ದೇಶ ನೋಡು ಕೋಶ ಓದು - Part 1

Knowledge is indeed powerful and the pursuit of the same can be a journey of a lifetime. The yesteryear philosophers in my state narrowed this pursuit very simplistically to two things – ದೇಶ ನೋಡು ಕೋಶ ಓದು (desha nodu, kosha odu - roam the country, read the books). It actually seems too simple – but the more I think about it, the more accurate it seems to acquire well-rounded knowledge - mix the knowledge from books and written soruces with the knowledge gained from experience of travelling and meeting people. Reading through loads of archives helps our brain to acquire the bookish knowledge while traveling lets you experience the same knowledge contained in the books in person, thus making us wiser. If I think about my personal experiences, I do realise that it is indeed the books and travels which has helped me in my learnings. Ever since I was in kindergarten, I have liked geography, so naturally I was more inclined towards the desha nodu way of learning. As a kid, I used to look forward to the long road/train travels and kept a log of the places / stations that we visited in my dairy. It still brings back memories of those travels and experiences when I read through those pages! One of our favourite pastime as kids was to be engrossed in either an atlas or a map and look up countries, places, roadways and train lines. When we got a dial-up modem internet in our house, Wikipedia used to be my favourite site where I used to spend a lot of time reading about places, their history and culture. With ADSL and faster internet came the mighty google earth - I was completely fascinated by the level of detail which it made available to a normal person just at the click of a button! Me and my brother spent countless hours on google earth as we clicked through streets, houses, stadiums, train stations, airports and what not - exhausting all the costly bandwidth in the process!

Although we had the atlas, google maps, etc to keep us company, growing up in a middle class family and school/college schedules meant that we could not have real travels around the world - they were few and far in between and remained restricted to my surroundings in south India. I still remained a kosha odu person. For almost 25 years of my life, the northernmost place on the earth that I had been to was Dakshineshwar (a small town on the banks of river in West Bengal). And the irony* in that statement was evident for a geography lover like me, I used to wonder if that would ever change. Some of my closest friends Tosi and Gunda moved to the United States almost a decade back, a time when everyone of us were finding feet and getting independent in life. In fact, for the first two years after they moved, we used to eagerly wait for the mails that Tosi used to send us, chronicling his life in a new country and how he dealt with being a student and eventually finding a job and settling down in the US. When the rest of the us who stayed back met and talked, we used to always discuss those mails and the way he described his experiences. Most of our gang's opinions about the culture and way of life abroad in developed counties was based on the stories they used to tell us. It really shaped our world-view. As part of my consulting work, I used to work for clients worldwide, creating maps of early adopters for a telecommunications client in far south NewZealand to analysing buying ice-cream buying patterns for retail stores in the northern part of United States. Through the course of such projects, I learnt a lot about the people from these countries, their culture and everyday way of life… and with all these stories, I had formed an image of how these places looked like in my mind… all the while wondering if I would ever get a chance to actually visit them!

Tourist versus emigrant

Like every wannabe globetrotter out there, even we (my wife and I) had Europe in our bucket list. Now, no encyclopedia can be ever complete without the mention of this small continent called Europe - at some point or the other, almost 90% of the world was colonized by Europeans and they have had a great influence on shaping the history of the world. Although I knew about its historical significance since high school, the real desire to visit Europe came from one game which Ultra and I used to play on our computer during graduation - NFS 5 (Porsche unleashed). The game featured some of the famed roads located in European countries like Germany, France, Switzerland, etc and gave us an opportunity to race Porsche cars on these tracks. A significant amount of college days was spent playing that game, virtually driving those porsches on Autobahn, Normandy, Pyrenees, etc, and then reading up on the car models and highways / mountain paths/ race tracks across Europe. This was the early 2000s and there was no real deadline set in mind when I actually go visit these places. It always remained 'someday in the future'. Around latter half of this decade, with the new found economic independence, we found that so many in our social circles were holidaying in Europe and posing pictures with some philosophical captions, it seemed that taking a trip to Europe (especially backpacking and living in hostels) was the new cool in-thing! By then, we already had a fair share of our trips outside the country - some neighbouring tropical and relatively similar third world countries which had a bit of an exotic feel but mostly similar to our own in aspects of weather, food and local culture. But Europe seemed so exotic with lot of adventures and experiences to offer travellers. Ultra was already there for two years doing his masters and a visit was long overdue - maybe around the time of his graduation. So, we started looking up web-sites for travel deals in order to plan our European holiday!

In middle of all these travel preparations, came an opportunity to work in Europe and stay for few years. My wife and I were thrilled and scared at the same time! Travelling to Europe was definitely exciting but we still had to consider the relocation. When visiting a place as a tourist, we always have a normal - we have our lives, jobs and family back in our home country. We know the normal is always back home. We know the vacation is temporary, so the stakes are not as high. We could have one bad experience here, one not-so-great hotel there and still take back nice experiences. But moving meant so many things to consider - packing for the whole year, finding the right accommodation, arranging utilities, help with local language, shopping, tax, finances, etc. We would have to build a new normal right from the scratch. For some people, moving is not as big a decision as they find our country too judgemental. Don’t get this the wrong way - but people do find my country (especially the southern cities) a bit intolerant! I have had friends who have at some point complained that my city is a bit conservative. Especially, if someone is an non-local living an independent life or for couples who marry out of their own caste, there are a lot of people who quickly pass judgments! Although it is not directly on your face, the undertones are still there which is why someone who has experienced this would definitely have no problems emigrating! We had no such complaints. We had a big gang of our friends and relatives around us and did enjoy the company immensely. So, moving away from all of them was still a hard decision to make. However, in the end, we knew that the travels and stay out of our comfort zone, would give us more self-realization and would definitely help us expand our thinking horizon, thus we decided to go for it....

PS:
1. Daskhineshwar : Town on the banks of river Hoogly in WestBengal, India famous for the Kali temple. Irony is because the word Dakshin in Sanskrit means 'South' and it was somehow the northernmost place which I had been to in life

Continued in Part 2 here

The two T's

As MBAs we are all quite familiar with the 4 Ps of marketing or the five forces of strategy. But only KGPians will know that there are 2Ts which form an inseparable part of our stay here -'Trains' and 'Technology'. These 2Ts have fascinated me all my life. The long whistle of a zooming train in the middle of the night used to stir up my emotions like no other and I used to yearn for going on long train journeys. In a similar manner, technological advances which made life easier for the humankind never ceased to impress me. When I was a kid, I used to visit my uncle’s place only for two reasons – to explore a new computer that they had bought which was a rarity in those days, and to stand on the terrace of their house and wave hands to passengers on the trains on the Bangalore-Mysore route. So, when I finally got admission in the railway and technology town of Kharagpur, there was little hesitation in quitting my job and coming here.

Kharagpur is home to the longest railway platform in the world and is a major junction for the Indian railways. All trains on the East-South and East-West routes invariably pass through this station. Equally famous in Kharagpur is the Indian Institute of Technology, the first of the world class engineering institutes started in India. The IITs are known world over for producing the best quality engineers year after year.

