God's Own Country's Trip - part 1

(Itinerary: Mysore ----> Thrissur----> Guruvayoor, 20th - 21st May 2006)

The past weekend, along with a couple of days taken off during the working week, saw five of us undertaking a trip to Cochin, Kerala, in God's Own Country. The trip was planned after a careful deliberation that lasted for 2.5 minutes, during which the first of the five - Neville informed us that he had to be there on 21st and 22nd May to attend a couple of marriages, that of some classmates of his.

Enthused at the prospect of free food, Gaurav, Kutty and I, throwing caution to the wind, as well as conveniently forgetting the fact that masquerading as wedding guests wasn't really our cup of tea (or plate of vegetarian thali), and that it was cheaper to pay for food and eat it here in Bangalore, decided to join Neville.

Our quartet was joined by another guy, Shaavi, who had time to kill before work ended up killing him. He is scheduled to join IBM in June. RIP in advance.

The trip meant different things to each of the five of us.

For Neville, as I stated, it was the hanging out with friends and max chilling out before the grind began for him at IIM A, combined with the convenient excuse of 'shaadi-putting', a phrase concocted in a stroke of extreme eloquence.

For Gaurav, headed for MDI, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Mallu-land without getting fleeced by the natives, who would otherwise pounce on a chubby guy from Delhi who knows exactly six words in Malayalam, with instinctive ease.

For Kutty and Shaavi, Cochin was home, where they had studied, and had a lot of memories associated with the place. They were our designated guides to all the good places to visit and ang out at, and they surpassed themselves, for us to have the maximum amount of fun possible in our (mis)adventures. More about this in the subsequent posts.

For me, it was a chance to visit Kerala in good company, and slack off work, something I hope to get really good at, so I can write a book about it, and live off the royalties for the rest of my life.

"How to slack off work and still retain your current paycheck", ladies and gentlemen, the book Dale Carnegie wishes he'd have written had he been able to think of such a thing in the first place.

Our trip was supposed to be packed with things to do and places to see, and we wasted no time in mobilizing ourselves to reach the first rendezvous point. We all were supposed to meet in Thrissur, and then head for the Guruvayoor temple, 14 km away.

I had rushed off to Mysore, to spend saturday there at home, and I boarded a bus to Thrissur from there, while the other guys were starting off from Bangalore direct.

My bus journey was alright, though there was one incident that stood out in mind. At around 1:30 PM at night, somewhere on the Karnataka-Kerala border, I was trying to count trees to fall asleep, since counting sheep was evidently not really proving to be that effective.

The road was really narrow, and our man, the bus driver, nearly hit another bus headed in the opposite direction. The sudden screeching of brakes woke all of us passengers up, and the two bus drivers commenced their invective-exchange exercises.

I presume neither of them knew which language to start cursing in, and so they started off in Hindi, it being our national language and having the most cuss words present in it. Censored translations provided below actual dialogue.

"Teri maa ki....."
(Your mother's....)

"Arrey, teri behan ki...."
(Your sister's.....)

"Abbey, tere baap ka....."
(Your father's......)

"oy! Tere bhaai ka....."
(Your brother's......)

They went on cursing previous generations for quite some time, until their limited vocabulary so far as relations were concerned was finally exhausted. Eventually, one of them let loose some bad words in Kannada, which the other guy picked up and responded to as well.

Once the warring adversaries figured out that they had more than just Hindi in common, they unleashed upon each other the very same things that they had initially said, but only in a different tongue.

This happens only in our country, where, with a whole host of languages and dialects present, it is very easy to be a polyglot. If the two drivers had four or five languages in common, the entire conversation would've been repeated that many times.

This was also a ripe opportunity for chlidren that were present on both buses to really soak up like sponges all the foul words that they would otherwise be subjected to, only in physical education or NCC classes, much much later down the line.

Once both the drivers had let off steam, and had exhaustively questioned each other's parentages right upto about four generations preceeding them, they moved on, finally realizing that they had passengers who would be telling them the very same things they were telling each other.

The bus reached Calicut/Kozhikode thirty minutes after the incident. I noticed some interesting signboards there, including one which said:

"Roentgen X-ray and Diagnostic Center"

Appropriately named, I must say.

Another thing I noticed was that a whole lot of signboards all through Kerala had expanded initials. SV was YesVee, RV was RVee, BS was BeeYes and so on.

There was one which said "Cee Pee", and it has surely put the imagination of you perverted readers into overdrive.

These peculiar spellings posed quite a problem while Neville was attempting to provide directions to his friends, for them to be able to arrive at the RVee'S hotel at Guruvayoor. To further compound his misery, there was another RV tower hotel present a hundred meters away from our hotel.

I guess it would be a good idea to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet before heading towards Mallu-land, for the simple reason that it will make life so much more easier for you if you have to give someone directions.

"Dude, come to Hotel Yankee-Echo-Sierra Victor-Echo-Echo, room no 605. Over!"

"Cut out the retarded soldier act, Private. But major thanks anyway. Over and out!"

I reached Thrissur at 6:15 AM on sunday, and met up with the other guys, and we took a bus to Guruvayoor, and managed to land there at 7:30 AM. On the cards was a visit to the famous temple there and a small trip to the elephant sanctuary.

To be continued.....