From a Moving Train

In my home back in Kolkata, we used to have 9 coconut trees. There are many a time when I boasted in front of my friends about having so many coconut trees together. But for last couple of hours I am passing through one coconut jungle after another. And if you wonder what I mean by coconut jungle, it is a continuous stretch of coconut trees with total number of trees in the region of few thousands!!

Well I am writing this blog on a moving train (one of my long time wish to write real time blog during a journey, so tick!) from Bangalore to Chennai and trust me I do not have much idea about the route. My cell phone service provider did inform me that the train entered Andhra Pradesh before entering Tamil Nadu. The journey is smooth in AC chair car and the view from the window is mostly green with coconut trees (a lot!!) and hills in the far distance. I wonder whether those are Eastern Ghats and will check in google once I get my internet working. (update: Kind of confirmed it’s a part of Eastern Ghat only)

Train journeys are always fascinating, for example now I am in Katpadi Junction, never heard of it and don’t think will ever come here but this train took me here and will pass through it. These near empty railway stations, the chayewallas with their South Indian accented shouts and the non-stop talking kid in the next row add to the charm of an Indian rail journey.

It is 49 days since I reached Bangalore. A new city, a new office, a new place to stay, new furniture to buy, it was a hectic 7 weeks. Still me and a group of my friends found time to visit Pondicherry for a weekend trip. Improvement in my cooking skills and FIFA12 PS3 skills along with that trip are the highlights till now. (I am in Mukundarayapuram by the way)

I like cooking. And I am pretty serious about it, at least till now. I got an induction cooker and my biggest concern every day is not to have too long power cut to hamper my cooking. Power cuts are very regular in Bangalore and once I moved my new place on 13^th May, there is no single day without power cuts. And there are days with 3-4 power cuts.

So, most of the days, cooking is the first thing I do after waking up and even before having breakfast. I started with burning my first day’s rice, trying to cook it in 2000 watts, the max power. Now I know 800 watts is enough and I cook my rice every day in less than 10 minutes. I have also cooked Daal and Cauliflower with a few failed attempts, especially because in Bangalore, things take more time to get boiled. So, either you cook with the water you are buying to drink, or use tap water and ready to spend more time trying to boil your daal and vegetables. And obviously I cooked my favourite Egg Curry or ‘Dimer Dalna’ with near perfection from the first day. That’s my staple diet and I had to learn it as soon as possible. My mother came up with a pretty good line regarding my love towards egg when she told my girlfriend, “He will eat only two types of food, Dimer Dalna in the day and egg curry in the night!!” I also tried making Tomato chatni with my first attempt resulting in a salty chatni (It supposed to be sweet!) but added more sugar to it next day to make it taste really nice and chatni-like!

It’s close to 12.30 and some of my co-passengers are having card-rice (I am getting the smell), also quite a few vendors are selling the railway food, so let me take bite of the cake and fruits I have before finishing this part. Expected time to reach Chennai is 3 o’clock.

Done with my lunch and let me resume writing in Arakkonam station. The new office is a cool place and with an existing group of friends it’s fun to be in office. And also, due to some strategic change I am not much occupied now days and utilizing my time by playing a lot of FIFA12 in the office PS3. I started playing FIFA in 2006, I was in IITK, and I will be ever grateful to Suddha Prasad Bagchi to teach me how to play FIFA and telling me about the wonderful thing called ‘career mode’ in FIFA. Since then, I kept playing its different versions in my home computer but playing in PS3 is much more different than playing in computer and playing against other players and also play with 2/3 members in same team is a completely different ball game than playing alone against the computer. It’s much more fun playing in PS3 with lot more real like moves and tricks. Still need to improve a lot. Need to learn how to head properly, how to take penalties and free kicks and how to use some of the tricks to baffle the opponents like Budha, Ashwini and Sayantan. Already contemplating buying a PS3 in home but with its price tag of around 15k to 19k it’s not an easy decision to make.

Having the usual sweet and sour romance with Shreya with calls, sms , Facebook chats and YM chats. It’s always fun to be around her and although I miss those evenings in Karunamayee and City Center and Princep Ghat we try to be in touch as much as possible by sharing everything, can’t wait to meet her again in August.

The Pondicherry trip was nice. It was hot and humid and also I particularly did not like the meal in Aurobindo Ashram but it was an experience and there are plenty of options for food of my taste. We had octopus in one of our meals and prawns aplenty. I absolutely loved the French style structures of buildings and the beautiful churches they have, the road in front of the beach is also wonderful. The plan of cycle ride through a whole city was an awesome idea which four of us (Sayantan, Soumyabrata, Tushar and me) did.

The only flaw in our Pondicherry plan was that we did not consider the possibility that KKR could reach the final of IPL and when they did we realized that we will miss the final as we will be in Pondicherry and will be traveling in a bus from 10.30 PM. Missed the match, but following the score in the cell phone when KKR won and then celebrating the whole night in Facebook and being in a call with Shreya is an experience I will remember forever.

This pretty much sums up my first 49 days in Bangalore, have not travelled much inside the city although went to MG Road couple of times but it’s not enough to know everything about the city. I have planned to go out for a full day city tour in one of these weekends. Also, I won a quiz competition in the office, it was good one and liked the experience, the questions were intelligent and learnt quite a few things along with answering some of them.

I just passed Tiruvalla, It’s 1.30. I don’t think I have anything much to write so let me stop here and get back to the ‘Ghanada Samagra Part 2’. Ghanada stories are wonderful and I would love to write a blog about the great man someday.