"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." -- Lin Yutang

“ I am not a bookie !“ that’s how it all began. That was my response to RB’s request to book the train tickets to Chennai. We were off to attend Anand’s wedding. Initially 4 of us were supposed to be traveling, but in the end, as always, it was left to RB and me to do the honors. Did you know that it has the second largest beach in the world. Neither of us knew the local language Tamil but we were confident that we could quite easily find our way around the city. So armed with simple tamil words like Addi paavi, timmaru, Kadal , poi sollade ,naNdri, Thiruvanmiyur ku enda bus pogu, bus stop enga irukku ? and other small but loos words we boarded the Chennai express. The train was scheduled to depart at 9:45pm but it was understandably 10 minutes late (the traffic you know). We had on this occasion made reservations (2nd Class Sleeper, thank you RB) and we didn’t have much trouble finding our berths. We chitchatted for 10 mins and I opened my novel, only to hear the other passenger asking us to switch off the light. The time was 10.30pm and according to the TC,the train would be reaching Chennai at around 5 am. We slept like logs ….only to be rudely awakened by our co passengers. Yes, they switched on the @#$@# lights. The time was 4 am and guess what, the TC was wrong (as always) and we were in Chennai an hour earlier than scheduled. I got down from the compartment looked to my right, and my eyebrows touched the roof. Sigh* and I looked to the left. This time, I swear, the eyebrows didn’t move a millimeter. I was looking at 2 groups of girls who had occupied the adjacent compartments. I desperately wanted to kick RB for not booking our tickets in those compartments. But I had to give up, not only because he’s bigger and tougher than me, but for the solemn fact that even if we were in those bogies, all that we would have done was switch off the lights and go to sleep ..right ? We made our way to the bus stand and were greeted by a swarm of mosquitoes. We waited for an hour for the elusive bus and then we decided to take a rickshaw. We had heard a lot of things about the Chennai rickshaw wallahs and not all were good. We asked a dude for directions to Thiruvanmiyur. He said that we should take a bus. I asked him “How about the rickshaw ? “. There were a lot of empty ones and believe me these are huge compared to our local Bangalore autos. They are also called share auto’s. The dude shook his head dramatically and said “ No , they charge too much”. Me : “How much and which place are you going to ? “ Incidentally even he was headed towards Thiruvanmiyur and was looking for an auto. He went over to a driver and started haggling and occasionally pointing in our direction, of course it is better to smile when someone is pointing at you,and so we smiled. He came back and said “ Too much “ .I persisted “How much is he asking ? “ He, shaking his head,” Rs 30 “.I think I said wow .. and said “ For each ? Lets go “. He continued to shake his head and said “ Too Costly” . The auto driver continued to stare at us. Eventually an uncle came to our rescue and as soon as he hopped in, the driver called us over and our rates were lowered to Rs 20.( yippee) . It was a quiet 25 min ride, with me sitting next to the driver and looking at the sun rise over the Marina beach. The best part was the uncle got down after 5kms and he paid Rs 50, we traveled for 10kms and paid Rs 20.hehe At first glance Chennai looked like a small town. Maybe it was because I visited the not so posh part of the city?? anyway the flyovers were pretty cool , that’s because they were all completed and they didn’t have traffic signals on flyovers( yep we in Bangalore have traffic signals on flyovers). We asked a panwalla the location of the Marriage hall and he said, “cross the signal, go straight and you can see the big board mentioning the name of the hall”. We crossed the traffic signal and walked for 5 minutes, but couldn’t find the above mentioned board. We asked an uncle for further directions and after a few up’s and left’s and right’s, please note we were never lost, we found the board mentioning the name of the hall and we smiled, no not because it was right under out noses but because it was in Tamil. After a breakfast which consisted of idli’s, masala dosa’s, vada , pongal ,some strange sweet and coffee, we sat down to watch the rituals of the Iyer community and believe me it was fun.;-) Apart from the fact that someone introduced RB as a “hindi “,which meant he spoke only Hindi ( he’s a typical Kannadiga) and me a “telugu” … ??? , nothing unusual happened.The lunch was delicious and RB confessed that he was mesmerized by the variety of dishes and didn’t remember what he ate. After the marriage ceremony,we made an “on the spot decision” of catching a train back to Bangalore. We didn’t like the humid climate and the thought of taking a stroll on the marina beach in the afternoon was a bit worrying .We went to the bus