If I wrote yesterday that I was busy and the day was eventful it was because I had no clue about today.
I had no choice but to wake up quite early in the morning, though after yesterday’s party I was kind of tired and lousy. Today was a big day for me and Reuben – the Kerala University Youth festival. But I guessed later in the day that my day was not so much big as for the guy who was selling one too many fresh white fishes at Allapuzha today. We were from disparate circumstances and that made the calculations a bit too complicated. I left it midway through ‘coz I soon learned it would be without point.
It might have been a coincidence that I started the journey with a hike as well as started on this journey a book about a hitchhiker. But the whole point needn’t be lost in between that I reached station on time to catch the Jan shatabdi as well as developed an exceedingly keen interest in the storybook. In travel you would relish good company and I did have the pleasure to share the allepy trip with a Sikh couple.
Allapuzha was once a bustling business place and still bears a rustic charm of its colonialist period. But goods that found business there today were lottery tickets, fresh white fishes and a few fibre and foam products. Thus in essence I had traveled from a town bustling enough for my take (Trivandrum) to a place one-fourth so. So much for the Venice of the East!
As I traversed the length of the district to Mararikulam near Cherthala, I saw, as I had seen six months back in Cannanore, a red flag too many dotting the green landscape of rural Kerala. The land was at places parched and at others vibrant. Just like how the blazing red is at times the clout and at other times the whimsical opposition. I have my doubts about the red, the saffron and the green but mostly I keep them to myself.
In the midst of my travel, Dad, I didn’t forget to notice the Prince Hotel (for a change it’s a really short story but left best when unrecorded).
I met Reuben at S.N College, our venue. It’s a place I have seen umpteen times as I travel along the highway. But it’s for the first time I have had the fortune to step in. I met there, people like Febna, Sherin and Lishoy – the kind of people you bump into at competitions. I was surviving on tea until the college canteen happened!
After the really difficult registration process and the long wait I did my elocution well, but Reuben did not seem satisfied. But then again with fifty-one participants and most of them truculent you do not expect much, do you? Debate was cool more so because I had bartered a bit of my stage dominance for the sake of stuffing my speech with points. At the end of the day, what matters is what you feel! I felt elated. (Did I fail to mention there were around twenty-four teams for this event and one of them is a renowned South India champion(s)).
I say again, I felt elated.
Our journey to Ernakulam was split into two. First we took a bus to Cherthala and then one to Cochin. Cochin, the queen of the Arabian Sea was naked with splendour and I felt an easy calm.
I had moved to a place that would easily pass for a metropolis. I found myself amidst the re-assuring cluttered-ness of a city and I lost count of the number of billboards and flux boards that adorned the cityscape. I lost count of the beautiful flats and expensive coffee day kind of hangouts I had started counting. And then there were way too many hotels (the Taj kind) than to be counted with flexed fingers. I saw a couple of benz s every minute. The Bay Pride mall kind of made me feel I am in a place like Chennai (the metro I have been to). Now I know that I will be drawn to far greater cesspools of human congregation (Doyle’s phrase on London) – cesspools reeking with squalid human togetherness shoddily made up by fresh paint and white night lights. Did I forget attractive marquee boards!
My father was a man of the village. He yearned for it. I am a man of the city (people I call Trivandrum one!). Little would Reuben have known that as we walked through the pedestrian drive at marine drive I was retracing a few steps that my dad had taught me to walk a few long long years back.
Reuben parted saying, “Thanks for the Pepsi”. I owed him one. It should have lost on him that he had treated me to a shake some time back, maybe in S3. So much for an ex-IITians son! Dude.
I reached the comfortable environs of my uncle’s house and I am bracing myself for deep sleep. But in between I have to tell this that nowhere in my journey did I feel left out or alone or nostalgic. There is a friend of mine, who ‘lost a wondrous lady to cancer’ (a lady who has taught me in substitution classes) –, who likes gypsies. Me too. Count me in, friend! I too like gypsies, but I have heard bad stories about their fraternizing.
It might have been a coincidence that I started the journey with a hike as well as started on this journey a book about a hitchhiker. But the whole point needn’t be lost in between that I reached station on time to catch the Jan shatabdi as well as developed an exceedingly keen interest in the storybook. In travel you would relish good company and I did have the pleasure to share the allepy trip with a Sikh couple.
Allapuzha was once a bustling business place and still bears a rustic charm of its colonialist period. But goods that found business there today were lottery tickets, fresh white fishes and a few fibre and foam products. Thus in essence I had traveled from a town bustling enough for my take (Trivandrum) to a place one-fourth so. So much for the Venice of the East!
As I traversed the length of the district to Mararikulam near Cherthala, I saw, as I had seen six months back in Cannanore, a red flag too many dotting the green landscape of rural Kerala. The land was at places parched and at others vibrant. Just like how the blazing red is at times the clout and at other times the whimsical opposition. I have my doubts about the red, the saffron and the green but mostly I keep them to myself.
In the midst of my travel, Dad, I didn’t forget to notice the Prince Hotel (for a change it’s a really short story but left best when unrecorded).
I met Reuben at S.N College, our venue. It’s a place I have seen umpteen times as I travel along the highway. But it’s for the first time I have had the fortune to step in. I met there, people like Febna, Sherin and Lishoy – the kind of people you bump into at competitions. I was surviving on tea until the college canteen happened!
After the really difficult registration process and the long wait I did my elocution well, but Reuben did not seem satisfied. But then again with fifty-one participants and most of them truculent you do not expect much, do you? Debate was cool more so because I had bartered a bit of my stage dominance for the sake of stuffing my speech with points. At the end of the day, what matters is what you feel! I felt elated. (Did I fail to mention there were around twenty-four teams for this event and one of them is a renowned South India champion(s)).
I say again, I felt elated.
Our journey to Ernakulam was split into two. First we took a bus to Cherthala and then one to Cochin. Cochin, the queen of the Arabian Sea was naked with splendour and I felt an easy calm.
I had moved to a place that would easily pass for a metropolis. I found myself amidst the re-assuring cluttered-ness of a city and I lost count of the number of billboards and flux boards that adorned the cityscape. I lost count of the beautiful flats and expensive coffee day kind of hangouts I had started counting. And then there were way too many hotels (the Taj kind) than to be counted with flexed fingers. I saw a couple of benz s every minute. The Bay Pride mall kind of made me feel I am in a place like Chennai (the metro I have been to). Now I know that I will be drawn to far greater cesspools of human congregation (Doyle’s phrase on London) – cesspools reeking with squalid human togetherness shoddily made up by fresh paint and white night lights. Did I forget attractive marquee boards!
My father was a man of the village. He yearned for it. I am a man of the city (people I call Trivandrum one!). Little would Reuben have known that as we walked through the pedestrian drive at marine drive I was retracing a few steps that my dad had taught me to walk a few long long years back.
Reuben parted saying, “Thanks for the Pepsi”. I owed him one. It should have lost on him that he had treated me to a shake some time back, maybe in S3. So much for an ex-IITians son! Dude.
I reached the comfortable environs of my uncle’s house and I am bracing myself for deep sleep. But in between I have to tell this that nowhere in my journey did I feel left out or alone or nostalgic. There is a friend of mine, who ‘lost a wondrous lady to cancer’ (a lady who has taught me in substitution classes) –, who likes gypsies. Me too. Count me in, friend! I too like gypsies, but I have heard bad stories about their fraternizing.
1 comment:
churukki paranja prize oonum kittate veyilum kondu vannu, alle?? :P
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