Hehe :),
Juss dat I am typing this blog frrm Kerala..so the title u knowz :)...I have found dat if I try to write a travelogue at the end of the trip, I am unable to write at all..soo trying to break it up in parts :D, so this is my 1st attempt :D.
Juss dat I am typing this blog frrm Kerala..so the title u knowz :)...I have found dat if I try to write a travelogue at the end of the trip, I am unable to write at all..soo trying to break it up in parts :D, so this is my 1st attempt :D.
Before I start on my tale, a fact and a warning from a harried, victimized soul. As most of you know, while Anil Ambani controls the Reliance CDMA service or RIM, Mr. Mukesh has the GSM version under his wing, branded as SMART. And apparently it was a major craze in Bihar, so urs truly took that SIM as I guess, I had posted sometime ago, rght ? Now, roaming pe uski haalat yeh hai ki I can't send / receive SMSes or calls and even when I "used to" check my balance, it charged me !!! And when I called up their service centre in Calcutta, they told me to call up the Bihar one because they apparently had no "info" abt. Bihar / Orissa customers. So, now the only use I put my L7 is to know my location, which trust me, apart from the numerous games, is the only saving grace. So, if you are gonna buy a SIM, please plz. plz. stay away from SMART n do yourself a favor :).
Now, yours truly's journey started from Calcutta, the land of many smells, rich man's sweat islands in the midst of large swathes of poverty, ancient architecture competing with modern highrises and the ever-resplendent Bengali sweets vying for their scent-space with the Bong Maach :). And, thankfully, in the sweltering heat I had ossum company. Neha, a friend from IIT Kgp was in cal. for some work, and was doing nothing on the day I happened to be in town. But, the struggler's luck came in the form of WBJEE exams scheduled on the looming Sat and Sun, which meant all hotels were booked and prices were touching the sky. Anyways, I did manage to get a room for a (paltry) 800 bucks :P, and that's wat has made me an impecunious vagrant by this stage of my trip. If you would be kind enuff to make any donations (which I promise to return with the guarantee of a BCG job :P), please please, leave a comment and I will contact you :D. Okay, leaving my misery behind for the time being, lets get back to the city of Joy (aka Dominique Lappiere if you have read the book ?)... Neha and I explored the whole city on foot and metros and trust me, it was brilliant. Talking, walking, coffeeing, lazing around, laughing at the silliest things, some times simple things can be soo mind-blowing naa :). We went through thoroughfares, dingy markets, lardes of human population, some left to rot, and some leaping forward to more riches, kinda Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. Anyways, after a wholesome dinnor at Trincas(Neha, u agree rght :P ? We eatttt sooo much :D), I dropped Neha at her di's apartment and then padded back to my hotel. So much walking, and I was just getting started. Anyways, morning dawned and I had to catch this flight to Hyd at 11 AM, so me and Neha met up at 8 and had brrkfast at Flurry's (if you have seen Parineeta , you would know what mez talking abt :))...and since Neha wants to goto US and all, I gifted her The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Now, I am travelling with a truckload of books (8 in all :P), and am making a point of gifting them all on my way (atleast something to help ppl. remember me by :D). And, then I was off to Hyd.
Hyd cometh, and soo came Zarine. We met at Eat street and followed up with the wonderful V for Vendetta (review later :P). Next day I met up with a Class X school frnd and his max nice gf :) [Binay, if u iz reading this...remember my brownie points, okay :D] and then ran into 3 Kgp juniors..wattay City ! and the bestest part abt. hyd is its structured outlay, its tuff not to become an admirer of the work Mr. Naidu had done, kaash saare log [esp. Mr. Arjun Singh] aapke terah soch paate !! Also, fer the first time I had Dosa with Aloo-Dum, another Hyd speciality I presume :).
Hyd cometh, and soo came Zarine. We met at Eat street and followed up with the wonderful V for Vendetta (review later :P). Next day I met up with a Class X school frnd and his max nice gf :) [Binay, if u iz reading this...remember my brownie points, okay :D] and then ran into 3 Kgp juniors..wattay City ! and the bestest part abt. hyd is its structured outlay, its tuff not to become an admirer of the work Mr. Naidu had done, kaash saare log [esp. Mr. Arjun Singh] aapke terah soch paate !! Also, fer the first time I had Dosa with Aloo-Dum, another Hyd speciality I presume :).
Then I took the Rajdhani to Bangalore, and went to Subrat's [again a Class X frnd] whoz doing his MBA frrm MDI and currently doing an internship with Wipro. I was meeting him after some 9 years !!! and boss..we totally connected. That's the thing with guys :), u meet after 100 years and you go current in 1 second :D. Then I spent some 350 bucks on a stupid auto, which had a maxx chor autowallah and went to Whitefield, which is like hazaar miles outside Bangalore, and met up 5 ppl :) and it was worth the trouble. Uske baad came back to the city, and met TK and Harry, two ppl. from my old electronics deptt. of Kgp. and it was like the ultimate thing :), meeting all these ppl. again, turning back time, living those moments again :). Now, IMHO, i din't like Bangalore at all, I dunno, the vibes weren't there at all. Frantic-paced people, going thru motions, with not a second to spare, surrounded by the best technology on offer, but cold-footed about emotions ? I dunno :). Haan, yea, I shared an auto fer the 1st time in my life with a nice lady, and waqt kaise gujra, pata hi nahin chala :P.