The beautiful Kharagpur railway station, at km 114 from Howrah on the South Eastern railway

But the only dilemma facing me when I got an admission was whether a management course in middle of a technology hotspot was the right choice or not? After all, location seemed to be the most important thing in choice of a management institute. Would the two years in a remote place like Kharagpur be as rewarding as some of the self-advertising, money squeezing B-schools in other financial hotspots of India? It was a tough call to take but the experiences in my work life came to my aid. I had observed the daily issues in the company where I worked – one of the technologically admired companies in the world. I realised that technology had the highest scope for management. It is relatively easy to manage small scale industries or firms which operate under little number of constraints. But the real challenge for a manager lies when the technology gets advanced and quick decisions have to be taken under a wide variety of constraints and limitations. And how well a manager uses this technology to improve the daily activities in the company determines the success of the company. No wonder then, we see a large chunk of MBAs having engineering backgrounds. With these thoughts in mind, I left all the comforts of my workplace to be a part of this technology hub in middle of the jungles of Bengal.

The first Indian Institute of Technology was established in the year 1951

Universities across the world have management schools which offer under-graduate, post-graduate and doctoral programs in management. The number of management institutes in the world has only grown in the past few decades, and we have around 3500 management institutes in India alone offering the once prestigious MBA degree, compromising on the cost and quality of the same. However, this was not the case in the early years of the modern corporation when the new B-Schools were set up in the world like Wharton School of Business in 1881 or the Harvard Business School in 1908. The premier technology institute, MIT, foresaw the need for creating specialised courses for technology management and created the MIT School of Management which later came to be known as MIT Sloan School of Management. In India, IIT Kharagpur was the first technology institute to recognise the need for such techno-managers and with sufficient funding from one of its alumnus Vinod Gupta, opened up the first IIT B-school in 1993 – the Vinod Gupta School of Management

Vinod Gupta School of Management is one of the most beautiful structures inside the IIT KGP campus

There is technology everywhere inside the IIT campus. People here are so obsessed with technology that even the hospitals, clubs, swimming pools, and gymkhanas inside the campus have the prefix “technology” attached to them ? Work on the cutting edge technology for the next generation happens here and an expert in any field is right in the department opposite yours, if not in the same department. We got exposed to so much of technology here and felt that we could be aptly called as “techno-managers”. No other costly B-school claiming to have a location advantage could have given us the same exposure to technology.

People are so obsessed with technology here that all sport/recreational places inside the campus have the prefix 'technology'- Technology hospital, Technology guest house, Technology sports gymkhana, etc... there is even a technology swimming pool where all technologies swim together :P

While I relished the two Ts that define Kharagpur, there was one important thing I had missed – there is little else apart from these two Ts here. For someone coming from a big metropolitan city, the difference was immediately obvious – no motor vehicles inside the huge campus, no shopping malls or multiplexes, no choice of fine restaurants, not even street lights on the road outside the IIT boundary wall. It took some time getting used to the life in midst of greenery, cycling through the huge campus, the humidity of the place and the food at the hostel (even the mustard oil). But the journey was made very easy, thanks to the friends that I made here. Having stayed and worked in one city all my life before, the kind of diversity that this place offered me was simply amazing. One thing that was common to everyone studying here was the determination to succeed and the motivation to keep going despite many hurdles.

One fourth of my MBA life is already over and even as I write this article sitting in the comforts of my house during the semester break, I am filled with a sense of pride of being a part of a great institute and a deep desire to go back to the two Ts which have influenced my life all along... to the greens of Kharagpur, to all those places where we roamed around in KGP, and to the place which I have come to know now as my home away from home.

PS:
1. This article was written by me when I was pursuing my MBA at Kharagpur. It was published in the college’s annual alumni magazine. It is reproduced here with minor modifications and slight additions. You can read the original publication here
2. KGP - the station code for Kharagpur, and KGPians - people who stay/study at Kharagpur
3. Few images are copyrights of their respective owners, used here only for representative purposes. Specially those of the trains and stations, will reference the orignial links from the original source

City Lights - Part 2 : The city of joy

[...continued from Part 1]

Kolkata has been referred to the city of joy. For me, it will always be the city of special love and that is one thing I immediately associate with the city - just plain and simple love and the faith that love cures all things going wrong. Right from the times when I first visited Kolkata in my high school days to the special weekend visits during the two years of MBA life, Kolkata has always been something special – a city with a heart and soul of its own. It was lot of fun getting to explore the city and its nuances. For the to-be corporate grads like us secluded from city life at our institute, Kolkata was the city where we would all rush to escape from the dull life. Since Kharagpur lacked a passenger airport, malls, software parks or anything faintly related to urban life, Kolkata was the go-to city for all these luxuries once in a while. Also, all opportunities like sponsorship for fests, interactions with corporate world, etc had to happen in Kolkata. More importantly, exploring a new city with some special friends and relatives always gives good memories of the place and Kolkata is one where I have lots of it.

For me, the most striking of all memories in Kolkata starts even before entering the city. To someone who loves the railways like me, the 22 platform Howrah terminus is nothing short of a holy shrine. The mad rush on the platforms, the red painted towers, the non-stop announcements about arriving or departing trains, the red uniformed coolies, the aroma of Comesum’s biryani near platform 18, coaches in all colors and classes to carry passengers – ah! Never has any Indian railway station fascinated me so much. Whats more – my first glimpse of India’s fastest train – the Duronto express was in Howrah. Even the first double decker AC coach connecting Howrah to Dhanbad was first spotted in the Howrah station. I have so many lasting memories of the Howrah station and the numerous journeys I used to take from Kharagpur to Howrah and back. I have travelled on this route so many times and in so many classes of trains – ranging from the basic Rs. 19/ ticket local train to the super luxury Rs. 541 priced ticket 1A coach on the TATA-HWH Steel express. I have also made these 2.5 hour journey at almost all times of the day/night – the most frequent of them being the early morning 6:20 MDN-HWH local to Kolkata and return on the 1930 is HWH-MDN galloping train. The oddest hour when I made this travel was at 0230 in the night when my flight landed in Kolkata at midnight on a cold December night.

Most of these journeys were undertaken in anticipation of special moments – be it sponsorship amounts, travel back home on flights, job interviews, rigorous academic terms that lay ahead or spending time with special people in the city of joy – each of these had a flavor of its own. There was a time when I could easily list out some 20+ stations on this route even in my sleep. It was always the same pattern - the vast expanses of lush green fields while passing through Jakpur and Ballychowk, then some green forest cover while passing Radhamohanpur and Panskura, the thermal power plant at Kolaghat and the bridge across river Rupnarayan. We would then zoom past the suburbs of Uluberia and cover stations like Phuleshwar, Chengel, etc and land into Santragachi junction, only to cover the next 10 kms in such frustratingly slow pace that entering into Howrah would make you want to get out of the train and dance.

