. So, I drove Sunil here on my motorcycle. He was groaning in pain throughout the ride,” said Babuli Jena, Sunil’s relative.

Rajesh, who studies at an engineering college in Bhubaneswar and is preparing for his back papers tomorrow, said: “The Rajyarani Express halted at Cuttack for over two hours though its normal stoppage time at the station is barely 10 minutes.” He had to switch over to Tapaswani Express that was leaving Cuttack.

But as luck would have it, even this one was stuck at Mancheswar, where he changed trains yet again to finally reach Bhubaneswar seven hours behind schedule. Since autorickshaws were not plying in the city, he had to hitchhike to his institute in Patia.

Rajesh was not the only one at the receiving end of the strike called by the Congress to protest against alleged police excesses on party workers during its rally in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.

The strike led to 46 trains, including nearly 30 passenger trains, being cancelled. People alighting from train and buses coming from other states found themselves without any means of transport within the city.

Litigants suffered in no small measure as work in the courts was affected badly, with lawyers abstaining from work.