lessons learnt from the sleeper coaches !!!!

Well, I always loved journeys.. Especially the long night drives to a distant place . My sleep was the most pleasant ones when I was in a bus en route tirupathi. That's where we would go often in terms of long drives. But as we moved towards having own vehicles, going anywhere would be at our own will and wish in our own vehicles. I personally don't like the idea because the stress and tension of somebody very close to you on the driving seat isn't really helpful to enjoy a drive over the ghats. But the fun and bonding which happens within the car definitely doesn't happen in bus train or anything else for that matter. Pit stops, stopping by every hour for coffee , pulling over to enjoy a scenic view , not having to carry your luggage in and out. so going on drive by yourself is absolute fun minus the risk ( punctured tyres are included too ).

So my love for journeys and bus travels seemed to be getting some returns . I shifted to Manipal to do my MS and then it being a place 400+ kms from home town (Bangalore) was all that was needed for me to frequent a bus travel. I was all excited. Like a big gal I would travel all alone back and forth every long weekends. Could it get any better ?
   My first return back to home town happened just 10 days after I shifted. I booked the ticket way earlier than people generally do. All excited I kept the ticket on my desk so that the very sight of the ticket would bring a smile on my face. I was actually excited about the destination nonetheless  but travelling alone for the first time was not less exciting either.
   So finally the night I boarded the bus, I was all excited informed everyone I had to that I've boarded the bus. And I trek up my sleeper platform. All excited. My first time (almost) in a sleeper . I sit down look outside the window and see how Manipal looks from a bus. Two mins into the journey. I have this strange feeling. The feeling is nothing but Nausea.. Oh COME ON !!!! I DON'T HAVE TRAVEL SICKNESS . Are u serious ? I don't want to feel sick at any given cost and ruin my stay in Bangalore. I had to do something.The only thing I could think of was to close my eyes like I just saw dirty vampire and not to open my eyes until I here the conductor calling out "BENGULURUUUUUUUUUU !!!!!!!!!! " . I safeguarded all my luggage. Most importantly my laptop bag which I kept so close to me like it were to be my baby :P
       And then I here sounds of something trickling .. !!!! of course trickling is water.. but where ?? somewhere close to my seat ??? Are u like Serious ??? Oh come on.. this need not have to happen.. And yeah .. Considering it was pouring cats and dogs in Manipal and the western ghats as a whole.. I know I shouldn't be surprised. SO it meant that My sleeper platform was going to be damp  all night ??? oh Puhleez.. !!! and it also meant (considering the nausea feeling) that I had to do something so I called the cleaner and he comes for the rescue and brings up a huge sheet of cloth (seemed pretty clean) and puts it over the platform and says"madam , now u can go ahead and sleep " .. I ask him ..hello !!!  don u understand that in no time the cloth would be wet too?? So he says.. "madam, the whole bus is full I cant give u another seat either..ille adjust maadkoli"  what shit.. !!! I give up and sit in one corner of the platform the whole night.. Putting this across to my parents would mean that I would not be able to travel back home too often.
  Now that's about the whole first time travel in a bus alone . And that obviously meant a cramped body for the next whole day :(|
  On the way back from my beautiful holiday at home, I boarded another sleeper coach . Looks like I boarded it a little too early as the bus took me for a city tour in my own city. !!!! even then I still had to keep with it.. So the actual lesson what a sleeper coach thought me was this.. I closed the curtains on both the sides (the window and the aisle side)  and laid down with my eyes wide open. I looked around in the 6x2 half feet space it was all dark and it just struck to me that, It was how it is to be inside a "coffin" .. Seems funny ?? Some  might even shrug away my perception and say I'm crazy. but that's how it is inside a coffin right ??
   Okay now that I gotta chance to see how life inside a nice cushioned coffin would be, I realised a lotta things. Like the coffin, the sleeper coach too has very limited space. You'd be cramped inside.
=>It is dark. Light would mean U should get outta the place to see the light.
=> U 've nobody to share the space with .. (its  bloody 6x2 space man !!!!!!!)
=> You've no network connectivity hence you are totally disconnected from the outside world( now that's when u go inside a coffin right ? )
=>U don't have emotions ( emotions for or about what ?? )
=> Nobody cares whether U're hungry or not ..
=>Nobody would say a hello to u..!!!! they are in their own world(coffins) !!!
=> U would not feel like stepping out... People would call anything which comes outta coffin a ghost.. and that applies to u in a bus too :P
 YOU JUST CANNOT DO ANYTHING LYING DOWN INSIDE THE SLEEPER COACH => COFFIN. What ever u do.. Do it before u go there.!!! JUST DO EVERYTHING BEFORE U GET IN THERE !!!!!!
    Live your life to the fullest, meet people, make frens fight with them ,dance ur way out, sing ur own crappy song, make ur own tasteless dish for once and hate urself for that. Dress up gorgeous, dress down at times too,  live ur dream, sleep like a pig, but wake up all energetic, set goals, even if u don achieve them somebody else might still achieve it for u  :P Set an example.. good or bad.. laugh at others.. all important.. laugh at yourself..( no never do it.. u are gr8 to urslef at least ) . Enact in front of the mirror... Party hard.. even if its in ur own room.. Cry out.. and call it mood swings :P  fall ill and enjoy the attention from the loved one.. Show them the same care when they are ill. Watch the crappiest movie and take the best movie as ur inspiration(and forget about it the very next day) . Regret,repent,rebel,remember,forget,love,like,hate,feel,hurt,get hurt, fall,climb up,walk ,read,write,talk,listen,eat,drink,watch do everything a living is blessed to do because EVEN GOD IS NOT BLESSED ENOUGH TO LIVE A LIFE LIKE YOU DO !!!. He is just MONOTONOUS writing our destiny. The fun of living through our destiny is for us blessed souls. Love your life.. Its only Until u are restricted to a 6x2 space .  That's not the place you would want to repent not to have lived a life. Go ahead and DIVE INTO LIFE :) (SHIT WHAT DURGAMBA TRAVELS DID TO ME MAN !!!!)