The station, river, bridge the city and trams are something very unique to this city. While most other cities of the world have combinations of the above, Kolkata is one which boasts of having it all! The vintage yellow ambassador taxis and wooden framed colorful buses on Rabindro Setu with the silently flowing Hugli below is like a picture postcard you can mail to dear ones for having travelled here. When you get into the huge streets with old angrez buildings on either side, you will realize that these are places which have survived the test of time – they could be easily a century old. Park Street, Camac street, etc are essentially where the midtown madness is. Esplanade and the market areas around it are places where you can shop for any item –old and new. Each landmark or area in Kolkata gives you some sort of thrilling feeling when you know that there is a lot of history and heritage associated with it. When I pass through the huge maidaan, I just imagine the sports Englishmen used to play here back then. Eden gardens still echoes the roar of the 100,000 people who were there to witness that epic test where Aussie pride was dusted. Passing through Kalighat, Gariahat via Rashbehari avenue makes me think of how Mother Teresa used to nurse the leprosy patients on the streets here. Passing through Nandan talkies somehow reminds me of gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and his legendary compositions. Victoria memorial stands in testimony to the glorious Fort William days. Kali temple at Dakshineshwar and the ‘across the river’ Belur math makes me bow in reverence to Paramahamsa and his famous disciple Narendra who carried the essence of Hinduism across the world. I just felt every place in Kolkata had a story to tell and tried to listen, see and experience it to the fullest.

The newer areas, read Salt lake, Rajarahat, etc dotted with all the technology companies, high rise apartments and malls are akin to any other metro. However, purely from an economic standpoint, Kolkata is much less expensive as compared to the others. I just might be wrong here. But this is just a personal opinion. Maybe it is the variety of options the city offers which presents the overall combination as being a little less expensive. You can use the buses, the trams, the underground metro, the rickshaws, taxis and the ferries or a combination of these to get to any place you want. You can eat at roadside thelas, carry carts, fast food outlets, or the big restaurants depending on your wallet size. And regardless of your wallet size, you must have chai samosa at local tea stalls and rossogollas at mithai shops at least once! :)

One thing that people say defines Kolkata is the pujo time. It seemed to me that the Bengalis have only one festival in the year – Durga puja! There are different flavors that the city offers and the pujo flavor can easily be termed as its flagship. Pandals at every nook and corner of the city, each one built with so much thought and artistic design put into it make the city look so beautiful during the times. The all night stalls, the dance and the rituals and the variety of food on offer during this time make it a very memorable one for anyone. However, since the college used to shut down for almost a week during the pujo times, I ended up missing the real pomp and glory of Kolkata during pujo, as I used to come back home for vacations during both the years. I just wish that I get a chance someday to visit the city during puja time and experience it.

Kolkata has been portrayed in so many movies in so many shades, the recent ones being Bidya’s Kahaani and Ashima Roy’s haveli in Vicky donor. But to me, the movie ‘Love Aaj Kal’ and especially the song ‘yeh dooriyan’ is one which immediately makes me recall the city and all its memories. ‘Love aaj kal’ was the first movie which I got in super high quality in the super high speed LAN at Kharagpur. The movie and the songs served as constant time pass when I travelled on the trains or stayed in the lodges at Kolkata. Whenever I listen to ‘yeh dooriyan’, my mind races back to the city of joy – to the train journeys undertaken, to the romantic rides on the SaltLake’s cycle rickshaws, to the time spent at Kolkata airport so many times waiting for people/flights. The song is one thing which defines Kolkata in my mind. When I used to travel back and forth on the KGP-HWH route, my mind would contemplate on the lyrics of the song ‘aa raha paas ya door main jaa raha jaane na koi yaha pe’. In retrospect, it is vividly clear on what the lyrics used to mean.

In any city, there can be good things as well as bad ones. One thing I deliberately leave out when I write this articles are the bad experiences. Also, along with all the good things a city has, there will always be some things which you don’t like at all. For example, the one thing which you’ll notice as soon as you get out of the Howrah station is the huge pile of debris and filth. But we can have a separate article dedicated towards infrastructure management which can get on all that. These articles are only about the pleasant experiences the cities have offered me and a recollection of all things nice which I got to experience in these cities.

In statistical experiments as well as in life, people always expect an ‘unbiased’ opinion when looking for insights. And that is exactly the opposite of what would happen if I wrote about the experiences and memories in namma Bengalooru – it would be highly biased because of the fact that over 90% of my life has been spent in this city – the growing up days of the 90’s, the PU college days of 2000s, the heavenly BMS days, the ‘new to industry’ Symbian Ltd. days, the ‘60km daily travel’ workdays and all other days in between. Nevertheless, the only word and emotion which I feel when I think of Bengalooru is ‘bliss’! In fact, if I had to start elaborating on why Bangalore gets associated with bliss, I would be writing an entire autobiography, which I plan to do sometime very soon :) But for now, let me just say that each and every experience that my home city has given me have been such that I always feel good about it. Even the bad ones seem not so bad because of all that they have taught me. Maybe I will write more parts of this article by sampling some of the awesome moments that define Bangalore for me.

Other big cities that I have been to in India include Pune, Jaipur, Indore, Bhopal, Udaipur, Bhubaneshwar, Trivandrum, Hyderabad among others. However, I have not spent enough time in these cities to have a lasting memory or an incident linked to these places. I was just a tourist visiting only the must-see places or using the city as a quick transit point to get to other places. Of course, there have been experiences but nothing noteworthy of sorts. And then there are cities like Delhi, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Srinagar, Shimla, Dehra Dun, Ahmedabad etc which I have always wanted to visit but never got a chance to. Maybe I will write more on these cities in the coming days. In the meanwhile I would like to hear from you all if you have any nice city memories/experiences. I know there would be bad points and cribbing about infrastructure, culture etc in all cities. But, no city if perfect in all senses that way. They are all in the development path and will take some time to improve. And the experiences which I shared were only subjective. Maybe someone else would have had the exact same experiences which I had in city A in other cities. The only thing which I want to state here is that people stop judging a city by the stereotypes and self-explore it. Take your own time and explore the city with the pace you are really comfortable. I wish you many more wow moments in your cities.

PS: 1. HWH - station code for Howrah, headquarters for Eastern and South Eastern railway divisions of Indian Railways
2. MDN - Station code for Medinipur. Local trains from Howrah run till Medinipur, passing via Kharagpur (KGP)

City Lights - Part 1

Books, clothes, accessories and most importantly memories of two great years were in those airbags and suitcases. They were getting crammed in the tiny space available in the air conditioned railway compartment of the 12863 HWH-YPR express. We were going back one final time and some of the closest friends in the two years had come to drop us off. The feelings were mixed – the joy of finishing a professional course, the sadness of having to leave such happy days behind, the excitement of the professional world that awaited us… it was all there. As the lights of the twin towers of IIT Kharagpur faded out far away, the city lights awaited us!

Having stayed in one city for almost all of my life, the answer you’ll get from me on which city I love the most is obvious. Even during most part of the two year MBA course that I stayed away, I kind of knew that I would get back to my city itself after the course. Also, during the summer internship, I had the privilege of staying at home. The joy was only compounded when I got an offer letter stating about the location of my new workplace.  Back then, it was placements season at college and the discussions would usually be around which city is good to settle down and make some money and the other things centered around them.  I used to listen to them with great interest. Some used to shout that Mumbai was India’s heaven on earth and some thought that Pune and Kolkata were great places to save money. There were some who wanted to be in Chandigarh and Gurgaon or NCR because it was closer to their homes and more “homely” than other metros. But the two southern cities they dreaded the most were Chennai and Trivandrum. Even some localites from Chennai had some sort of aversion to going back to Chennai. It was something which baffled me then. Why do some cities become a instant hit and bring happiness to people while others are feared so much that people spend days together crying when they get their work location as these cities?

