kartik kannan's space on the web

Ernakulam Trip-Diary – Part 1

Egmore

7: 30 Pm March 10th

I finally manage to do the three finger job (CTRL-ALT-DEL) to my PC and gave myself to the count of 10 to dart across to the lift and blaze across the Egmore railway station to catch the bus to Central Station,as I had a train to catch at 8 pm. My focus of reaching egmore station by 7 35 met an untimely accident when my olfactory modalities detected the smell of masala groundnuts that were being sold. This distraction and transaction burnt a hole of 5 rs in my pocket and 5 minutes of my time.

Now the time was 7: 41 and by no means could I walk it, I was no “4 minute mile” Roger Bannister ..so I decided to do the unthinkable, that any sane Chennai’te would think twice before entering. Yes I decided to take the services of the rather notorious Chennai Auto.

The Chennai auto drivers, if they had the luxury of being born during the Industrial revolution,would have certainly drawn flak from the “ Burgeiose “ class for over exploitation of travelers and would also bag the award for the “emerging entrepreneurs” of the year who charge an autofare of 500% more than the normal prevailing fare in other parts of the country.

The auto drivers in Chennai are a talkative lot,giving you loads of gnyaan and opinion and bymistake also include that in thebilling apart from the rather trite joke that the auto fare meter is indirectly linked to the speedometer. Anyways let’s leave the economics of the autofare pricing to the B school grads who may find this topic, an interesting case-study.

After the autoride, I entered platform 5 …and walked over to my coach AS 3 and glanced to have a look at the “status”. Status from my college days in our lingo was means exactly this SQL Query executed on the reservation list.

Select GIRLS From RESRVATION LIST in COACH where SEX =’F’ and age >18 and age<25.

And this query returned me this.Here’s a snapshot of how it looked like.

61 Bobby Jose F 19
62 Kartik Kannan M 23
63 Baby Jose F 21
64 RosaKutty Jose F 23
65 Mr. Jose M 54

I did a quick glance from 61 to 64 and the selective amnesia that I have totally missed out 65.Did expectations soar ? I strode like Julius Ceaser victoriously inside the coach and just stayed there for a few seconds mentally forming a picture what the booty was to look like inside. This was with 30 seconds to go for the train. All of a sudden, a man rushed from the nearby snack shop, disturbing my thoughts and murmured something in Malayalam, which I could not figure out…but I could briefly assume that his stare said the following “What the heck were you blocking the way for, were you assuming tat your kind help would be solicited by a girl in a hurry to board the train in true DDLJ style(Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge).

As said before , I had noticed a number 65…and little did I realize that this was going to cost me my peace for the rest of the journey. As soon as I neared my seat, I saw a bearish creature giving robotic instructions to his daughters. Yup the dad of the three girls was with them and all my grandiose plans of eye exercise had just been quashed like a lemon when a vehicle goes over it. My adam’s apple moved a notch lower and kept vacillating up and down.Rubbing further salt into the injury was the fact that the girls who I had imagined to be Aishwarya Rai, Dia Mirza and Mallika Sherawat (in no particular order) turned out quite on the contrary.

I felt like a hot air balloon brought to the ground and swore never to look again in that direction. I took up a novel and pretended I was engrossed in it, while my mind was heavily reflecting on this bad stroke of luck. All of a sudden I heard giggles and from what the corner of my eye told me, they were looking at me and giggling. I consoled myself saying “all girls giggle for some strange reason and such events should not be entertained by any thoughts of the attraction quotient, unless and until the girl’s eyes are powerful enough to attract me, than a magnet would do to iron filings.

5 minutes into the journey, the girl was still giggling and staring at me. I just wanted to take a peek at the girl, more so my conscience assuring me that the nubile 23 year old was not all that ugly as my Cornea had perceived her to be. It was more out of the fear of her bearish, boorish dad that my eyes were thinking twice to change the angle of inclination from the book to the girl. But Alas nor would chemistry work neither would trigonometry work…as the angle of depression stayed with gazing lifelessly at the book, while the mind was harboring a 100 hopeless thoughts.

It’s in such a situation when a girl is with her father that you realize that a girl can actually stare at you endlessly, but when a guy wants to return the compliments, he expects the line of sight to be a highway where only colors red and pink exist. The serene peace of the highway vision is all of a sudden eroded by a much stronger deadly vision from the father…who seems to honk loudly …reminding the boy that this highway is not so nice after all... and the guy in such situations practices the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi by practicing non violence in the most peaceful way by pretending he is sleeping to avoid any more battles of eye contact.

But none of the above happened, as I was just imagining all that.. and when the TTR came to check my tickets, I furtively glanced at the small family and much to my consternation, these girls were still laughing with her dad often giving me looks of derision.
I also figured out that these girls were looking at the region between my stomach and thighs… GOD !!! Have girls become so open in their behavior and so vulgar that they do this openly with their dad …seeming to support them in this lascivious adventure. Well, I just wondered did the girls take the human rights/Liberation/equality topics a little too seriously..Wanting to match guys eye to eye for all the staring at body parts that we pruriently pass of as “ F U N “ …. So was I being Adam Teased????

Since I have this recently acquire habit of seeing things in a positive sense, I started to look at this as a situation which could make me famous. If Elton John had the first gay marriage …then perhaps I could make history.. by being the first guy to be Adam Teased.

Shhhhhhhhhh…… was what I said to myself …as I decided to focus some attention back on the book that still was crying for my attention..even as I was diverted by some low percentage thoughts. I open and my book look for a line to start and all of a sudden this..script seems different to read…and slowly my brains gain traction and I realize that ALL THIS WHILE I HAD THE BOOK UPSIDE DOWN…and while I sheepishly turned the book to its rightful position…the silence was broken by another group giggling session.

That was it … if ever embarrassment had an Everest.. I was proudly standing atop that …and wanting to put an immediate end to my misery, I climb to the upper berth and lay myself flat and switch on the earphones….only to enter another dream world where actually Dia Mirza,Ash and Mallika are all in the train. Now to narrate that , I would have to make a movie of the 12B types and note bore you further.

So here ends day 1 of the trip. Will post day 2 shots sometime tomorrow which would not have so much happening as as I was quite occupied shooting pictures.