Livin La Vida Goa-Part-1

10-30 am 27th December- I get a call from my friend Anand, who's waiting at the central station, Chennai for 1 member of the gang to arrive, yes thats me..andI had to cut his call, as I was in a meeting, fully aware of the fact that, three kilometres from the place I work, a certain Mangalore West Coast express was all set to leave in 45 minutes. I quickly finished the meeting I was engrossed in at work, and sped to the station a good 25 minutes ahead of time, only to hear that the train was to leave half an hour later than scheduled.The surplus time was spent gazing the various platforms of Chennai Central and hogging in Saravana Bhavan.

Once the train started, we discovered that the 6 of us had been booked in two different sets of seats,3 in each set, though within the same coach.Unfortunately I had no glamorous woman between 18 and 25 in my coach, and I resigned to my fate of having to send the journey with 3 cronies and 2 potential terrorists. Out of these 5 people 1 was a 70 year old self proclaimed god fearing man, while his adjacent seat had a man wearing a white and white shirt and Lungi.He turned out to be a politician, a councilor of the Red hills area in Chennai.The other 3 people were his chamchas. A few minutes into the journey the 2 "potential terrorists" who did not posses a ticket, drove away the original inhabitants of the seats away with force,which was mutely watched by all passengers.Though I did raise my voice in support of the victims, the rowdie's voice seemed to overpower mine and mine was lost in the din of the noise between the harangued passengers, the hooligans and a shamed TTE.

If that was not enough the Councilor opened his suitcase and amidst a smelly set of clothes were a few bottles of liquor and heavily greased oil packets having chicken biriyani.These savage men went about openly having liquor as soon as the TTE passed and I had to bear the dirty smell, for well over an hour before the drunken stupor struck them and they fell asleep.

In their drunken state, before they lost consciousness, a eunuch entered our compartment and these 5 men, including the lecherous old man(the self proclaimed god fearing 70 year old), decided to extract his share of fun, for the tenner, he personally entered into the eunuch's blouse.He went about fondling various sensitive organs of the eunuch and the rest of the men also seemed to lay their hands on whatever they felt would titillate them. It was a like a porn movie with their clothes on.The eunuch went about teasing and entertaining her patriots before she decided that these 50 plus men, were not man enough. Our tour had an eventful start and left us shocked at the audacity of the politician and the old man.

From the Right-Clockwise - Thats the letch, Vinu Anand and arvind, sitting in rapt attention of what their future looks like

Before the old man, succumbed to the liquor, he also entertained us on the pretext of checking our palm and giving us pointers on astrology. He cracked some lewd jokes, that never looked befitting the image he had give us earlier, and the guys patiently listened as we had no one else in the compartment to speak to :-).

The 6 of us regrouped and started making fun of each other, especially the funniest college antics each of us did and topping the list was a discussion on one of our fellow companion, Sabarinath, who changed his name to Shabreee after spending an afternoon in London.Thankfully decent couple boarded the station at Vellore and they gave us company tell Palakkad, and we didnt have any more dirty episodes, barring a few minutes when the politician tried making a pass at the couple(the lady, more so ), in his last stages of drunken stupor.

The period from 6pm to 9 pm was the most enjoyable with the fresh evening breeze, cooling the warmth on a hot Chennai afternoon. This period was spent taking potshots at each others inane comedies while in College,after all it was supposed to be a small re union amidst friends.

December 27th seemed to be over in a flash, and as soon as we entered Kerala, I helped myself to a few banana snacks including chips and some local delicasies that is available at the wayside stations.

Sabari and I at Palakkad station.

The later part of the night was spent listening to music, and this particular song "Green -Day Bouleward of Broken Dreams" as I sat near the isolated window near the door, to reflect on what I wanted from this 6 day break from the normal routine.Though it was chill, I enjoyed opening the door of the compartment at night and feeling the chill gush of wind, even as I could see the train snaking along the bends and the curves under the moonlight, with my walkman providing the right musical ambience.

Thats me at the window

Expect more in Part-2 ( On day 2 the 28th of December-2006).