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1200 Hours- Just off Mangalore, from the Mangalore – Mumbai Matsyaganda Express, Konkan Route

It was 7 in the morning when I reached Mangalore. The dawn reminded me, much to my disappointment, of Bangalore, the city I had boarded the bus from. The same grey sky, some drizzle and mist in the air. The plan had been to spend the day at Mangalore before going to Udupi by late evening and catching the train to Goa, my home, the following morning. But a first look at the sky and immediately I knew — my plan had backfired. What I hoped to leave behind, I had not. Gloomy morning was very uninviting and the sea, it was far away.

But hope remained. Something in me wanted to stay as per the original plan. And why not, I had waited for this trip quite a long time and had been looking forward to it. I managed to reach the nearest bus stop and asked for the bus to Ullal beach. Number 44, they said. I waited. Bus 43 came and Bus 45 went by. No luck. By that time the drizzle had transformed itself into pouring rain. Ah, I saw Bus 44 coming. It zoomed by me even though I had gestured for the driver to stop it. He gestured me to go away. Just go away. I think he even said that in Kannada.

The rain did not stop. I went back to the railway station, my base camp. Got myself a platform ticket. I prefer to eat at the railway canteen when I am alone in unknown cities. First, I can eat lavishly without thinking too much about the pocket. The food is never bad. Secondly and more importantly, I make it a point to strike up a conversation with someone from the canteen staff. They are the best people who can tell you about the city and since they talk to all kind of travellers, language is never a problem. As I ordered my tea and bread omelette, the canteen manager gave me, as I realised later, the most important piece of advice at that time– Take the first train from Mangalore to Goa, Matsyaganda Express at 11AM and GO HOME.

Cancelled my ticket from Udupi to Goa and decided to board the Matsyaganda express that was to start at 1100 Hrs and should take me home to Goa by late evening. And here I am, writing this on the train, leaving the edge of Malabar on to a journey to the Konkan Route, a known terrain to me.

1645 Hours — Just off Karwar, the last Karnataka station before the train touches Goa

A little after Udupi, sunshine welcomed me. Rather, I should say, I welcomed the sunshine. It was as if, the bus driver of route 45, the canteen manager and the rain gods conspired against me and made me come here. After being deprieved of sunshine for almost 3 weeks in Bangalore, it was a relief to see the Golden Globe. Droplets of sweat appeared on my forehead and I did not mind it at all.

Now, as the train goes through Konkan, the coconut tree count tends to increase, the tunnels, some as long as 3 Kms, come and go. My age old custom of switching on the lights of the compartment in the daytime, has been invoked.

The rivers are full of water. Greenery is in abundance. The Sun sprays it’s rays and the dust appears almost Golden. The train enters countless and seemingly endless tunnels and when that happens, the smell of dampness overwhelms me, and my new found friend, the future hotel manager who comes from Bengal. We continue to talk about topics ranging from Fish names to Ganguly’s woes.





Goa is an hour away. Coming to Mangalore and bringing along the rain with me was certainly a bad idea or not, I do not know. In fact, who cares, now I do not want to know.

I arrived here in the evening on a train that runs on meter gauge track. It takes almost 8 hours from Indore to reach here. The official time table indicates a little more than 6 hours, but I do not care since my train to Goa arrives past midnight. Whether this train pulls in at 5 PM or at 6:30 PM, I am hardly bothered since I have a lot of time to kill anyway.

I have travelled enough in this long, wide country to conclude that travelling by train in India is an important part of your syllabus if you think of India as a “full term course”. All the theory learned like “The diversity of the land”, “the different dialects in the speech” come to life when you travel in the train, second class. But meter gauge track is different. It’s like specialising in “small town India” and the villages. The usual trains pass by them with speeds of 110 km per hour as if flipping pages of the book and skipping small, not so important chapters. At the small railway platforms of these very same villages, the meter gauge track trains spend hours.

So we start our journey from Indore and pass on, the two of us, my friend $D and me, passing by stations like Mhow, where we have a stop of 45 minutes. A man sells Kachoris in a cardboard box. It is a long journey and food could be a problem so we eat what we get. By early afternoon we reach Kalakand. Everytime that I have passed through this station, I am reminded of the sweet. I am told the village name is Kalakand because it is famous for the sweet with the same name.

Lucky Ali sings “kitni haseen zindagi” in my ears.