How the whole month was just a dream... !!!!!

My first article in the blog would be an obvious guess by the people who know me, even as an acquittance. The Title of the article gives away the plot very easily. Hence my article can be an instant flop .:D  But would that stop me from writing the article . Of Course not !!!! Giving up is not in my kandaan (Family :P) lol :D okay that adds the drama element in my article too. Why not, family drama and dramatic situtations are not a part of my life . But my life itself.. !!!!
 
    So coming to the point of interest in this particular article ,the month which turned out to be a dream started off  with me having a sound sleep after a long and tiring day. The day which was chaotic and messy, which made me have the feeling to  pass the situation and take a run away from this chaos. But the whole chaos made me realize something, that the whole chaos ,wouldn't be a choas only if the pressure of a certain responsibilty could be shared with someone. And if that someone was somebody you could rely on ,any given time  , chaos is not chaos but just another situation.

PS: the day could have got worse if not for my teammates. The situation got harder only due to my personal situation handling Technic . If not for you guys , it would have been a little more than hell .. adding to the naraka ,was the Internal Guide. God Bless .!! But thanks to the team to have stuck together.

So I realized who  could have been that morale support. I so wished that the support could have supported at that moment but it just could be a wish. I ended my day blaming my support system to have left me helpless . So helpless that I couldn't help myself. But Last one year was just that, Helpless. Minus his support I am Helpless.
That night I sleep, hoping for a better dawn, a better day and a pay off to all the hardwork. 2hrs into my sleep, I hear my dad's voice, calling me out with an excitement I'd never heard before. It was a dream after all , I thought. No it wasn't ,it was actually my dad calling me to wake me up. Why? like at 2 in the night ?? Oh wait !!! oh wait !!! I heard my dad telling something. I sure know I was not dreaming. What I heard was Shenthil was here. WAIT!!!!! REALLY ??? U MEAN HE IS REALLY HERE??? I open my eyes , I see my dad. But a closer look I see my brother behind. YES!! HE IS HERE.. !!!!
My Voice.. I heard it myself as loud as possible( whoa !! I've a loud voice ) , I shouted like they say "on top of my voice". I'd say I shouted on top of the whole sleeping world. why not I shout. ?? He was here, My brother, who I missed the most at that moment. I never missed anyone as much as I missed him past 1 yr.
Thanks to his plan to do his PG in this Gr8 land called New Zealand. (shenthil don kill me for this joke :P).
I was shouting , I could see him, now not on skype but right in front of me. I could here him talk , not his sad voice on skype again but that excited voice I had missed one here. I hugged him tight, Which I'd missed the most last one year and which I needed the most too. I couldn't believe he was here. Thanks to the surprise he had planned to arrive at home before the date he was supposed to arrive. How unexpected was his arrival.. So better was it.. I'm sure his friends who had accompanied him to drop him home must have thought ,we as a family are insane.
Never saw my dad, a man with least expressions, being so happy. Forget about seeing him happy, I had never seen him having tears in his eyes. The way he was rubbing his eyes and wiping his tears reminded of shenthil and me doing the same thing when we were kids and would see Dad after a real long time. I'm sure shenthil recollects few such incidents.
What about my mum ? By the time I got to the living room after all my excitement seeing shenthil home, I saw my mom ,as expected she was in tears too and it seemed like a happily ever after movie climax scene after a family receives a son  who comes home from the battlefield(faction field to make it more dramatic :P).
Its not his presence which made me more happy, what made me happy was , my life would get back to the beautiful princess life it was. I'd relive all those moments which I crave for each day I wake up, those insane jokes, meaningless talks, Meaning full talks too, terrace talks , movie talks, Caste creed community talks, family welfare talks, talks bitching about common friends, talks about the future, talks about the past , talks about anything everything. Is it all for the talks I missed him for? Of course it was beyond it. Talks being the best part, mostly that's what got us closer . We talk like there's no tomorrow. All the things happening day by day, second by second is updated. Even the days he was in NZ, we still were updated . So much so that we dint have much to talk when he was at home after a year, or that's what I thought was the situation . But we still ended up talking  all that we could  for quality amount of time.