I have given it some thought for quite some time now and realized that it is those strong memories which people associate with a city that make it good or bad in their perception. Consider for example, even if Gurgaon is one of the sophisticated and high-fi cities in India right now, just because I have heard a strong unpleasant memory /story relating to it, I never feel it is good. Even if all the other factors and surveys report the city to be good, it is ultimately the mind-set in the people which would go a long way in them liking/disliking the city. And then comes the familiarity angle. If you stay in a city long enough, you get used to the place, the culture and the way of life that you start loving the city. The more you get to know about the city’s history and why certain things are the way they are, there will be more appreciation of the place rather than contempt or disdain. Imagine having to land in an unknown city at night and having to speak an unfamiliar language to the local taxiwalas to take you to someplace which is not your permanent home. Now compare that to landing in your hometown at midnight and telling the local autowalah in your own language something like - 'guroo, Vijayanagar bartiraa?' Need I say more?

In the next part of this post, I list down few prominent cities in India which I have been to and the emotions/stories that I associate with them. There is also a lasting memory of the place which kind of defines the city for me. Of course, your opinions could be different based on your own experiences. You may feel free to add on to this list at the end so that even I get to hear about more city experiences and memories.

*****

 

I have spent very less time in the financial capital of India, Mumbai to say anything about it but one emotion which I can immediately associate with it is HOPE. Some years ago, we had been there during the monsoons. Like most Indian cities, rains wreak havoc in Mumbai too. However, I was really amazed to find that nothing could deter the city from going on. We could always find some people on the streets busy with their work, regardless of the weather or the time of the day. We could always see that hope in people's eyes - be it the dabbawalahs who sang all the time they carried heavy lunch boxes in crowded local trains, the vendors near the railway stations who sold every possible item you can imagine or the people living in the slums alongside the railway tracks – they all seemed to have dreams with the hope that Mumbai would fulfil the dreams. One takeaway memory of the place is that of the monsoons. It is really amazing to see how people go about their work during this time of the year without caring for the downpour or the hardships it brings to them. The rains are perhaps the soul of Mumbai and the people's reaction to it - its true spirit

The next city on the list is one of the earliest British settlements - Chennai. I have not spent much time in this city owing to its proximity to my home city. Whenever I have been there, it was during transit to farther cities or for small works which would not last more than a day. However, the thing which I can instantly attach to this city is HUNGER for KNOWLEDGE. There is something about the city which makes you want to learn things. The feelings for this city can be best summarized with an anecdote about the city.

During my summer-time application for MBA, I got a call from IIT Madras, DoMS for a GD/PI at their campus. My initial reaction after seeing that call letter was indifference. Who would go to Chennai when most institutes would conduct their processes at Bangalore? That too, there was nothing motivating about the institute (ratings wise) or the city itself which made me want to go there for a day long process, let alone study for two years. After much deliberation, I decided to go and attend the process because getting a holiday to travel was easy. I took the KSRTC’s flagship Airavat Volvo to Chennai with a strong bias against the city. And as soon as I set foot on it, most of my initial feelings about the city were reinforced. The Autowalahs deliberately pretended not to understand anything other than tamil and dropped me off at the campus gate, while still taking the full fare till the hostel. I had to walk almost 2 km to reach the hostels in the morning heat and humidity of Chennai which further irritated me. I was made to wait for another frustrating hour outside the hostel till the admissions committee member came and allotted me to a tiny hostel room. By the time I finished the bland breakfast in the mess and came back to the room, I had almost decided that I could not study in such a place for two years.

A couple of other aspirants like myself who were there in the hostels kept discussing about pros and cons about doing MBA from institutes known for technological excellence. I was so biased that all the cons were taken in happily and the pros were conveniently filtered out. We then went to the DoMS in the afternoon for the process and were made to sit in a AC classroom waiting for the process to begin. A religious looking professor with vermillon applied to his forehead (a stereotype south Indian, especially the Tambrahm types) walked in to talk to us about the institute and the course they offered. It was the first time I was listening to a professor from IIT and even to this day, that talk for one hour remains one of the best talks I have ever heard in college. The way he was able to seek attention from disinterested people like us, describe the course and the institute’s legacy to us was totally out of the world. In his talk, he even described the beauty of the city and its culture, by quoting from the scriptures. It was an amazing turn-around for me.  My entire perspective of viewing the city and the institute had changed in a matter of minutes. The seemingly insignificant troubles I had to undergo to be there that day dint seem to matter for me. The city was offering me knowledge and it had induced the hunger in me to seek it. I dint care about the pros and cons or the rankings of the institute anymore. I just wanted a chance to be in a premier institute like that and listen to more of such professors. I had my own doubts on whether I could stay in a hostel after spending all my life living at home. But all that dint seem to matter anymore - it had given me that thirst. The special Friday night 'Pulav and seviyan' dinner at the hostel tasted even better that night. A friend I made there and I shared an auto back to MAS for our trains and even that autowalah seemed friendly. This one incident made me realize the power of perception. If you look at things in the right perspective, everything about the city feels good. And that is what Chennai taught me in a day. 

Every city has both a heart as well as a soul. A stay of a very long duration would be needed to experience the metaphorical heart of the city. But getting to and experiencing the soul of the city is something which takes more than that long duration stay. It happens to very few people who spend their lifetimes exploring cities and understanding its true identity. And the realization of having experienced this feeling is also too hard for someone to notice.  The next two cities which I want to write about are the ones which are very dear to me – both individually and collectively.  These are the state capitals of the two states (one a former national capital as well) where I have collectively spent almost my entire life. The cities are Kolkata, the city of joy and the awesome namma Bengalooru. I have had innumerable experiences/memories in these two cities such that narrowing it to one simple thought or incident would be very tough. I am still not sure if I have experienced the souls of these two cities but in the numerous experiences that I have had, I certainly have experienced the large, caring heart with which these cities have embraced me.

[continued in part 2]
PS:
1. HWH-YPR express: An Indian railways' superfast train that runs from Howrah, WB to Yeswantpur, KAR. It connects the cities of Kolkata and Bangalore, passing through the states of WB, Orissa, AP, TN and Karnataka
2. MAS - Station code for the 'Chennai Central' railway station - one of the oldest stations in India

Bro when it’s you, life’s always gonna be a dashing ride! - Part 3

Read part one and two of the posts here and here

Many people have asked me this question ‘Temples in Goa? You are kidding right?’ and have given a sheepish ‘I know’ kind of grin when I have tried to answer. So, here I am clarifying, once and for all, a little lesser known facts about the tiny state.

