Sow shall you reap!

The M70 bus that would take me from Velachery to CMBT arrived at the IIT bus stop after what looked like an eternity. Along with a small crowd, I boarded the bus, found a space where only my leg could go through and tried to apply my knowledge of Physics to balance myself in a dynamic equilibrium.

In a crowded bus, such as the one I was traveling in, the passengers would automatically form a human chain, pass the money and collect their tickets. When I was about to pass the money to the nearest passenger, a hand pushed me yelling "Don't fall on me, move!".

The push toppled me for a moment, knocked off the balance of a few passengers nearby while I was trying to regain mine. From the crowd, I observed that the voice came from a person who was seated. Before I could reply to him, I heard an angry voice shouting "Don't you know how to hold on to a support? Why are you pushing everyone around?", apparently oblivious to the person who started the chaos. I apologized (to no one in particular) to bring the situation under control, passed the money to the human chain and collected my ticket.

The bus would have moved only a few feet when the driver pulled it off the road! After a brief discussion with the driver, the conductor turned towards us and said "The bus broke down. All of you get down and board another bus".

Cursing under our breaths, we got off the bus, waited for ten minutes before the conductor flagged a D70 and authorized our tickets with his signatures for us to travel on that bus. D70 was not as crowded, and there were several empty seats, one of which I occupied. The D70 driver waited till the bus reached its saturation level, and pressed the pedal to the floor.

A cool breeze flowed through the window, caressed my face and dissipated into the crowd which was packed to its maximum. When the driver applied the brake to avoid a pothole, which eventually he ran through, a passenger toppled and stamped on my feet. I was about to yell "Don't fall on me, move!" when he apologized "Sorry Sir! I lost my balance!", to no one in particular.

Nithya

Nithya closed the book she was reading, kept it on her table, put her reading glasses inside their box, and moved to her bed when she got the text "Hi dear! How are you?".

The text came from an unknown number. "Could this be my longtime friend whom I lost touch with? Must be one of my school friends! It has been so long!"

"I am fine! What took you so long, my dear, to know that a friend exists in this remote space and has been waiting for long to get in touch with you?", she replied.

"I am sorry! You must have mistaken me. I am Ajay, and I am not the friend you were expecting to get in touch with."

She read the last reply twice to make head or tail out of it. He is undoubtedly not her friend, for his number is not in her contact list. So what does he want from me? When her thoughts reached a dead end, she asked him, "Who are you?"

"I am Ajay. Am working for a construction company as a design engineer. And I am currently located in Singapore." After a few minutes pause, she got another text saying, "Can I know about you?"

"I don't remember if I know you! How did you get my cell phone number?" she asked him.

"One of my friends gave me your number and asked me to talk to you. Is it okay if I call you now?" he asked.

"Who could he be? Why does he want to talk to me? And who was this friend who gave my number to him? Does his friend know me?" Before asking any of these questions, her cell phone alerted her of an incoming call from an unknown number. After letting it ring half a dozen times, she took the call.

"Hi! Who is this?" was all she could manage to ask him.

"Hello again! This is Ajay! May I know your name, please?" replied the voice.

"You don't even know my name! What do you want to talk to me about?"

After a momentary pause, he replied, "I know I am not your friend. But can't I become one now?"

After much contemplation, she said, "Nithya."

"Sweet name! By the way, I am 26. May I know how old you are?"

Age? What next? Size? Well, it sounds fun. Let me see how far he can get.

"23"

"23? Strange coincidence! I guessed you would be 23!"

"Oh, really? How come?"

"From your voice. It sounds like a 23-year-old."

She giggled for a while. "What else can you guess from my voice?"

"I guess you don't have a boyfriend?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Its a hunch. By the way, do you have a boyfriend?"

Do I have a boyfriend? What should I tell him? That I had one who passed away recently?

"Let's agree to a condition that I will not ask about your past, and you will respect the same?" she said.

After much thought, he replied, "Sure." She figured out that his "Sure" sounded like "What the hell."

"Well, we haven't seen each other. We do not know anything about our likes and dislikes, dreams and passions and so on. I know its too early and premature to ask this question. But I have a feeling that we are meant for each other. Do you feel the same way about me too?" he asked.

Is he proposing to me? Not so early! We don't even know what the other one looks like! When she was about to reply, she heard the doorknob click, and the door open, through it a girl in her early twenties entered.

