“11,June,2012?????” I exclaimed on seeing the date of my last writing here as I opened my gmail blogger page after long.
“So what was I doing all these days?”
HIBERNATING???”.
“See; that is too long a period to remain inactive.”
But then again; was I being ‘inactive’? The better word would be “engaged”. Here, I should mention without fail that english language has a unique ability to produce words that actually helps you ‘play safe’; as they say. If I were to mention that I was ‘busy’ these days, my dear mom would be asking me “Oh, so what kept you busy? sleeping???”. But since I have used ‘engaged’ instead, I can promptly reply that I have been ‘enagaged’ in sleeping (not that I was actually sleeping all through. Many things happened during this gap.The most important of which was my final year tour. My college friends and me went on a seven day tour ………shhhhhhhhhhhhh….sorry…our dear HOD has told us never to call it a tour but to call it an INDUSTRIAL VISIT (thought the closest reference, if any, of visiting an industry was our visit to HMT; which is of course, no place for an electronics and communication student; on the last day’s later half). So this INDUSTRIAL VISIT, as we are forced to call it, was in fact GREAT, as is always the case when you are on a trip with your college friends. Though we visited a range of places of varying geography, the most memorable of them all was our time in Hyderabad. To be more clear, the so called ‘memorabiLITY’ is the direct result of a daring attempt. Me and five of my friends went for a stroll to EXPLORE THE BEAUTY OF THE CITY’, as we called it. Of the six, the only person who had even a slight knowledge of hindi was the proud me. With that courage, we walked on, found or destination which was the Big Bazar there. We did some minor shopping, had some light refreshments, and started walking back and NOW COMES THE STORY…
After covering the familiar bus stop near the Big Bazar, and the turning into the dark lane which my dear friends had duly noted, we were walking merrily talking things since there was nothing like what we expected to see. All around, there were puddles of water which were the fresh remnants from the evening’s rain. To add to this, the drains were leaking in many places…speaking of which, one thing i noticed was (and for your infomation, I notice many such wonderful things), the dirt and drainage have the same smell everywhere. Be it Kerala, the God’s own country or Hyderabad, the city of pearls; the stink was the same. In fact, I could say that Kerala is cleaner. I even took time….sorry…that was not our topic. The thing is that, in the middle of the walk and talk session, we lost our way. In fact, if one of us, (and I don’t remember which ONE), had not loudly exclaimed and to quote him “aliya, vazhi thettiyoooonnoru samshayam”, we would have walked on to the next STATE. Now was the time to panic of couse, our worry was not that we had lost our way in a totally strange place, but that the buffet in the hotel we stayed was to end in half an hour. Losing way was OK, but losing dinner was unacceptable. ‘BOYS’!!!, right???
After a half an hour of walking around, and asking a large variety of people whether they knew the hotel we stayed in, we saw a police jeep. Now that was a relief. I went on and started in hindi, “uncle, ye hotel Sandarshini kahan he?”…Suddenly I remembered the time when I called a policeman ‘uncle’ right after I was caught for riding triples. The memory made me correct myself, “SIR, ye hotel Sandarshini kahan he?” to which he promptly gave me the reply and VOILA, we had the way. Actually, we were walking around it throughout the time and didn’t know it.
After a few turns and stairs, and a warm bath, we were in our beds, warm and cozy with a memory that would last long.
epilogue:
Even when we reached the hotel, the buffet was not over, which was a greater relief than finding our way back…