Enter the south

I board the train destined for Chennai on 10th night, sad to have left a lot of things at home, many including my bike, guitar and my most precious music collection, cursing my fate as to why I kept delaying my packing till the last minute, only to get trumped by the power failure, leading to a hard time packing all my stuff using my mobile’s flash light and a torch. Was glad that my brother brought a nice dinner of naan(Indian baked bread) and egg bhurji for me, something which I will cherish as the best dinner I will have for a few months. I was fortunate enough that some mysterious miraculous power always delays trains bound to and from Kolkata, whenever I am to board the train. I reached the station just in time only to see the train delayed by almost half an hour.

Day2 of journey and I reach the outskirts of Chennai to find the hot arid winds blowing in my face. Pretty quick to depression and fluctuation of moods that I am subject to, I went through a quick self analysis and a sense of guilt and remorse. Is this what I had wasted half a year of my work ex and hours of studying for? To join a college that is below my expectations.
Reached Chennai only to be fooled by the brokers and thugs aka Chennai auto-rickshaw drivers. It was only after boarding the auto did I realize that the person I had bargained so hard with was in fact a broker who swindled away 50 bucks in the process. After reaching the men’s hostel that the college had entered into contract with, I clearly saw that the ground reality differed a lot from whatever abysmal expectations that we had.

I befriended a few friends who had travelled in the same train. Later in the evening as we decided to go to the college, we decided local trains were the best way due to our proximity to the station. Measured my weight and was pretty pleased to find that I still weighed over 70 kilos despite the fact that I was at an all time low on health and starved after the long the long train journey.

Local train experience was a first for me. We made our tickets for our college IFMR which is in Nungambakkam and proceeded to board the train. Later it turned out that we were heading in the wrong direction. By the time realization dawned upon us, we were already pretty close to IIT, Madras at the Guindy station. Lucky again that we didn’t have a Ticket Examiner in the train to check our tickets, we stepped down from the train and started again but in the reverse direction.

On reaching the college, we met a few seniors who were familiar from their orkut profiles, and then decided to eat before the cafeteria stopped serving dinner for the night. The food at IFMR was the best thing that came across to me in Chennai, pure unlimited north Indian food, which I ate to a heartful.

After dinner we were to have a short ice-breaker session with the seniors but since we were late enough for the night, seniors allowed us to leave for the day back to the Mambalam hostel.