Before it became the popular beach tourist destination it is today, Goa was a Portuguese colony. In fact, till as late as 1961 (yes, after independence too!) it was under the control of the Portuguese. If you recall, the Portuguese were the first of the European merchant-cum-invaders who came to India seeking richness in the Middle Ages. After Vasco da Gama, we have one Mr. Alfonso de Albuqerque who snatched Goa from Bijapur sultans and established a Portuguese colony. Before all this happend, numerous Hindu empires ruled over the area and the Indo-Aryan Brahmin group called ‘Saraswat Brahmins’ had setup a large number of temples. Most of these temples were eventually destroyed in course of Portuguese rule but have been subsequently restored. Since the GSBs have a concept of Kuladevata, it is a practice to visit the ancestral temple whenever possible and offer prayers to the Lord.

For the more interested, here is the wiki link to history of Goa.
And here is the link to history of Goud Saraswat Brahmins.

23.12.2011 12:45
Nothing of interest had happened with me at the wheels. We had crossed Hubli and were on the NH 63 moving towards Ankola. NH 4 till Hubli was awesome with 4 lanes and dividers that we dint have to go below 80kmph at any point. But the NH63 was a two-lane divider less road. There were lots of places where we had to go below 60kmph and the gear changed to 3rd or less. Even then, since the traffic was not so dense, we had managed to keep pace. We had now reached Kalghatgi. And Ultra was ready for one more round of driving. He took over when the km reading on the trip meter read 436kms…

curve on NH63

23.12.2011 14:00
We just finished lunch at a small restaurant in Yellapur. Though the hotel was a small one, the meals were filling and the mango drink really helped in the hot weather. Ultra resumed on the highway while mom, dad and I tried to take a nap. We were passing through the western ghats now and there was constant green cover along the highway. The forests got denser and the road started it natural descent into the coast of Karnataka. There were a lot of curves – some of them hairpin and some of them really tough to negotiate. Bro was doing it so well that we dint get disturbed in our nap.

23.12.2011 15:30
National Highway 17 … ah!
The coastal highway connecting Kanyakumari in the southern tip of India to the financial capital of Mumbai... passing through the coast of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, is one highway which both Ultra and I have always admired and longed to drive on. We used to sit on the compound wall of our maternal grandma’s home in Thekkatte and count vehicles passing on this road. We used to memorize the names of bus operators plying on this highway, remember the places covered by this highway, visit temples and beaches which lie on either side of this highway. It was our long standing dream to drive our own vehicle together on this highway. As soon as we reached Ankola, the place where NH63 joins NH17, we both took a deep breath to take in the excitement of being on this road… NH17, you beauty!

(For the uninitiated, who are wondering what is so beautiful about the Konkan coast of India, I would strongly recommend Konkan Railway and a drive on NH17 covering the coast of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka once. I bet you wont be disappointed)

23.12.2011 16:00
I was itching to drive on the highway and Ultra was anyway getting tired after driving for more than 300 kms today. Even on a holiday we had got up so soon and started on the journey, so the eyes had gotten a little tired. I took over from him at km 563 and immediately we crossed the port of Karwar

Immediately after the coast of Karwar we crossed the bridge across river Kali and then a narrow road through the cliffs – one of the fine examples of the scenery that is available on this highway

A short while after this, we crossed the border entering the tiny state of Goa. Even on the highway, the traffic in Goa gets a bit dense and the roads are narrow. Some roads are so narrow and curvy, lined with houses on either side, that if you get stuck behind a truck at one point, you are stuck behind that truck for almost 20-30 kms… there is no way to overtake.

23.12.2011 17:00
Driving in the traffic road of Goa was tiring. We had started 11 hours ago and still had some 50 odd kms to go. So, when the signs on the road said that a ghat section would emerge, we decided it was time to take a short break and have some refreshments. The highway side hotel named ‘Karmal Ghat restaurant’ dint look such a big place anyway. So, I thought it would be better to order less and took only tea. What a refreshing tea it was – sugar, tea and milk in the right quantities and awesome taste! It was one of the best till date. This rejuvenation was enough for driving through the tough ghat section where Ultra kept saying ‘Slow Slow Slow!’ …maybe he dint have the tea :P

23.12.2011 18:25
After crossing numerous traffic hurdles in Margao, Ponda and the highway, we had finally made it to the parking lot of Shri Ramnath temple, covering a total of 665.6 kms in a span of 13 hours! It was one of the most awesome journey ever, and the fact that it was with Ultra made it even more special. We would be offering prayers to the temple deities the next day, ie on 24th . We also planned to visit Panini’s kuldevta temple at Mahalasa, Mardol and go to one of the beaches if time permitted. We managed to do all that and more. Unlike previous times, where we would end up paying a lot to the taxi walas, local transport would not be a problem anymore – the privilege of having your own gaadi! Not only that, but we also visited places like Karwar, Ankola, Kumta, etc on our way back and even stayed at my mom’s maternal home in Thekkatte. I wish I could write about all this sometime in detail. Maybe someday I will.

23.12.2011 21:00
We sat in the all too familiar Hotel Venkatesh Leela, savoring the awesome kingfish curry, fry and prawns rava fry! Visiting this place and having the signature fish and prawn dishes had almost become a tradition now. I have kept bills of all the times we have eaten there. Its worth collecting! I still have not been able to figure out what it is that makes the fish cuisine in this part of the world so delectable. Maybe it is because we get a chance to eat it very rarely. Maybe it s because the humidity makes you more hungry and the sea food is fresh because of the proximity to the sea. It could also be the coconut milk that they mix along with other spices. But the kingfish curry and rice is THE best food I have ever had in my entire life. Add to it, the side dishes like prawns deep fried in rava and kingfish fry, the meal is one whose taste would stay on for a long time. If you are a fish eater, I would definitely recommend going to this restaurant once while in Goa to enjoy the delicacies.

Ultra and I sat there in the restaurant after the meal, sipping fresh lime soda and taking a bit of saunf. I had been a long and tiring day, but one which we would remember for a long time to come. We missed having Panini there. Pulling her leg by making fun of her eating would have added a completely different dimension to the fun which we were having. Nevertheless, we were still happy having spent time together. Right from the time we had bought our car, we had this dream of driving to Goa in it. After 4 long years, with preparation and planning, we had finally managed to do it. And we had even got along skeptical dad with us! Driving in Goa for next two days would be fun. And with him by the side, life would always be a roller coaster ride!

Bro when it’s you, life’s always gonna be a dashing ride! - Part 2

23.12.2011 Dawn
One mobile started ringing at 04:26 AM and the other at 04:28 AM. For most of the familiar readers, it’ll be easy to guess which one was which. Excitedly, we both jumped out of our respective beds. Yes, we would be driving today! Ultra slept for a while while I got ready. Mom and Dad had already woken up and mom was making VangiBath (popular rice dish) early in the morning. We had packed most of our clothes and there was a little bit of hurry in the last minute charging the camera and mobiles, some last minute packing, etc. Ultra was the last to get ready and by the time he got ready at 5:15 AM, the rest of us had some coffee, which he doesn’t like to have anyway. We put all the luggage in the dicky of the car. The audio speaker deck was creating problems for large bags to be stuffed, but somehow we had managed to fit them all.