stand and decided to catch a bus to the Central. All the buses were packed and I didn’t like the idea of being suffocated in the crowd. I kept telling RB that I could strike a deal with the auto. But no, he didn’t trust my Tamil :-( . At last we boarded a not so rush bus and after a 45 min ride landed at Central. One of the curious things that I noticed was that all the ladies were sitting on the left hand side of the bus. Unlike in Bangalore, were the first 4 front rows of seats are reserved for women. Weird. Time : 12: 30pm We went to buy the return tickets and were in for a shock. What greeted us was a huge serpentine Q. I found out that there were 2 trains bound to Bangalore , the 1: 15pm super fast express and the 3: 45pm Lalbagh express. Our hopes of boarding the 1:15pm train went up in smoke when we saw the long Q. Nevertheless we stood in line for 42 minutes, looking on as people shouted , swore and jumped lines. It was fun as I kept pestering RB to buy AC tickets, but he declined and moreover they were all booked. We asked for 2 tickets to Bangalore and that’s what we got. But when we checked the ticket, it said nothing about which train, what time or which class we could travel. Time : 1: 13pm I went to the “Can I help you” section and showed the dude our tickets and asked “which Train”. He looked at me as if I was joking and said “Bangalore train”. I was exasperated, I kept my cool and asked “what time ? “ He explained that we could board any train bound to Bangalore. Time : 1: 14pm We ran to Platform number 3 and heard the whistle. The question that was bugging our mind was which class tickets did we buy?. I showed my ticket to a TC and asked which class ? , He took a look at the ticket and said , any bogie, go go … and we ran. We didn’t jump into the first 5 bogies, because it was filled up and I thought I saw a goat (hallucination? ) and our search for a compartment with seats came to an abrupt halt when the train started moving and we had to jump in. As luck should have it, we landed in an empty 2nd class seater compartment. We spied a couple of empty seats and sat down. We were not sure if “ anywhere on the train” meant literally anywhere or just the general compartment (the goat). Of course I wanted to go to the AC compartment but RB wouldn’t let me..grrr. We decided to stay in the cosy seats, until we were forcefully evicted. We liked it not only because it had a lot of small ceiling fans but the endless running food vendors entertained us. These guys were selling bottled water, mobile covers, different types of vada’s, potato chips, coke, pepsi, pulav, curd rice, cold badam milk, ice creams and toys. I even saw a lady selling flowers. wow talk about variety. According to a colleague, people traveling in trains, spend more on eatables than on the Railway ticket. Time : 2:30pm A couple of typical Iyer, Maami and Mamma came over to our seats 76, 77 and informed us that they had reservations. We got up and moved on to the front row, which thankfully were empty. Time : 2:40 pm Enter the TC. Amusingly this dude was inspecting tickets of people who were seated and he didn’t care about the others who were standing near the door. We were tense because we were not sure what the TC would do when he saw our tickets. I said lets plead ignorance and blame that other TC who told us that we could sit anywhere .RB’s reply “Ignorance of rules is not an excuse”. Grr. This TC was a cool dude. He took one look at our ticket and informed us that the tickets were for the general compartment and that we had to go to the front bogies of the train. I asked him if we could pay extra and continue sitting in the 2nd class. He explained that all the seats were reserved and that the other passengers would be boarding the train soon and until then we could continue to be seated. Time 3:00 pm Another eviction and we found ourselves occupying 60,61 and 62. This was the coolest part of the journey, because for the next 100 minutes no one bothered us (apart form the food vendors) and we dozed off. Time 4:45 pm. We passed Vellore Institute of Technology and I was impressed by the huge campus. It was at this time that we were asked to vacate for the last time, as the rightful passengers had boarded the train. From now on it was “standing” and we jumped in and out of different compartments looking for standing space. We wanted to stand next to the door where it was cool with the breeze blowing. After 3 hours of standing and looking out at the passing scenery, we reached Bangalore.We talked about how we wanted AC tickets, but traveled in 2nd class with general tickets. I was really amazed by the sheer number of people, who used the trains to travel from one village to another. The Indian Railways is indeed one of the most amazing modes of transport and surprisingly are sometimes punctual. Apart from the fact that I jumped off in a different Railway station (Bangalore East) please note I was not lost, and had to pay a hefty auto fare, I reached home safe and sound :).