Visit to Chennai...Piece 1

Getting started... literally...

Chennai.... Of course there will be thousands of blogs on Chennai and on any city you can name. So I'm just another, giving you a view from my eyes. Till this day I had only heard others' words about Chennai. Now I've become one of those others for somebody else. And along with Chennai, I also talk about few other things. Glad you could lend an ear or an eye.

I'll talk about the places, events and people chronologically. I don't see any point in mentioning time and dates as this is not my tour journal or anything. I believe I've touched little of Chennai but I sure feel there's more to it than meets the eye. Ok lets get rolling.

A Bangalore night on the 5th working day of the week, seemed cloudy, breezy, a little raindrop on the nose or eyelid once in a while. I arrived with my folks(family no. 3) outside the Bangalore City Railway Station, opposite to what known as 'The Majestic'. We went in, we had to meet the rest of the group at the rendezvous point, which was Platform no 5. We took the over-bridge. Even at 10.30 in the night, that way seemed pretty busy. A lot of people going and coming our way, seemed like a swarm of ants, only less in number. There are stairs leading down to the next platforms. One can find many kinds of people aboard this bridge. One uncle constantly looking at the watch and going away from the trains. A family of 3 resting on the bridge trying to feed their toddler some milk. A drunkard lying with his pants open without a care in the world. A family of almost 6-7 kids pulling their small trolleys and following their mother as if to form a long tail, and many more. We stopped at an entrance towards a stairway. To the right it said Platforms 1-4 and to the left it said Platforms 6-10. I know, Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince was released during the weekend and I am sure that thought might have crossed some people's minds now that I'm just playing. Believe I'm not. On a serious note, there's no such thing as Magic in Bangalore. So determined to find Platform 5 and almost sure that its gotta be around there somewhere my better sibling went down the stairway only find bearable stench of Public toilets. Bearable only in comparison with other unbearable stenches. Once you go down one can see a lot of small rooms there, storage room, repair rooms etc. On one such room, we saw a small scribbling in red saying this way to Platform 5. This is no Harry Potter stuff and you can check out for yourself. So we went through 'this way' and lo, the Rendezvous point. There were people already, our people. The host family (aka family no. 5) , the family no. 6 and an other family who had come to see us off. Don't mind the numbers, there'll be a glossary attached. One can generally come at 3 instances for any meeting before a trip. One, too early, before or at the same time as the host or the one who has setup the rendezvous time. The second, rightly on time. The third, arriving at the nick of time, causing concerns to many or all of the members of the group, especially when its a scheduled mode of transport. This time, for a change, we came right on time, 10.30 PM to be precise. So there we were, exchanged hi, hellos, cracked a few pale jokes, started towards our carriage (bogie is what its called here). It was at the far end of where we were standing. The coach's number was S-11 so we'd a good 400 or so metres to cover. As we moved lazily towards our coach, towards our left were the rail tracks and other gooey things I'd rather not mention and towards our right, a range of things, from dogs, to sleeping people, sleeping cops, a shipment of god knows what, passengers who were waiting for our train to come etc. Within no time [considering 24 mins as no time ;-)] we arrived at the place where it had a sign hanging which said S-11. Minutes passed, there were many phone calls by many ppl to many ppl, exchange of snacks, water, checking and rechecking of our berth numbers etc. And slowly the train came. The 11th coach exactly stopped at the where we were all standing. Most of the people got in, I took up the task of getting all the luggages inside. One of the hosts get a call from family no. 4 and they supposedly cant find the Platform no.5, S-11 bogie on the train. So my cuz from host family was sent to get them, 10 mins and they were at the coach. Actual departure time around 22 mins away. Everybody was told it was at 11.30 PM just to make sure everybody will be present on time. Of course there will be delays everywhere, everytime. The family no. 2 apparently arrived at the station at 11.35 and again me and my cuz were sent to find them and bring them to our coach. The family no. 2 had 2 moms and 2 daughters, we were finally successful in finding them and brought them to the compartments. So everybody who were supposed to come were in the bogie and the train jerked forward( or was it backward) and I was very excited as it was my 6th train ride of my LIFE, first ride of the distance more than 200 km. AND it started. There were talks in many groups of 2, 3 and more. They were discussing about who get which berth and so on. Finally everything was settled and I got an upper berth and was about to doze off, just then our train had reached KR Puram. A girl just got in and came to our group, one who was sleeping below me and said 'that's my seat'. My cuz got up and checked her ticket and she had the same berth number where one of us was sleeping and strangely we had it too. The train began to move, we were repeatedly checking ours and her ticket again n again, just then the TC, ticket collector arrived. It was almost 12.45 am. He took our tickets, verified and gave it back to us. He then took hers and just said, 'this train's tomorrow'. The TC moved on and she followed and they reached some agreement later I guess and she wasn't thrown out as I saw her in the morning again. After this everybody fell fast asleep and with difficulty, I too, fell prey to the sandman.