23.12.2011 5:33 AM
We planned to start at 5:30 in the morning and it was exactly 5:30 when we locked the main door and sat in the car. It was a cold, December morning and we had to close all the windows to feel comfortable inside. However, the sunrise was still faraway and we had to drive for sometime with headlights. I had this experience before so I wanted Ultra to start it off. And he did! This was the route which we had to cover:

Tumkur --> Davangere --> Hubli --> Ankola --> Karwar --> Goa border --> Madgaon --> Ponda --> Ramnath temple

Route map - click to enlarge

So, we had chosen a little circuitous route instead of a direct one and this was not without reason – many bloggers on the site had warned that the road would be very bad if we had taken the shorter route without going till Hubli. We planned to reach the temple by evening.

23.12.2011 5:45 AM

We were on the NICE road by now and Ultra was already doing speeds of 80-100 km/h. I was just sitting in the navigator’s seat and trying to help if needed by warning. We kept saying ‘Quick but safe’ to each other. But we knew we had to cruise through the city limits as early as possible to avoid the morning traffic. Although we thought we could do it, there were many toll booths on the way. Our first target was to get on NH4 and then touch Tumkur by 6:45…

driving with headlights at dawn

23.12.2011 6:40 AM
Well, we had made it almost near Tumkur but the city traffic was a little heavy. So, we would just barely make it to the bye-pass at 6:45. The dense fog before sunrise was not helping either. It would be cold if we opened the windows, but the fog would cover the windshield and reduce visibility if we dint. The AC directed towards to the windshield helped a bit but not totally. Dad and Mom had taken the backseat. As usual, Dad had forgotten the ear cap and was asking mom for the sweater and we both laughed remembering the numerous times that had happened before. Whoever said familiarity breeds contempt! It doesn’t! In fact, you start loving the familiarity and start yearning for it. We laugh that it is too familiar, but deep down, we develop a liking for it and miss it when we don’t get it. Isn’t it?


23.12.2011 8:00 AM
The sun was out now and it was already 2.5 hours since we left home. The excitement of getting up early, packing and hitting the road had slowly sunk in. We were cruising at 80-110 kmph consistently except for the toll booths where we had to shell out some 150 rupees already for as many kilometers covered. Mom and Dad were already dozing off after the initial high. Ultra was still going steady. It seems he had made ‘Quick but safe’ his mantra of the day. Some scenes like this were on offer to our eyes:

tractors on truck

Quick but safe :)

23.12.2011 9:00 AM
The hunger pangs had set in and we kept searching for the Kamat Upachar on the highway. We had crossed Chitradurga already. Mom kept saying we will have VangiBath which she had packed. The name of Vangibath excited our hunger pangs even more. We thought we will go to a nice restaurant on the highway instead of leaving the highway to get into any city. It was 225kms when we stopped on the parking lane for a quick loo break for the first time. Ultra had driven all the time. As soon as we came back from behind the bushes (:p), we saw that mom had already opened the Vangibath and started eating. None of us could control either and we gobbled it up in no time. We were good to go after that and I took over from Ultra to drive on. By 9:30, we reached the Davangere byepass and most of us were still hungry. So, we decided to get inside the town for to have the famous ‘butter dosas’.

It was a long way into the city and we struggled to find a decent restaurant till we reached the city limits. We got into some restaurant and ate heartily. By the time we finished and got out of there and back on the highway, it was already 10:10 AM. We had to make up for the lost time. I drove on and hit 80 right away. Ultra went to the backseat to take some rest…

continued in part 3 here

Bro when it’s you, life’s always gonna be a dashing ride! - Part 1

23-12-2011 17:45

He kept saying 'Slow! slow! slow!' … I just said to myself 'Sorry bro when it’s you, life’s always gonna be a dashing roller coaster ride'

The ghat road was winding, curvy and didn’t have a divider for the traffic coming in the opposite direction. He kept warning me to slow down and watch out! But I knew I was in total control. I had the best navigator in business and nothing could go wrong… we had come this far and we would definitely make it safe. Finally, we had managed it and it was an experience to cherish.

Flashback: 2011

Okay, so 2011 was not exactly a year of leisure or vacation for me in anyway. It also reflects on this blogger site as I could not find to update my blog posts at all with zero entries in the year – a personal low for me (or anyone for that matter). The year started with the second semester of MBA in Kharagpur and continued there till the summer internship back in BengaLuru. After two and half months of awesome stay at home and relishing the internship experience, it was back to business at Kharagpur with the hectic third semester – one of the busiest till now. There was always something to do at all time with lot of electives to study, politics to deal with, fests to organize, companies to prepare and so on. But there was also the odd trip where we could enjoy. A Coorg trip with close college mates during internship was good and the trip to Rishop and Darjeeling with a different gang from college was not exactly something which gives good memories. Nevertheless, it was the trip in which I caught my first glimpse of the Himalayas and that alone was enough to make the trip a memorable one. Such being the case, when there was an opportunity to go on a long road trip with Ultra at the far end of the year, I dint want to let go of it at any cost. Thus began one of the most awesome drive trips I have ever been on till now!

When I landed in Bangalore with three weeks of vacation in hand, I already had a long list of to-dos built up even before I set foot on the YPR platform from the HWH-YPR duronto. Regular maintenance works at home, bank related work, phone repair, and what not. But the main thing of all was to spend time with family (especially Ultra) without any tension of college, job, etc. Also, Panini had landed in India with her hubby and they had plans of visiting their ancestral temple in Goa from their residence at Pune. So, I was thinking that if we went on our trip at the same time, it would be a good opportunity to meet her after a long time. But, the main things to be considered were if Ultra’s and Dad’s holidays coincided with the dates when they planned to travel. The idea of the trip had been planted but nothing concrete was decided.

A week went by in finishing off the routine tasks like vehicle service, bank account, etc. When I first brought up the tour plan at home, Ultra got really excited. He said he had one whole week of holidays in the last week of December and that would be the best time to go. Mom was in for it as usual. As a rule, mom is always in for travel plans like this. That’s the best thing about her. So, only person remaining was dad, and we all instantly knew what his reaction was going to be – trip to Goa during Christmas? No way. Do you know it will be enormously crowded that time of the year? (Khanddaaaapati rush :p)

And yes. That was exactly how he reacted. He was true to some extent. Christmas and new- year time is when it gets really crowded and expensive in Goa. Room rents per day in some places are known to touch a whopping 25,000 INR per night! Even the temple accommodation, where we usually stay would be full. Panini and her in-laws had already finished their trip by then and had to cut short their trip because of accommodation problem. Thus, we had thought it was all over about the trip plans. Ultra had plans to buy a new phone for long and was waiting for me to assist in that work. So, we decided to spend the holidays together by exploring the new phone he would buy, watching movies and playing games.

20 & 21 December 2011
It had happened many times before and it did happen this time too. Some casual talk between mom and me during a lazy winter morning over breakfast made us think that it would be a good plan if we continued our plans - The car had been serviced and yearned for a long drive since so many days; we had not been on the family trip since early 2010 and did not see any chance for some time in the future if we dint go now; Ultra was anyway taking a leave on Friday and if we could somehow arrange for accommodation in our temples, we would be good to go. A casual call to the temple office evoked a response of strict no for accommodation at first and then turned to a tentative yes to a confirmed status within a span of 10 minutes. Dad returned from office in the evening and said that if the three of us were going anyway, he would come too. But the only constraint for him was to be back in Bangalore on Monday morning which we thought could be taken care of. And by the time Ultra was back from work on Wednesday we had a plan in place!

