The Swine Flu Break

The past weeks have been nothing of a law school trimester; certainly not the forced holidays due to ‘swine flu’ creating a name for itself in areas around law school.
The holidays were good. A welcome offer from Harini led to an early morning ride to the train station with the hope of getting me a ticket to Coimbatore. The line at the ticket counter was long; long enough to warrant me to look at the clock and calculate my chances. With Harini already on the train, I was thinking that I might need to take a bus from the bus stand which was just opposite the train station. Thankfully, the train was 15 minutes later than what I had expected and the man at the counter gave me my ticket as well as the necessary directions and told me to hurry. I caught my train, short of breath but on time.
The journey was uneventful. I fell asleep but awoke every other hour to see whether it was already 1 pm. I DID NOT want to land in an alien place in Tamil Nadu and dutifully, we got off at Coimbatore.
Luckily enough Coimbatore showed me what I wanted to see; hills and that too so close by. Felt a lot like home. And that too with days filled with contemplation and sleep...loads of it and good food. It was like getting some time to be fully re-charged except that law school tends to finish off the charge rather fast:(
Coimbatore city itself was good with strangely long buses, lack of parking spaces but places for good filter coffee and authentic North Indian food. The city also had lots of old houses. I also developed a taste for banana chips and authentic Tamil rasam. The time spent in Coimbatore was memorable especially the interaction with Harini’s family.
Next stop was Chennai. After biding adieu to harini and her family for the great time, I took a night bus to Chennai, I saw my first tamil movie (thankfully it had subtitles) on the bus. Though the songs were peppy and the storyline somewhat different, the lyrics of the song seemed to make no sense in English. The entire journey was spent in silence, as my co-passenger seemed to prefer only Tamil whereas I had to admit my complete ignorance of the language despite some words that I picked up in Coimbatore.
Chennai brought to me a harsh reality that I thought I had left behind in Bangalore; bargaining with the auto-rickshaw drivers. Although Varun had quoted a price of around 150, I had to settle for 180 from a starting price of 250.The auto-rickshaw driver kept on repeating that it was morning and hence the higher price. After a half an hour journey, I arrived at Varun’s place and also had my glimpse of the sea at Eliot Beach along the way.
Even before I could greet his parents and grandma, I was greeted by his huge labrador named Tara. Thankfully she was friendly and I had to make her the exception to my fear of dogs and soon we were good enough to be friends.
After having lunch, me and Varun went to Marina beach but soon we got bored. Then we decided to go on the search for Fort St. George, which Varun said was pretty close by. Thus, the walk started. Then it stretched and finally we tired and had to call for help. And funnily we were just some 100 metres from the fort. After giving some information, we entered the fort premises which also functioned as the Secretariat. Just roaming around, we saw some old walls and gates.
As we left the premises, we were in for another shock. Where had we come out? We were at a train station and could not locate the entrance. Another call for help and finally we were able to have lunch, buy some books and head back home.
Evening brought the arrival of Prateek from Bangalore, who had his own share of arguments with the auto drivers with the reason being that it was evening this time around!!
Two more days of perfect lazing around with football on the beach and dinner at a nice restaurant with Vaun's lovely parents brought to culmination our stay at Chennai. We even managed to get wet in Chennai which changed our perception of Chennai, but only for a day because the next day was again very humid.
Finally returning back to law school, the normalcy seemed to return slowly at first and then faster and within a day or two, it felt like law school again.
Looks like the holidays after the trimester should be devoted to roaming around Karnataka.