"Grandma! Aren't you sleeping yet? Whom are you talking to, at this hour?"

Sunset at Alappuzha beach

 Prasanna and me at Alappuzha beach

"I guess it will take another hour for the sun to set. Do you think we have enough time to witness the sunset?", I asked Venu. The passenger train that would take us to Kollam was scheduled to arrive in ten minutes.

"Don't worry Jam, passenger trains are always late. Moreover, its a single track route, so the train has to wait till the route is clear from the other direction", he assured.

I had seen the sunrise at Elliots beach on several occasions, but the fact that I was going to witness the sunset for the first time in my life excited me beyond measure.

"Is this like Mangalore beach?" I asked Prasanna the question, with the curiosity of a child. He graduated from NIT Suratkal.

"Beach is beach, Jam", he replied. After a momentary pause, he added "but this place is serene and neat. Mangalore beach is like the Elliots, full of people".

With not even a soul in sight, we sat on the sand facing the tides, contemplating on nothing, until our thoughts were interrupted by Venu suggesting "let us take some photos".

"My camera battery is down", I replied and gave him my mobile camera with instructions on how to take a shot.

While Venu was shooting the last picture of Prasanna and me with the setting sun background, I asked him "What is that train which was just crossing us?"

"Train? What train?", he gave me a quizzical look, looking towards the level crossing then. The last compartment made a slow crossing making the guard light visibleto us.

"Gosh!!! We should be on that train! Run!", he said. And then we ran like mad towards the train, as if a pack of wild dogs were chasing us.

The station is about half a kilometer away from the beach. We reached the level crossing, and ran on the track following the train which had already made a halt, dispersed the passengers and was taking in the ones commuting towards Kollam.

When we were about a hundred feet away from the train, I asked Venu what our plan B was, pointing towards my footwear which had lost its gripper. "Grab it in your hand and run barefoot", came the reply from him.

We reached the station, stopped a while to catch our breath. "I did not see any train running in the opposite direction, so the passenger will stop for some more time", Venu said. Taking his word, we walked towards the train, hastening all the while not taking a chance. By the time we got into the last compartment, the train pulled off from the station!

I uploaded the picture we took at the beach on facebook, joined Venu and Prasanna who had already found the seats for the three of us on an empty partition and hi5'd them for making it to the train. When I was about to lay down, I got a text from my cousin with a question "Where is the setting sun? :P"

One Enemy

The king was pacing up and down in his private chamber when the minister came in.

"Your Highness! I disagree with your idea of forging an alliance with the company men", the minister said.

Ours is the best army in the world. We have several lakh skillful infantry who can fight with swords and spears. 

Our cavalry is the best in the world. We have thousands of cavalrymen, each of them an expert at wielding swords when the horses' race at lightning speed. Some of them can also shoot arrows, or throw spears with precision and accuracy that are second to none! 

"We have enough of the army to protect our boundary from all the sides," the minister's voice beamed with pride for his command and their collective abilities.

"My friend, thank you for updating me on the strength of our army. I am sure we can win all the battles, should we need to face a threat in the future. But then, let's have a great vision, my friend. You will then appreciate that I made my decision in the great interest of our kingdom,", the king replied.

Portuguese are marching towards us from the south-west, while French recently captured Pondicherry. We have a constant threat from Mughals in the north. Though the company men (East India Company, or the British) are not interested in politics, they spread all over. 

I do bet that we have the best army in the world, but should we always have to live with a constant fear of battles?

The question, my friend, is who our enemies are? The entire Bharat has been divided into several kingdoms; each of the rulers is fighting for his own power. While we are busy fighting against each other, the foreigners are coming in large numbers, enslaving us, and forcing us to trade with them.

"I am sure, with our army, we can win the battle for our kingdom. But, what we need is to think of winning the battle for all the kingdoms of Bharat", the king said in a reverberating voice. The minister absorbed the king's message and asked, "What do you see in Robert Clive? Of all the company men, why him?"

The king was happy that his minister understood his point of view. With a smile on his face, he replied, "While the other company men are trying to get our trade rights with them, it is only Clive who appears to have a vision of uniting the whole kingdom under one rule. Giving away the Cuddalore fort to him will help him achieve that goal"

"But what do we get in return, your highness?", the minister asked.