The train stops at the slightest excuse it finds. We do not get annoyed, all this was expected. But we observe. We see villagers carrying huge loads of vegetables in the train. One corner of the coach smells of coriander. On the outside of the windows, hooks are attached, one by one. Some of these hooks carry small logs of wood while the rest carry big cans of milk.

We reach Khandwa at 6:15 PM. According to the timetable we should have been here an hour back.

$D’s train is a good 3 hours late so I have company before I catch the train that will take me to Goa at midnight. Our first stop is the railway canteen run by a bespectacled man who seems well educated and a nice person. Dressed in a simple, clean full sleeve shirt and a little stocky. We order tea and in addition, I order bread and omelette. After a journey like this, where there are no big stations and no food stalls, this is a treat. The man behind the counter continues to read his newspaper while his son, probably 10 years old, tries to engage him in conversations. His trials go in vain.

$D is bored. Unlike me, he does not carry a Walkman. Amidst of all the trains that come and go in front of us, he picks out Bangalore-Delhi Karnataka Express and goes in to roam inside the train while it stands on the platform. “The girls are beautiful inside”, he arrives at the conclusion after he comes back with a wide grin. Evidently, the Bangalore-Delhi culture is in full form inside the coaches. That is the only glimpse we see of the metro culture in one of the busiest rail junctions of Central India. I see $D enjoyed his short lived adventure.

The much sought after train to Bhagalpur arrives. $D finally leaves at around 9 PM. This main part of his journey shall take a good 36 hours more. He has a waiting list ticket. That means no guarantee of a seat. I do not have a confirmed seat for the journey either but Deepavali is around the corner and we are going to our homes to celebrate. Nothing else matters to us. Homecoming could not get better than this. That is the biggest joy.

I stay there, on the platform, sitting on a bench while listening to Six Pence None the Richer’s “Kiss me”. I just heard, my train is on time, a quarter past midnight. This train coming from Delhi and going to Ernakulam in Kerala, will go through the Konkan route and drop me home, Madgaon, in the next 24 hours.

The year was 1999. In the next two years that I went home from Indore via Khandwa, things did not change much. The meter gauge train to Khandwa continued to stop at the slightest excuse and continued carrying logs of woods stuck outside the window. The man behind the counter at Khandwa Station’s canteen continued to indulge himself with late evening newspaper reading while I always ordered my favorite Bread and omelette with tea. I looked at him and wondered if he ever recognised me. Don’t know why, but I hoped for that. But I do not think he ever did. And whenever he noticed me for those 3-5 seconds, each time, it appeared as a mere interruption in his evening newspaper reading project.

$D told me, nothing much has changed there, even now.

Things don’t change much in small town India.

Many writers and travellers have been left amused and enough literature and travelogues have been written on the city of Bombay that I wonder if I would be able to do justice while I attempt to tell you my experiences when I visited the city recently. I was not a tourist. This is home away from home.

On 23 July 2005, 3 days before the Bombay cloudburst, the city was as sunny and sweaty as it could be. I guess the pictures suggest that.


[Above: The Flora Fountain]

Nostalgic crossroads, these on the Flora Fountain. It was 15 years ago, I used to have ice-cream cones, at least a couple of them- A bribe my mother paid me to keep quiet while she took her time shopping and bargaining with the cloth merchants. And I was always fascinated by the glass entrance of the Vimal Showroom that slid open as I walked towards it. But in 1990, this could happen only in Bombay. I also wondered what “Akbarallys” exactly sold. At one end of the Flora Fountain, towards Churchgate was the street of pavement booksellers. All the books you can imagine, and you did not have to be a rich man to buy them in bulk. Towards the other end, starting from the VSNL building, was the most boring place on the planet, or so I thought, the Fashion Street- 2 Kms of clothes, clothes and clothes.

What good would that do to a 10 year old? There were no book shops there; that meant no comics. It was often that I said to ma, “amma, when you want to go to Fashion street, count me out of it”.


[Above: The Old Taj Hotel]


[Above: The Friends of the Gateway]

The Gateway of India, as always drenched in the salty, smelly breeze. The colourful boats, still the same much like faithful companions to the age old monument. Not even the colour schemes have changed and the odd rubber tyres all over them. As I stand facing the green sea with the Gateway behind my back, I see the inland, the large chunk of land devoid of the mainland, which had once been my home for 6 years. The hill, far away and in the middle of the sea, with a tower on top. The view so faint that the hill almost dissolved itself into the surroundings of the sea and the sky, just a thin borderline preventing that from happening. Happy Homecoming.