22 December 2011
Ultra went to office early for the last time in the year. Mom got busy packing for all of us. I spent most of my time reading up blogs on teambhp.com and making notes for myself on which is the best route to go to Goa. The main criterion was to stay on good roads as much as possible. After going through many discussion forums, I decided on a route, somewhere close to 675km one way. It would be long drive and we would have to leave early to make it to the temple by dusk. We planned to stay at the temple for 2 days and then maybe leave for Karwar on Christmas day. Dad would catch a bus back to Bangalore from there and we planned to continue on the coast of Karnataka to our mom’s native place near Kundapura in Udupi district. Visiting the sacred Ganapati temple at Anegudde was long overdue, more so in our alto because we had put the deity’s name on the windshield and could never take the car to meet the deity whose name it flaunted

Pic of the alto lxi with the deity's name in Kannada script - it reads 'Aanegudde Sree Mahaganapati'

When Ultra came back in the evening, we went to fill fuel in the car and get the air pressure right. It had been serviced just two days back so we assumed there was no need to check anything else. We watched some videos on youtube together and learnt how to change a flat tire using the jack. We even tried out jacking on our own car, but dint make the mistake of removing the tyre… why remove something that’s fine anyway? Ultra’s new phone, which was promised to be ready by 22nd was to be available only the next day. We abused the sales guy over telephone but there was nothing much to do. We thought we would collect the phone after the trip anyway. We had to wake up early morning at 4:30 AM the next day and leave home by 5:30AM. A long but exciting day awaited. Both Ultra and I could hardly sleep and kept waiting for that alarm ….

... continued in Part 2 here

Boarding the Train - Part 2

We were almost to the end of Banaswadi when we saw a traffic pile-up. My heart just skipped a beat. “Oh, no! Not today” I said to myself. We waited for two minutes and I started to get restless. I asked the driver to take a u-turn and take an alternate route which he did. We managed to cross the bottle-neck only to land up in an even bigger pile-up of vehicles. I uttered some profanity to myself. I guess the heavens heard it. They responded by showers, rubbing salt on my already aggravated wounds. It was 6pm already. There was no chance that I would reach by 7pm today.

All the decisions I had made earlier that day came back to haunt me now. I could have taken a sick leave owing to my injury. I could have taken a vehicle and drove home early. I could have atleast taken a Volvo at 4:30pm. But no, I wanted to take the cab and risk myself. But I had half expected the “late-comer” to come. I had half- expected my cab mates to stop for food. I had half-expected the rains. I surely never expected all three to happen on the same day, especially today. I had estimated in the morning that in the worst case, I would reach home by 7:30pm. There was a chance that I would not make even by the worst case time…

We were now slowly crawling on the streets of Fraser town and Cantonment areas. The poor driver was trying his best to move faster. I noticed that the wipers of the cab were not working because of the crash last day! Not the first of all troubles – I told myself. Maybe he had planned to service the vehicle over the weekend. But even he had not expected that it would rain today itself and play spoilsport.

I started to text Ultra with more fervor now, flooding him with all sorts of questions. Thankfully he was handling it well. He had packed all stuff into the suitcase, got food packed for us and even got the banana. But he could not find a bag to put some stuff in as the suit-case was overflowing. Wait a minute, I thought to myself. I had a bag with me which fit all the things he mentioned. But unfortunately, that bag was still stuck in traffic with me and I myself did not know when I would reach. I even thought that maybe I would go to Ypr directly in my office attire and he would lock the house, get all stuff and join me there. But that would be a huge responsibility on him. He just said, “hogolo! You come home, we will go together. You tell if it is absolutely necessary”. Honestly I still did not know if it was.

The cab mates, especially the late-comer now realized that I was acting a bit restless and tried to talk to me. I tried to tell all of them indirectly that I was really angry with them for not being supportive when I needed it the most. Their reaction was really indifferent. Either they had understood everything I meant and didn’t have anything comforting to say, or they were too dumb not to understand what I meant. Either ways, there was no point in pressing it further so I indulged in some playful banter with one of them.

It was 7pm when I reached Navrang, a good 20 minutes from my place. Given the trafiic today, it would be more than 20 minutes. I had to make a decision whether to go home or go to Ypr. I had to make sure that house was locked. I had my bag which had some stuff to be filled. I could not entrust such a huge responsibility on ultra yet. So I decided to go home. I asked the driver to take as many “F(s)hortcuts and chota F(s)hortcuts” as possible to reach home soon. Finally after a further half an hour of maneuvering the traffic, I finally reached home by 7:30pm. Still a good 100 minutes before train departed.

I asked Ultra to pack up everything in my bag including the travel tickets while I freshened up and got ready. He did that and locked up all the doors and windows. Finally, after double checking everything and making sure that everything was in place, I locked the door. Ready to leave…

“Have you taken the tickets?” Ultra asked me. I said, “I thought I asked you to put it in the bag”. I was getting a little frustrated but there was no way we could go without tickets. Nor was there any point in fighting with him now. I found myself unlocking the door, running to the TV stand and putting the tickets in the bag. Finally, after a complete scan of the place again, it was locked and we started to walk towards the auto-rickshaw… It was 7:50pm

I was woken up from my thoughts when the auto suddenly came to a halt. The station was almost three fourths of a kilometer away. I asked the rickshaw driver what was the problem. He said that he had run out of fuel. We had to get down. The place was dark and it was at such a distance that no autos would agree to come from there to the railway station. It was 8:15 pm now. I could see the tension in Ultra’s face. But this was not the first blow to me that day. I asked him not to panic. We started to walk slowly towards the station. We passed through the “Metro” outlet, went under the yeswantpur bridge and towards the railway station. It was dark and we used the headlights of vehicles to guide us. We entered the station through a walkway directly over the tracks. It was 8:35pm now.

Since we were walking on the tracks itself we did not have to take the over bridge to get to our platform. We just ran over to the platform on which our train would come. Our past knowledge that the Garib Rath train would always leave from either platform 4 or 5 helped a lot. Finally, we saw our train – the green colored Garib Rath express comprising completely of AC coaches. We had finally made it to the train. It was 8:40pm now. We walked towards the train from the rear of it. Our coach was G12. So we expected it to be at the rear of the train. We crossed the first two general coaches and reached the first reserved 3A coach. It was marked “G1”! One more jhatka in the long list for today – and probably the last. We walked past almost the entire train (except the engine and G13) and finally reached our coach and ran to our seat. It was 8:45pm

Never in the history of our train travels had we reached a station so late. But we were happy that we had finally made it against all odds. The AC inside the train was a welcome relief for our sweating bodies. Both of us relaxed for a while and started to talk. We laughed about how pathetic we would be if we had finally managed to run till the train and remembered that we forgot the tickets back home! Thankfully that had not happened. Ultra asked me if I had kept the house keys safely. I said yes and checked in my bag to make sure. But I had packed so much stuff haphazardly that I could not find them. Just when I thought everything was fine again, we ran into this new “key” problem! Finally, as the train slowly moved out of Ypr platform at 8:53pm, we ransacked the whole bag and managed to find the keys. We were totally exhausted from the happenings. Right time for dinner, we thought.