"One enemy! Clive has the potential to lead an army and fight with other foreigners."

"But, the United Bharat will come under foreign rule. How can we let that happen my lord", the minister asked the king.

"True my friend! We cannot do anything about this. For centuries, we have had a lot of infighting and some of our own rulers are responsible for letting the foreigners come in and involve them in our politics. If we unite our nation under one foreign rule, we can identify that one enemy, who is common to all.

"But the one nation will be the most divisive one, my lord. Am afraid we may fall into a deep pit from which we can never come out again", the minister said in a grieved tone.

"I wish a Mahatma be born who will have the charisma to unite the whole nation and fight against the common enemy. But for now, we need to do this as our duty, irrespective of whether a Mahatma will be born or not", the king said.

"This is how Robert Clive captured the Cuddalore fort, and the rest is history," I finished telling the story to Deepak.

"Those who want to get down at Jipmer or Ashram, please come forward," the conductor was calling out to the passengers. "Should we get down here?" Deepak asked me.

"Let us get down at the Pondicherry bus stand, and roam around the city for a while before we take the connecting bus," I replied.

"I thought the same too," Deepak said. "Let us say "hi" to the French before we go to see the British."

Troubled Beginnings

Murphy was proving his law one more time while we were waiting for an MTC bus that would take us to the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT), from where we could take a Cuddalore-bound bus. 

The MTC buses from CMBT were running towards Velachery, while the ones that depart from Velachery were heading towards T.Nagar. After what looked like eternity, an M70 arrived at our bus stop which Deepak and I, along with a small crowd boarded.

The driver stopped the bus a few meters away from the bus stop to allow the conductor to finish distributing the tickets to all on board, or so I thought! It became clear to me soon when the driver tried frantically to start the ignition that the bus was never going to start!

The conductor went to a nearby tea shop, talked about the problem with the shop owner, brought a pot of water and filled the radiator. Some of the passengers were inquiring from the driver to see if pushing the bus would work. But, the driver's facial expression gave me a feeling that he already knew the bus wasn't going to start again.

The passengers got down from the bus and started to push it from behind. But with the collective muscle power, the driver could only manage to steer the vehicle to the edge of the road, thereby not causing a traffic jam.

We waited for ten additional minutes before the conductor flagged a D70, authorized our tickets with his signatures, for us to travel in that bus. We boarded to find that it was already packed to saturation level. After a tiring journey which took about 45 minutes, we reached the CMBT.

We had a cup of coffee each, and were walking towards a bay for the Cuddalore-bound busses when we heard a loud boom followed by shattering of glass from a nearby platform.

"This is my bay. How dare you park your bus here?", the driver of the bus who accidentally crashed his vehicle with the other one, started to yell at a conductor, who was rushing towards the scene to inspect the crash.

When  we reached the platform, an air conditioned bus was about to depart from there. We located the conductor and asked him if we could buy two tickets to Cuddalore. "This one goes only up to Pondicherry. But you will get a connecting bus from Pondicherry to Cuddalore every five minutes", he assured us.

We did not mind boarding the bus and taking the last two seats, since it was an air conditioned volvo model. But soon, we regretted our decision when we found that the ac outlet was spewing hot air instead.

Moments later, we raised this issue to the conductor. He inspected all the other outlets and said "other outlets are working fine. This one alone seems to have some problem. I will ask the mechanic to service it (after the trip)"!

Just like seeing the sun finally come out after gloomy days, a slow and bumpy ride from the terminus to the outskirts of the city with all the troubled starts changed to a pleasant drive the moment our bus hit the East Coast Road (ECR).

At a stretch in ECR where the road narrowed for some distance, an auto was parked in the middle of the road. The driver of the auto was bargaining with his client for some extra money to strike a deal. Though there was enough space between the auto and the median, our driver decided to choose this particular stretch to overtake a tanker lorry.

A sudden brake was followed by an exchange of few angry words between the two drivers. Our driver parked the bus across the road blocking all traffic, turned off the ignition, got down and engaged in physical fight with the auto driver. It took a conductor and a few bike riders to stop the fight and bring them to their senses and steering wheels!

I asked Deepak "What do you think about all this?", referring to the development of situations since morning.

"We have a lot of stories to tell our readers", he said.