  So , what I missed next last one year was , some body taking care of me . How I dress, How I walk , How I talk , How I behave, How I eat ,drink sleep.. And a new addition to the list was How I "drive". I'd been driving for a year. And I was a learner until my brother said.. I drive well. Even the RTO's approval wouldn't matter much but the actual Driving Licence would be issued by him is what he thinks :D but I know how good-bad a driver I am :P but still hearing it from him that I can drive pretty well , was a feeling apart all the things.So did I get to hear it from him. And my joy and satisfaction on hearing that was more than the joy of seeing my results and getting a distinction :) It seriously means a lot . How much ? Even I don't know.
 The ice creams, the night -outs, the shopping, the movies, the comedy shows. The songs playing back to back on the stereo in the car and then continuing in either of our laptops. The co-incidences, the thinking -alike situations, the high -fives. If counting these as the things I had missed last 1 year.  Then what was exactly I doing ? Hanging out with friends . New friends came in, old friends got closer but did it matter ? I got even closer to mom . But did it matter ? I got closer to myself.. but still does it matter ?
It just doesn't matter. What mattered was that my brother was my strength nonetheless  ,
BUT IN MY BROTHER I FOUND A SECOND ME.
What I missed was not my brother. But what I missed was myself. . I missed laughing out loud, I missed crying out loud too. I missed being paid attention. I missed talking out. I missed listening to music .I missed everything. I missed myself.
The last one month he was at home was just nothing but a dream which made the gone by year look like a dream too. Everything was back, the house looked home. I looked alive . My parents too looked  more happier. Everything seemed like life back on track.
The three days road trip to Manipal was BLISS(shenthil calls it so :P) I could relive those three days the rest of my life. Just if life had a pause and a rewind button. I'd play it over and over again. Selective  replay , if that was a facility , I'd play so many situations over and over again. Okay knowing that all this is not possible, I know I need to accept the truth. Life doesn't remain constant.What's constant is change is what I've heard or read  ( thanks to all the forwards I've been receiving from my friends, my knowledge and philosophy about life has been useful this way :P)

Last year when he left to NZ, even though it was for a year, the pain within was not anywhere closer to what I'm going through while I write this article. This time even though he's going to be here at home probably in the next 4 months ( as he claims ) . This time its me who is going to be away from home. He's going to be home with out me around. Is life for him going to be the same as it was for me ? For him life is going to be back to normal in 4 months. But for me its still a year for things to get back to how it was . Is the year going to run jog  walk or crawl ? What is in store? I'm curious, Yes!! but would I prefer life to be the way it was .. now that's a big Yes.. !!!!  but It was me who had made the choice. And its still me who have to stand by the choice no matter what. Isn't that what Shenthil, mom and dad would say? for that matter any body would say that to me the minute I'd say Its a difficult choice I made. But its still me who'd live through. I don't know how life would be after a year. The way I want it to be? Or even better ? Or a whole new life ? What is it?
What ever it may be ,I'd still Live through and still complaint about how life has changed (even though it wouldn't have :P: .
  The month which now looks like a dream now has given me the hope that even though there was a year in between , Life might have changed in many aspects, relationships and the people are which still remain the same . I'm sure next year too , life would have changed in many ways, but shenthil and I would still laugh on a stale joke. My mom would still complain about my eating habits, my dad would still monitor my sleep timing, my friends would still think of me when they come across chiranjeevi . :D But yet life wouldn't remain the same , yet  not too different .
  Awaiting to face the change , and awaiting to see how there is no-change, I put a step forward. And forward it is, and forward it will be.

Shenthil, Thank you for everything. You are the only one whose gonna read this ever . :)