Okay, now, now, now I finally reached Trivendrum, the place I had started out for. Abhilash, one of my bestest frnds at A, will be joining ABN Amro, HK in June, and so, you know :), I had to drop by :P. And, I brought rains with me :) [now, I was really beginning to think I was the rain mascot of sorts, but Mumbai and Ahd put me back into my place :((]...So, amidst the stuttering drizzle, we went to mebbe one of the most beautiful beaches in India, namely Kovalam..and mein gott, apart from being naturally beautiful, it was so spick and span, almost pristine. With numbered crowds, and hence almost-absent noise except for the gentle waves crashing against the shore, it was humdrum and riveting. [Wait for the pics, coming up soon on a yahoo album near you :D]. Though I din't want to leave, we had to leave for Kottayam early morning next day and hence had to, had to go :(. From Kottayam, we went to Kumarakom, a wonderful Bird Sanctuary and doubly wonderful canoeing ! Coincidentally I had been reading "God of small things" at home, and I felt like I was in Ayemenem itself. The same lush greenery around which Miss Roy weaves her dark magic, the Auto-names, "Hannah Mol" and the Syrian churches, it was almost a haunting deja vu, if you know, wat I mean ! After a blissful afternoon in the bird sanctuary, and an equally wonderful fishy lunch, we went back to Ernakulam (Kochi) and put up at a hotel for the day, and it rained there as well :D. Next day, we set out for Munnar. Now, I donn have enough sobriquets to describe the beauty of Munnar, but suffice it to say, that before this trip I was dying to visit Simla, but after Munnar happened, Simla can now only simmer on the backburner. A primavera Tea estate, its nature ensconced at its most pristine, with thankfully verry few junta milling around, and all I can say is, God really made this country his / her own :). When we reached Munnar, it was drizzling, we got all freezing and sodden, went to a 5-star buffet to restore normalcy, and then the drizzling stopped. So, we became Livingstone and Rhodes respectively :P, and went exploring the landscape on foot. There are sooooo many small, small lanes, which demand to be explored, enticing, enchanting poor us to go down that way, but little does it know, that stupid "we" had given Munnar only a few hours of our "precious" time. So, after a few hours of drinking in, we had to sadly set flight back to the humdrum city :(. Now, while we were looking for a lift to a bus-stop, none of the cars that passed us even cared to stop. Hai naa funny, am sure if me and Abhilash had looked wee-bit like foreigners, almost everyone would have showered us with the famed "Indian" hospitality, but we don't deem our own countrymen to be deserving enuff to be given the same treatment :). The car that eventually stopped for us was an Indicab waalah looking for extra bucks to be made on his return trip, I would like to believe, that was a mere coincidence, nahin :).
To put it succinctly, I fell in love with Kerala, and its sleepy-eyed elegance and the easy-going cities. Even when ppl. get jammed against each other in traffic, they smile at each other and pass easily, what would I not give to see something similar in Bihar :), but Alas !! Gifted with extensive greenery and natural endowments, its a *no words*, I wish I was born here :), but then there is always the next birth :D.
Okay, then I moved to Mumbai, where the funny thing with the Santa Cruz airport is that the only kind of telephones available are the coin-operated ones, and ppl. like poor me have to buy a 20 bucks ka mineral water to get 1-rupee coins to make fone calls. At an airport, ek toh govt. operated Booth laga doh yaar...it mite sound silly, but u really get frustrated, when at 10 in the nite you donn have enuff coins to make a fone call ! Anyways, mumbai mein I stayed at Rangaz, the newly minted ATK consultant :), and he can be a wonderful host :D. And am typing these lines from IIMA :), had some work in ahd, so had to come here, and will be moving to indore tomm and then finally back home :D.
More than the travelling, this has been a journey of endless self-discovery. All of us dream all our lives, but when the time comes to give shape to reality, we balk away, and cite various excuses to rationalize the shying away... sometimes parents, kabhi kismet and mostly the "situation". I was also given a 1000 excuses by my dad to not go on this stupid 12-day hash of a trip, but I planned this out in 6 days and just went ahead with it, if I would have stopped and thought, am sure I would have nevvah made it. I am told I am a verry impatient man, but this time I have forced myself perforce to buckle down and sit my way through. The train to Trivendrum, which I thought would reach at 7 in the morning was slated to reach like 8 hours later, at 3 in the evening, but I sat through it. Countless hours of waiting at the station, playing games on your cell, reading novels [ohh I finished Grisham's The Broker and Coelho's Eleven Minutes and the philosophy has made my feelings run further amok :)], watching people, makes you think about yourself and the niche you have created in the world. Waiting alone for an hour at a railway station is the most lonely you will ever get, and however far you might go in this life, loneliness will be the scourge one will always be afraid of, shying away, creating defence mechanisms to keep it away. But the best way to fight this loneliness is to build patience, bid one's time and then some more. I also realized one thing I haven't done much in my life is to say "No" to people and let them be all-over me, as they like it. And thankfully, I have started saying "No" now, to be myself...have opinions for the 1st time in my life. Also, because I have never said "No", I have never been possessive, but you realize, the most special thing in your life is your small coterie of people, whom you need to keep close by, who give meaning to your life, and who let you be yourself. Suddenly, I have been calling all these people up every 1 or 2 days, and have decided I will never ever let them get away again :). Thanx is a small word for what I feel, but this time I am not letting you go anywhere, trust me :).
And finally on my train to Ernakulam, this smally, cute grrl with her grandparents played Peekaboo with me. She would see me and then close her eyes with her tiny, beautiful hands [yea, I know, even kids get terrorized by my looks now :P]...and then open them again to see if the monster was still around. And all I could do was smile back :). But, as the train was about to enter my station, she for once, gave one of the most innocent and beautiful smiles I have ever seen, and I would like to believe she smiled for me :). And in that one moment, this journey made total sense, all the rush, all the hurry seemed worthwhile, for that one smile, for that one moment, I hope I meet the grrl again :).
Ta ! [and donn forget the donations plz :D]
Ranjan
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