This is my first blog I've ever written in my life an was quite surprised to see that my favourite font type - MS Comic Sans was missing. Everything need not go as planned as life is full of surprises and at the very age of 21 i have learnt one thing ,"Nothing happens as expected in our life", well that is the very definition of life.
So was our journey to Chennai. We a team of six from Infosys took a very adventurous trip to Chennai.
Before I continue with this let me give a brief introduction - trust me a very brief intro of the adventurous six . The first in my list is Dhavan Kumar Singh alias Ram Bhaiya, the eldest in the group and Sri Ram in his attitudes(Note: This guy has had twelve girlfriends in the past 5 years), so please do not get carried away by the name Ram Bhaiya:). But trust me a very good person indeed he is there always to take care of things and to add an MBA in HR.A perfect Allahabadian!!
Next in my list is JitendraKumar Yadav, as the name suggests a perfect Yadav. Loves to sing (he is a very good singer) and a dancer(but not as good as me ;) ) and does very good mimickry of nearly all actors and singers. He is an out in out fun frolic person, loves his friends and his most amusing hobby is sight-seeing, well implicitly 'GIRLS'. These days he is out to learn Bengali...you must have guessed by now why?? Good my blogreaders are!!!Oh i forgot to mention, he is from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.
Then comes Ritesh the great, a complete intellect with child-like attitudes . The information that this guy's brain can hold is massive and is very good at C-Programming, has helped me a lot, who did not know the basics of the same. He is very much recent to our group and is from Delhi. Desperately in need of a girlfriend.
Then comes our sweet Veenu Sharma, what should i say about this pretty girl? She is very caring ,loving and we tease her by saying that she should get back to her hometown Yamuna Nagar(Ambala, Haryana) and get married as she can become a very good housewife.(She gets irritated when we say this). She is so very attached to her friends that if anything goes wrong in the gang she sits and cries- so a very sensitive and emotional ,tender human being.
Now comes the turn of the LADY DON: Vidhya Dakshinamurthy, she is the cutest and the kindest person I have ever met. She is the core anchor of the whole trip and she is from Chennai, so we were to stay at her place. To add to this, whom we should never ever forget is her 'Appa'(Appa is the way people address their father in Tamil). He is such a lovely and fun-loving person himself that within a span of 2-3 months of our training in Infosys, we got really close to him. So he actually put this master plan of we people hitting the roads of Chennai.
Last but not the least me. :) I will love to say much about me in the next blog , and so we are entering the adventure world not the Lewis Caroll one, but the Enid Blyton way.
So everything was planned well, Vidhya's 'Appa' had already sent us the train tickets . What we had to do is just catch the 5:30 pm train from the Secunderabad station on the 13th of July a Friday. It is around 12-13 hrs journey from Secunderabad to Chennai by train. Even we had thought of not sleeping during the journey and make a hell lot of noise in the train.
I know and we do understand that we are now Software professionals and had to follow the corporate etiquettes, but the stage was all set for a memorable trip and we preferred to wear our college shoes.
The very old belief that the number '13' is very unlucky(All my ancestors(Hey not the mummy ancestors :) ! I meant to say my grand dad and dad do believe) had cast its spell, our batch owner Mr. Nuthan Naidu, the so called villain ,delayed his entry to the class and he was well aware of the trip to Chennai. But then he left us by 3:30 pm. We got back to our hostel rooms . packed and got ready.
So we left the Infosys. Hyderabad Campus at around 4 pm, we took two autos and off we were to the Secunderabad station. The spite had started , on the way we saw an accident case, and the person was lying dead on the road, so quite obvious a hell lot of traffic and as the timing was such it was the evening wee hours, everybody returning back from offices and schools and the narrow roads of Hyderabad could not support this traffic. And to add to this it started raining heavily.(Oh i missed onething, our auto tyre got punctured too in between all these and we had to switch to another one!!! Fate you see.).
After all these obstacles finally we reached the railway station and we rushed inside, just to see that we had missed our train. Everyone looked into their watches and mobiles and found the time to be Quarter to six.
Vidhya got really upset and there were tears in her eyes, none of us could bear that. Uncle had called and she refused to talk, then I had to speak.He asked us to get back to the campus but Jeet (JitendraKumar Yadav) took the responsibility of getting to Chennai in someway or the other and uncle was quite convinced that we would make it.
We enquired about the next train, but there were no reservations and we were not in a position to get into the general compartment and I was the first one to refuse because I had a prior bad experience . So we went to Paradise Circle ,Secunderabad to take bus tickets to Chennai. Uncle was continuously asking about booking the airline tickets for us, but we kept on refusing and we booked the bus tickets to Chennai. This was around 7:30 in the evening. The bus would leave Secunderabad at 9, and it was again a 12-hour journey, this was what the guys told us. So we went into a restaurant to have food, and as we kept on talking , Ritesh with a filled stomach spilled the beans, the bus was to leave at 10:30pm. On hearing this we girls, especially Vidhya became restless. She realized that we would reach Chennai only by noon the next day and all the plans that she had in store for us will go in vain.
Now it was the turn of the Lady Don in action. The news reached her Appa in a span of five minutes and uncle called us told to cancel the bus tickets and he booked the airline tickets for us.
We were like , why on earth is this person taking so much efforts to bring us to Chennai? But later we realized there are good human beings on earth and he was one of them, he was like a demigod now. And the tickets were for 'Kingfisher Airlines', Dhavan our Ram Bhaiya was on his toes. He loved travelling with Kingfisher and I don't think any straight guy(no offence) would ever say no to this, they have the world's best Flight Stewardess' :) .
The flight was at 6 am ,the next morning, and now the plight was like how are we to spend the whole night??After our dinner we decided to watch a movie, so we took an auto left for Prasad's IMax theatre , we actually planned for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but the tickets were sold out a long time back. So we were left with only one option-"Apne", the movie of the Deols. Oh how I hate them, I have never watched any Deol movie completely, but I had to this time. Moreover we were in the midst of an adventure and nothing actually mattered.
The movie had nothing but the Deols showing off their muscles and delivering some dialogues in Punjabi(which is always their default language), and finally this trauma(atleast for me, though Veenu enjoyed, she is a true Punjaban) ended around 1:15 am, early in the morning and then we again took an auto (Thanks to those who made this mode of transport, these are life-savers at times!). When we reached the airport we realized that we did not have the tickets yet so we cannot go inside it and to add to our luck the counter for collecting the tickets was closed , so first we moved around the airport, then took the footpath there and slept on trolleys(the luggage carrier). :) trust me this was the best part, after a nap we got up and were really tired and hungry. We bought tea and Upma(Sooji ka) again sat on the platform to eat. Though I am coming to end of this adventure, there were many things that set stage for all these that I will not like to share, because that are quite disturbing.
Finally at around 4:30 am the counter opened , we collected our tickets and went inside the airport, went through the security checking and at last left Hyderabad at 6:30am and reached Chennai airport. As expected both Vidhya's Appa and her very cool Bro were standing to receive us and her bro was holding a placard saying 'Welcome Vidhya and Friends' and there is where we found solace.
