Travel

Posted in alayam on 5/23/06

I was walking towards the office canteen with my friend. A small smile was in my face. I was leaving my office. One may wonder whats so special with that. Yes it was coz it was not even 5pm when I started. Not a time for a software engineer to start. He should have be in the office with some Burgers and coke around.

I was starting for Lucknow to attend Pooja’s marriage. Pooja my College friend...... all the things about college came fresh to my mind…. Most of the people in my gang were planning to come there………. A get together after some 3 years…..I made sure I drank the juice in a single gulp so that I could hurry. I got to reach home pack, have dinner and start…. Generally I used to do all these things early…… but nowadays…. Was very lazy actually.There was a company shuttle service to the city at that time. I had double checked it in our company's internal website.

But as fate would have it, i reached a bit late and the shuttle had already left and i had very less time to afford reaching the station. So i came out of the office to take the private cab services, which used to ply in that road. They generally are those famous green Mahindra vans more popular in south India. As i walked in the side of the road, a van approached. I had to get into the front seat as all the seats at the back were occupied. To be frank, there was no seat in the front side. People had to sit in a sort of wooden seat and also share the big gear box. This made the people running this service to accomodate a lot more than the number of people who are suppposed to travel. Actually this is nothing compared to traveling in North India. When i was in Maharashtra, I have seen Sumo's carrying around 50 people.

As i got into the vehicle, a lot of shocks were awaiting me. First one was that the guy who was driving the vehicle, was not more than 16 years old. His legs were hardly reaching the brake, clutch and the accelerator. I became selfish by thinking about my safety rather than being pity for his state. I never thought if his hands which was in the steering wheel would have ever touched a slate or note book. The vehicle was in a very bad shape. There was no base in the front portion where i was sitting. So the road moving beneath my feet was clearly visible. The front portion too was open with lots of wires hanging all around and a bulb dangling down the holder. That was the headlight clearly visible from inside the vehicle. All the capacitors and resistors, about which i never remembered during my examination, were all hanging down. The Dashboard had all the meters, but everything was as if fixed in the Dashboard. The most funny part was that one of the meters was placed upside down. I raised my head to find out if the front glass pane existed. Yes it was there. "Thank God" was all i could say.Then i noticed a small Pillayar (Lord Gansha) photo sticked to the glass pane. The Journey was only for about 20 minutes, but being in such a vehicle, it seemed very long (This is a very common line and is applicable in many places and cannot be said as plagiarism). The road i was traveling was the Old Mahaliburam Road popularly referred to as OMR and according to its name was really old. The whole journey was like a Joy ride in an amusement park. Somehow i managed to reach my destination.

As i was getting down, I looked up at the Pillayar. He looked at me as if he wanted to ask me "How was the trip?". I just smiled, thanked him for bringing me safely (driver please excuse) and got down carefully.