A return thru the unforgettable train journeys... |
|
|
|
Posted on 6/18/2012 |
|
|
‘A return thru the unforgettable train journeys’ is my attempt to recollect all those nice memories connected with my college days in Tamil Nadu. I had been the part of Tamil Nadu when I was the student of MBA Dept. at Adhiyamaan Engineering College, Hosur, during 2003-2005. Now I am thinking of sharing those moments with others with no other intention than to regain those pictures from my memory. My journey to Hosur, the border area to Bangalore, starts from Pattambi, the area where my house is located. As a Post Graduate student at that time, travelling was not that much monotonous as of today and to kill the time, we used to have some entertainments like singing songs, joking with fellow travelers, playing games and reading books. Travelling in the third class compartment of fast passenger train is not that much easy compared to travelling in any other mode of transport. Fortunately, all Indians have got practice on this adventurous travel by birth. To be frank, I was not that much systematic at that time to reserve a ticket and travel in sleeper class.
After getting in to the train, the next step is to fight for the seat if it is rush hour. Many passengers reserve their seats through the windows of compartments by keeping their belongings on the seats (an ancient and popular method of reservation still existing in India-no idea who the father of this method is). If there is no rush, we used to sleep on the seats as not to disturb anyone nearby. In a train journey, the common fact is that the fellow traveler used to become our friend. Throughout the journey, we keep our mouth busy with snacks, biscuits, pop corns, masala dosai and vadai which are plentiful in all the stations wherever the train has a stop. As we would be reaching Coimbatore by noon, we prefer to take lunch from Coimbatore.
Pattambi is a commercial Town in Palakkad District of the state of Kerala. The train is going between Bharathppuzha River (Nila River) on right side and paddy fields on the left side. The railway track parallel to the river ends after Ottappalam, the nearest railway station to Palakkad. Palakkad forest lasts for a few minutes of the way train goes. Palakkad onwards, we stand on the door step to watch the blue colored mountains which are partially covered by dark clouds. The mind-blowing scene is the flow of clouds through the valleys and over the top of these mountains. The scenery over there is very attractive and I think that might have made our journey non-monotonous. Somewhere we can see monkeys jumping from trees to trees and hanging over the branches of trees. In this route, we can’t see some nice locations like Malampuzha Dam and Tipu Sultan Fort which are the main tourist spots in Palakkad.
By noon, train reaches Coimbatore and returns back to Mangalore where it started from. We all get out there to get into another train which is supposed to come from Chennai to go to Bangalore. It’s called Chennai - Coimbatore - Bangalore intercity Express. Intercity express is always over loaded as it is once in a day at 2.30 pm. So, everyone will be careful to avoid missing the train which is the fastest train as far as a common man is concerned. Tirupur, Erode, Salem, Dharmapuri and Hosur are the major stations in this route. Coimbatore is called Manchester of South India and almost all the transport vehicles, shops and gardens connect their names and captions with this characteristic.
After each and every city, the train enters remote villages where we can see old villagers looking like the people of centuries ago. From their appearance, we may guess that they are not interested in taking bath everyday because as they don’t have sufficient water. Here it rains very rarely. Most of the houses are of two or three small rooms and a hall with a kitchen outside. Front side of houses seemed to be covered with large monuments of Asuras and Devas in different postures. Very curious scenes in these villages are the small hills and the upward steps ending to any temple on the top of the hills. Small streams flowing thru the gaps of largest mountains provide them water for their day to day use. Wheat, rice, corn and sunflower are the major crops visible thru the window of our compartment. Whenever the train goes through the bridges connecting two mountains, our heart beat will be high like anything.
The roads in the villages are very small like the footpaths in the cities and the main vehicles on the roads are Cycle, scooter, donkeys, carts and the great TVS. We would be exclaimed to see the small dams for small lakes which neither flow nor carry enough water. I guessed that they had built all those in the olden days when they were in abundance. These people used to conduct donkey marriages for availing rain. Our professor Sri Dhanaraj used to sarcastically explain this in the class room (Yes, it was our destiny to listen the same story many times). In his words, those people think that when donkeys get married, the clouds will become very happy and it will rain. He used to conclude by saying that those people were not having common sense and doing all these nonsense.
The train would have reached Dharmapuri when the sun is about to set in the western horizon. Another three hour non-stop journey will end at Hosur at 9.00 PM. We return to our seats from the doorstep while outside views disappear in the darkness of the night. A view of n number of lights from the houses outside was reminding us the rainy nights in Kerala. My land mark to get down at Hosur is the light from the top of the well known hill of Hosur. Hosur is called Little England because of the cold at all times regardless of season. Always my train journey in this route ends at Hosur which is my second home since the time of my grandfather. It was at the end of one of my regular journeys from one corner to another corner of Tamil Nadu, my roommate came across to me when I reached my room at Hosur, with the shocking news that Tsunami, the giant waves, had hit Tamil Nadu as well as the various parts of the world. |
|
|
Report: Nazar Thekkath
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are strictly personal and IndiansinKuwait.com does not hold any responsibility on them. We shall endeavour to upload/publish as many of the comments that are submitted as possible within a reasonable span of time, but we do not guarantee that all comments that are submitted will be uploaded/published. Messages that harass, abuse or threaten other members; have obscene, unlawful, defamatory, libellous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content; or have spam, commercial or advertising content or links are liable to be removed by the editors. We also reserve the right to edit the comments that do get published. Please do not post any private information unless you want it to be available publicly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Its your portal, its your platform, so get involved.
|
|
|
|