[Above: The Kitten at Bombay VT]

In the early first week of the month of June, when I booked my tickets for Pondicherry I hoped and prayed that the day I was to spend in Chennai, 19th June, not be that hot since I had heard a lot about Chennai heat.

Ironically, 19th June was the hottest day of the year.

By late night I was in Pondicherry. I just wanted to visit the place and see the Bay of Bengal. I did not expect anything much. Heck, I did not even expect the hot weather.

As you walk by the straight and clean roads of Pondicherry, the city constantly reminds you of its French past. This was a colony of the French while the rest of India was in the British rule. The only exceptions were Pondicherry, on the east coast, which was under the French and in the west coast, Goa, my home, which was under the Portuguese.


[Above: Pondicherry, by the sea]

On the walls of most of the houses, their French names are written in neat blue boards. The architecture is beautiful, more so in the city of Auroville (located near Pondicherry), which was a dream of Sri Aurobindo. Auroville is a must see.

The ashram of Sri Aurobindo is the main attraction and people come from all over the country to visit his samadhi (more about it, here). This is the city where he lived in exile and made his home since Sri Aurobindo was also involved in the freedom movement and was wanted by the British Authorities. No visit to Pondicherry is complete without spending some time at The Ashram. Also do not forget to visit the Aurobindo handmade paper factory. It is walking distance from The Ashram.


[Above: Under the white sky, Pondicherry, by the sea]

The best way to explore the city is by walking. It is an enjoyable experience. Walk, be patient and the city quietly unfolds itself to you. The residents, they all seem so welcoming.

Also make sure, that the bus you take from Chennai happens to be a day journey. At least make it that one way. Trust me you won’t regret the sight. The highway is all along the east coast. The bay flirts with the line of sight when, at times, it goes away. All through the journey you will have the treat of watching the Bay along the highway and the humid, salty breeze washing your face.


[Above: The Blessing]

By the way, now that I have travelled by road on both the east coast and the west coast, I think there will be less road journeys better than the ones on the west coast. I have travelled extensively on that side and each time I am left spellbound. In fact, since my family is still in Goa, I do these journeys every few months.

Coming back to the topic, Pondicherry is not a city for beach bummers. If you wish to do that, Goa is the place to be. I think this city is a place where you can get in touch with your inner self by exploring your own version of spirituality. I found it to be a quiet and silent place, even though locals insist that in the past it was much better. When I go again to Pondicherry, it will be only to spend some time back in the Ashram, in the day and sit by the Bay of Bengal, watching the limitless sea in the evening. These are enough reasons for me to visit Pondicherry again.

(PS: while visiting Chennai, do NOT miss the Idlis and the Dosas.)

While formulating a rush hush travelling plan, the last 30 hours or so I had kept for my home- Goa. I came from Bombay, via the Konkan rail route. I took the KonkanKanya express from Bombay VT which began its journey at 11 in the night. As I woke up at Ratnagiri around 6:30 next morning, the landscape that I got to witness was one comprising of bright green lands and trees been sprinkled over by the mountain rains. I have travelled for about 3 years in the same route but have not been lucky enough to watch this treat, which happens every monsoon here. But a little more of these rains, accidents start to happen and the trains start getting cancelled.

This is my second day at Goa and rains have been drenching this land since I came in its vicinity. There is no question of sunlight. The only thing that has changed since my arrival here is the rain frequency and kind. Small rain, Big rain, Angled rain and what not. In the night, the toads and crickets add the chorus while the rain does its usual batter on my home’s roof with varying intensity. The roads are lush green on the sides, in the middle the asphalt shines as it is washed with water from above. The car wipers are working overtime. As I drive by the city of Panjim, the sea on my right is brown. In fact, almost Red. The thickness of the waves has increased by folds since I last saw the sea. Warnings are issued by the state government to stay away from the waves. The newspapers have reported almost a flood like situation in some parts of the state. I have just seen, the sea is red with anger.

Today is my birthday. A brief celebration and I will be off to Bangalore in a few hours. Tomorrow is another day and I will be back at work. But this trip has been worth it. I have travelled closed to 2700 KMs in the last 4 days. I have covered 2 magnificent cities that mean a lot to me. I have been able to meet some close friends and also meet my family. But, I have travelled alone. (Which, contrary to popular belief, I have enjoyed.)