Unplanned

Oflate i have got the penchant for unplanned travel. I think this will be the perfect to mask the lazy character i have grown into. But beleive me its fun. After being in a near sober office environment where almost every visible soul s glued on to their monitors, after spending hours talking to people whom u rarely meet, after being clobbered by demands for infomation on customer client vendors & partners, after spending time with people in a company cab in near pin drop silence – An unplanned travel that too in a local bus is refreshing.

The first thing that flashes in mind when i think of going home – is the 32 hours i will spend in travelling. When I plan to go home on a weekend i would have 62 hours in hand. But I end up spending 32 hours in bus ( to & fro). If I start by 7 PM from bangalore I would reach my town next day 11 AM.  I will be dog tired by the time I reach home so after spending 2-3 hrs with family & my dog I will go to bed and would wake up by 8-9 PM. Then would spend another 4 hrs discussing all those important n not so important things. Jus three hours, coz others arent quite used to stay awake till late in night just as i can.

Finally the second day (sunday) would start very early at 6 and by 11 the idea of making me get ready would occupy everybody at home coz they know that am very good in forgetting things. By 1.30 I will be ready with everything packed and with a heart that would not want to take that 2.30 bus. My dad would make sure that i leave by 2.10 to catch the 2.30 bus and thus the effective time i spend with the family gets cut down to just  3+4+8 = 15 hrs.

So i travel 32 hours just to spend 15 hrs with my family. thats a pretty unfair deal.. no I would say something like that. Okay chaltha hai ya.. Leaving these aside what makes the entire trip fun is the travel and becomes a lot more enjoyable when it gets a little unplanned. I remember meeting these two blokes in a bus from hosur to salem – two iyengars who can be distinguished from their very apprearance. One of them was very much like our ambi from anniyan. The other one looked like a normal saadhu boy. We got introduced and were talking about something. yeah we were talking about this saadhu boy’s company which was into outsourced mortgage processing. then conversation went on for sometime and strayed into the quality of work in BPOs/KPOs. With the bus full, the engine was roaring n struggling and the incomplete combustion was evident in the strong dark particle laden fume trail which it was leaving behind. I guess it moved at nothing more than 30kmph. There was silence and everybody looked as if they were spellbound. I thought they were are trying to help that struggling engine by syncing their mental vibrations with that of the engine’s to help it. the only people talking were we three. And both these guys spoke as if they had swallowed a loud speaker. As the conversation grew interesting suddenly the saadhu chamathu looking guy started talking in english. Well for a while i stepped in and out of the conversation while still answering in tamil. I am not really easy with the idea of talking in english at such places, which would make people look at me like an alien. But suddenly i noticed everybody around and i felt they were distracted in their efforts to help that poor engine. Now when for a moment i sinked in the silence, I realised that the noise of these blokes have taken the lead leaving the engine sound to the background. I was able to notice 10s of men looking amused at the way both these guys were conversing at a high decibels that too in english, which i guess only few men understood in that crowded bus.

After realising the way these guys’ english was so out of place i tried my best to hint that they must get back to tamil. Well they carried on with a sense of pride. Okay I have no stakes and why would i like to stop them from what they are enjoying. Aah it went on n on n on and finally ended after three long hours. The funny thing wasnt the english but the way it was spoken. look if it has made me think it was poor then you must guess how bad it was. Well they too seek a chance in life to improve and this event was what they had created for themselves. So i just prayed that it give them that extra practice to tune themselves to perform better next time in a crowded bangalore city bus replete with eye candy babes. All the best dudes. . keep it up

But please dont ever try doing this when you travel down south. You will get a good dress down unless you have that rustic humour to connect to them if ever somebody raises objection. beleive me your filmi heroism and vanity would impress no ass .

Nehow unplanned travel gives so much to experience. You travel through variety of terrains, with different kinds of people having different physical & mental make up, with different life styles. And you get to compare how the rest of india speaks, thinks and acts with what that u experience in those extended office spaces called cities.

Some and soon many are gonna get caught in these microcosms called cities for obvious reasons so justifiable. At time i think those visuals of sci-fi movies showing huge settlements with multiple skyscrapers with streams of traffic in air moving in all possible directions and with no visible quality life beyond the boundaries of these settlements can be a reality sooner than we would expect. Well I donno why my thoughts go so awry, like what has happened here i began with unplanned travel and finally have ended up with something very close to to talk about future of growing urbanisation. Well I think i must stop now.. next time i will write about that long travel in a brand new mahindra from bangalore to tirunelveli and the way every virgin vehicle gets rapped before its been delivered..