Risky Travel

Yup, its bangalore again.... I missed out to blog on pondy trip (31/dec), there wasn’t much action out there.... so its bangalore again on this edition of my travel blogs.....

Bangalore, Nice place, cool, serene, peaceful city… people live in fun and masti ….. This definition matches all except in case you are from Tamil Nadu or mistakenly speak Tamil… If you are a tamilian and you luv to speak tamil, bangalore becomes the most uninhabitable place to live in…. Especially when some cauvery issue breaks outta court.

I travelled this time exactly during the announcement of the cauvery river water case judgment… the result fortunately /unfortunately favored the tamilians, and I was traveling to bangalore from Chennai, friends and ppl at synap were telling me all sorts of stories about tamil people suffering in bangalore during the recent riots regarding the cauvery river case… But I was never really worried about all these…. You know when it comes to travel, I forget everything else…. I travel for the sake of traveling. I got my tickets online, but when I was trying to get a ticket back home, IRCTC website gave me a BULB (it usually happens). So I had to resort back to booking tickets in KSRTC. So this time I was sure that I will at least have a hassle free travel back home….. don’t be over excited, read on you will get to know the truth.

It was some lone Friday night (9th Feb), my train ticket was reserved for night 11:30 train starting from Chennai, which will drop me off in bangalore next day morning. I started outta office at some 10:30 with this guy called Davis (* a very good friend of mine at syanp, he is so good that he almost convinced me to cancel this trip) WE started off in his bike from office, on the way he started giving me all sorts of advices and nightmares of the situation of tamilians is in bangalore now… I was like saying this to myself “did I make a wrong choice???” … We landed at the station some 30 mins ahead of time …. Stupid thing again the ATM doesn’t work …. He started giving me weird advices that I never heard of before… He was saying words like…. “You are a great warrior Krishna … I have never seen sucha brave person like you !” ….. and I was like …”What? @#@#$” It was 11:29 at night and I was thinking… “Shall I cancel my trip now…. ?”Atleast I made up my mind Let whatever happen, I won’t give up…. And I BRAVELY said good bye to Davis….. I was feeling like a Boarding a Train to Islamabad during Kargil War …. :-)

I stepped into the train, took my berth, did speak a word with anyone, switched on my XpressMusic Player and slept, this guys reaches office and calls me up at 1 am asking “How come you are still alive….? I thought they would have bombed your train by now….?” …. I was saying... “Dai please da… don’t do this to me..“

Amidst all nightmares I managed to wake up alive in Bangalore station, Now I m all set to forget one language from my résumé…. Called up Deepak, spoke in hindi + english in a very low voice, hung up , just to notice that the guy sitting next to me was shouting at his son “Eadatha vittu navundhaey , konnu ea pottuduvaen” (I will kill you if you move)…. I felt like I did the dumbest thing on earth…. Ah I found this guy… Deepak traveled all the way from mangalore , he knows bangalore very well so he comfortable with the local transportation… I step out of the railway station and we head towards the tea-stall. All our communications are either in the dumbest version of hindi or fairly reasonable English. No tamil …. I felt like I landed in islamabad with some traditional Indian wear….

Now we headed to the rooms, the place was near somewhere…. I don’t know much about there… so leave it now… we managed to reach the hotel…. And atlast we found the place.. kannan anna was waiting for us. Rest, bath and sleep, food, coffee…

Were were all set to visit Infosys Bangalore., considered to be one of the world’s largest software campuses, Infy Bangalore is truly an exciting place. It was clicking all the way with our multi mega pixel mobile cameras… We did some shopping for eatables and were back on room. While coming back we took an auto, and I spoke with that auto guy in telugu…. That was really funny. Telegu is obviously my mother tongue, but you know first time in my life, I was like speaking my mother tongue for survival J. Next day we were at Indoor stadium for some event.

This is Sunday(11th Feb) night , I had my ticket booked for this night 11:20 Volvo bus from KSTRC, I was waiting till 10:40 ,, busses for 11:22, 11:30 etc have arrived but not mine… I was little worried, bcoz there was a local bandh here the next day for cauvery issue. Atlast the bus came… I boarded the bus.. and slept…

After a while…I hear some one shouting Koyembedu… I open my eyes…Its 5:20 AM My left leg is aching ,, probably I slept in some wrong posture…. I manage to snatch my bag and get down, I landed safe and fine in chennai…. I was so happy when I stepped down, I felt like I won a war against them…

The ground reality is that situation is not really that bad out there... But you need to be cautious at times. Jus keeping yourself updated of what’s going on will be enough. And regarding Tamil there are 100’s and 1000’s of them speaking Tamil with freedom out there… so don’t really need to panic …. But again be careful, speaking Tamil might end you up getting pissed off somewhere... But there is nt much to worry about… there aren’t much terrorists around.