As I lay in the comfort of my lower berth snuggled up in a cosy blanket that night, with the train rumbling past sleepy villages in rain, I reflected on the happenings of the whole day. We were pushed to the limits with one after the other tough situations inflicted on us. But we had finally made it to the train with our perseverance. I was wondering whether it was God’s way of punishing us for not attending the fest or something. After all, he is called the destroyer of all troubles. If someone messes with Him, He could as well present them with troubles- Right? Then this realization drew upon me. This year, I expected the experience of Hyderabad to be less exciting because I would miss all the festive fever of Karkala. But even before we reached Hyderabad, we had already experienced so many exciting moments that even with little happening, we would always return with so many memories to treasure. With this realization, all my worries, tensions and anger towards fellow cab-mates vanished and I was able to appreciate the beauty of life as God presented it to me. That’s the true rationale behind celebrating festivals Isn’t it?

PS: YPR - Railway code for Bangalore's new complementary railway station at Yeswantpur. Due to many long distance trains starting from here these days, the load on SBC (Bangalore City) railway station is greatly reduced.

Boarding the train - Part 1

“Boarding 21-08-09 2050 hours at YPR”

I heaved a sigh of relief as I held the ticket in my hands. It was 8:10 PM. We still had a good 40 minutes to go and we were almost there. Given the incidents of the last few hours, I really had my doubts that we would make it so smoothly. Ultra had made it as comfortable for me as possible. I looked at his spectacle covered face. He still seemed a little fidgety about reaching on time. I asked him to relax assuring that everything would turn out fine. Sitting there in that auto-rickshaw headed towards YPR, my mind wandered back into the happenings of the day….

For quite a few years now, the festival of “Ganesh Chaturthi” is linked to a trip to my native place and a get-together of our big joint family of about 40 people praying in unison to the “Vighna Vinashak”. As soon as we get a calendar for the new-year, the first thing that Ultra and I look for are the dates of the Ganapati festival so that we can plan leaves in advance. The tickets on bus/ train are booked one month before and the day of departure is very eagerly awaited. The round trip during monsoons, the celebrations, the food, the pooja, the immersion of the idol – each and every aspect of this festival is a treasure in itself which we would not want to miss for anything else.

With Panini getting married, this year we were faced with a dilemma. Out of Dad, mom, Ultra and me, two of us had to go to native and two of us had to go to her place in Hyderabad for her first “Gowri Pooja”. Since the dates of both the festivals were the same this year and given the large distance from Hyderabad and our native, it was impossible that all of us could go to both the places. Finally, it was decided that mom and dad would go to the native for the fest and we both would go to Panini’s place. Though we would miss going to the native, the joy of going to a festival and going together would always be there. And moreover, Ultra and I would be going by train together. Also, it would be my first trip to Panini’s place and I was looking forward to it eagerly.

We had booked the tickets for Friday. Mom and Dad left for native on Thursday. I met with an accident while coming back home by cab the same day. Next day, ie, on Friday morning, Ultra fell off his vehicle while going to college. Though both were not very serious kind of injuries, the very fact that they happened just before the festival made us ponder whether it was God’s way of punishing us for missing the festival this year. Maybe yes, and more probably no. But I have decided to ask Him whenever we get a chance to meet next. If you have anything to ask Him, you are free to write to me. I shall ask them those too :)

I woke up Friday morning with little pain in hands and knees due to accident. I dint know whether to drive a vehicle to office so that I can leave early or to take the usual office cab. The cab would reach home by 6:45 pm usually and even if it got late by a maximum of half an hour, I would be home by 7:15pm. And the train was scheduled at 8:50pm. Since Ultra was there to pack stuff and get everything ready, I decided I will take the office cab – a decision which I would regret later….

Panini called at office and asked me to get 5 dozen bananas for the pooja. She said the ones that were available over there were either not good for the pooja or too expensive. That’s when I realized the significance of Bangalore’s yelakki baaLe - It is unique, tasty, famous and most important of all - economical. I put a reminder in my cell phone to purchase the bananas from the in-building department store during lunch break. However, during lunch, we were too busy eating a “festival special” meal that I forgot completely about it, inspite of the reminder on my cell! When I remembered it after lunch again, I consoled myself thinking that the best place to buy bananas, that too dozens of them was not a department store at office but a HoPCoMs store near home. So I texted Ultra and entrusted him the responsibility of buying bananas. That was the first of long list of tasks that I was to assign him that day – poor ultra, he just had an accident and might have wanted to sleep. Being the youngest child, he was not used to taking responsibilities as yet. I felt sorry for him. At the same time I was helpless.

Work went well that day. All tasks assigned to me were finished by 4:30pm itself. A thought occurred to me that I could start from office early and take a Volvo bus till majestic. But then, it would be too hectic to travel and the cab would drop me off home by 7pm anyway. So this idea too was vetoed out. Little did I realize that all these thoughts would come back to haunt me later.

I left office at 5pm sharp and went and sat in my cab. Our cab usually has very less number of people and they come to the cab by 5:05 to 5:10. But there is one girl who seldom comes in our cab but whenever she comes she is late. I just prayed she didn’t turn up that day. But as luck would have it, she said she would be coming. It feels quite funny when I think about it – most of the times, people who come early to the cab call up the people who are late and wait for them. It is like calling up someone wasting your money and then wasting your time. waiting for them Maybe I would not make a big deal of it on other days. But today, even a minute was precious to me and I was getting restless. That girl finally came at 5:15pm and we started. She gave a big smile and said “sorry!” – seems some kind of a weapon that all girls possess. How can you fight after that?

The driver was very cautious after the accident last evening and was going a little slow. But we were only 5 minutes behind normal time and I didn’t think much into it as we had crossed the most dreaded K R Puram by 5:40pm. One cab mate said she was feeling hungry and wanted to stop for some snacks. We do this sometimes owing to our long journey and less people in cab – we stop at some food joint and have something before going home. But I could not afford to waste more time today. I told her politely about my situation and they agreed not to stop today. I thanked them for understanding and decided to rest for some time before reaching home.

There is this stretch on Banaswadi main road where our cab usually zooms past at over 60kmph. But unfortunately today, the driver was feeling thirsty and stopped to drink water just in front of a bakery. This time, the cab mates didn’t listen. They said that they would pack food for eating inside the cab instead of eating it there. Some sort of a favour they were doing me, they said. I had no choice but to oblige this time. True to their word, the cab mates came back soon and they had got me some snack too. We were back on the road. It was 5:50pm… already 10-12 minutes late from normal.

This was the first signs that things might get really nasty today. I was particularly angry at my cab mates for not being supportive. I messaged Ultra asking for status. He said that things were ready to be packed, the maid had come and left, but bananas were yet to be brought. It was raining heavily and so he could not get out. I asked him to take the car and get both banana and food for us packed. He agreed. So far so good....

[continued in part 2]

PS:
1. HoPCoMS - Horticultural Produce Co-operative Marketing Society - Head quartered in Lalbagh, Bangalore. This was set up for supporting the horticultural produce and encouraging horticulture as a side-business by regular farmers.
2. Panini, Ultra - my siblings. In case I had not told it earlier :)