Travelogue: The place that was - Delhi

Our much awaited event of last year was sandwiched between our stay in Delhi. I remember the first time I went to Delhi. Bread omelet in the morning and curd rice in the noon. As a person who loves travelling and journey equally I was much looking forward to two day train travel to Delhi. We started on a Monday morning, the day before Christmas, the bus travel from my house to station took just half an hour, the roads were empty, bus was empty etc. According to the bus drivers the emptiness were attributed to the crowd who had already used the two holidays before that, thus making it a four day holiday. A fact. But the scene in Central was no different than the ordinary days.

Balaji, Karthik, Prasanna, Seena and I were sent off by parents and siblings of the trio Karthik, Prasanna and Seena. It just took ten minutes for us to get into the monotony of laughter. However monotonous it might me it never ceases to amaze me. Seena and Balaji form a terrific combo backed by Karthik and Prasanna. I'm the loner of the five here but that doesn't stop me from occasionally teasing one or the other. It was equally enjoyed by everyone. Thanks to my magnanimity and of course because of the 10 year break I wasn't as close to them as they were with each other. But this is just for the writing. Otherwise we were equally enjoying.

Karthik was in 3/4 th and everyone were teasing him that he has not got outside Arakonam but seems he is the only guy who has gone to Delhi out of them four. The first night in train was cold but was bearable. I purposefully didn't take out by blanket as I wanted to get acclimatized to the cold. Winds were oozing into the compartment, thanks to the invisible holes. Though I felt cold I somehow managed and came through the night. The next day's journey went in style, thanks to the playing cards. After rounds and rounds of Bluff, Ace etc we settled for the night's sleep. In between cards we got down in most of the stations and had everything that was available. As I haven't traveled long distance in a while barring Pune I didn't know that the food quality in train had deteriorated so much. The food was plain yucky, worse than the meals they show in Anniyan. So we had to settle for the food in station. It's not that what we got in station was sumptuous but was way better than the stuff we got in train. It was costly as well as uneatable.

The highlight of all the food that we got outside was the Orange juice in Nagpur. While Karthik and Balaji had gone there before me to the juice shop and were making faces while drinking the juice. I went there and had the same juice in a gulp in spite of their warning. To their surprise I loved it. They didn't like because they had added chat masala in the juice. What they were calling as ajinamoto. Poda naangalam peruchaliyayae thooki potu thooru varavanga, ithu enna jujube. Once I had the juice I packed three for the friends who were lazy to move their asses and come outside. I asked for few more masala and took it in a cup. Being an over enthusiastic person I mixed the juice with the masala without knowing that the juice already had enough masala in it. If not for me the rest of the guys would have spitted the juice. They all combined and had one cup and I had the rest. In addition to it we had a duplicate cool drink which gave a rotten smile. God!

Once we got on the second day morning we were eagerly awaiting for Delhi station, only to be disappointed of the four hour delay. Through the window all we could see was mist. "Enna orae pani mootama iruku" was our general feeling. Karthik received a scathing look from Seena when he said "enne da nama ooru margali masam mathiri thana iruku." Then Seena almost fainted when he saw someone bathing in cold water in a hand pump in that weather.

After all the eventful happenings we reached Delhi and went to my relatives place. A small apartment in the second floor. We badly wanted to go by metro but were advised by them not to as it'd be very crowded. The auto driver took 80 rupees per auto for our journey from station to Karol Bagh. I thought it was a robbery as the place was very nearby. Autowallas are autowallas no matter what. We were welcomed by hot idli and red chatni. It felt amazing. I gulped around 8 idlis and then my most unfavorite part, shopping, was in the agenda of the remaining lot. Balaji was the most enthusiastic out of the lot. I was barely interested. I was looking for various things to eat.

After shopping, their shopping, we reached home and refreshed. Without knowing the water scarcity in their home we all took bath and the rest started their photo session in the terrace. We started from there well before time, this time in a single auto after lessening our luggage. The ride in auto was nothing short of spectacle, he whizzed past all the traffic in a jiffy and reached the station in half an hour in spite of full traffic. When asked, "aap aise hi chalathe hae kya" he replied, "aisa hi chalana padtha hae."

Our first witness of Old Delhi happened then. It was a wonderful site to see everything I craved for was there in the streets of Old Delhi. The place was shabby yes but that's I loved about it, especially the hanging chicken. The station too was dull and shabby but had McDonalds much to the happiness of Balaji. We had French fries there and boarded our train to Pathankot. The train even though smaller than Tamil Nadu express was better and clean than the former. Added to it we had a couple of chicks in the next coupe and one directly opposite to us whom Seena made eye contact throughout the night. She too reciprocated but it stopped without any further improvement.

Then after our lovely Himalayas trek our return journey from Pathakot to Delhi was annoying thanks to the cold we had to bear while waiting in the station. I was sad too as the trek had got over but everything stayed only till the next day morning. Once we reached our hotel in Delhi we were more than warm. We had a nice room with cozy bed, good water heater facility at a walk able distance from Metro station.

We reached the hotel by taking Metro. Our first glimpse of metro was amazing. I loved the Delhi crowd, not only the ladies. In spite of us having huge bags and shoving them with it and not knowing the language they didn't make any face instead were commenting happily. Our first metro experience was awesome. I decided that we had to go in Metro from then on to whichever place we go.

We spotted Om Saravana Bhavan hotel (not to be confused with Hotel Saravana Bhavan) on the way to our hotel. Everyone unanimously decided to have breakfast there. The roundabouts were we stayed had Tamil hotels in predominance. We went there and had mini tiffin for 100 rupees. Seena was the happiest of the lot. After rounds and rounds of chapatti which he didn't enjoy at all he was very satisfied with Pongal and Coffee and Vada and what not. We got a dizzy feel which could be attributed only to south Indian foods. And boy how we loved it!