today i embarked on a two day trip to manjeri and nilambur, former is where my maternal uncle lives and latter is the maternal native place and where the temple of family deity is situated.
i woke up at 0500 using my mobile alarm quite easily enough because the reason i am waking up is to travel and not to study anything. i got ready and left home around 0545. i caught a private bus to reach the railway station. at this early in the morning wind was quite chilly and i dearly wished i had brought some cap or something to ward off the cold air now attacking my exposed ears with earnest, almost always a prelude to a nasty bout of cold. the queue at railway station was quite long and from snippets of conversation i over heard from fellow travelers i could make out that rush was even denser at the other ticket terminals. i really doubted if i could get a seat today. anyway thankfully i was on route being seated too!!! maybe i was the last person who got a free seat in that entire train before it started to lumber off. it was a pretty nice journey and slowly i became fading in and out of sleep. i was woken up to answer the ticket collector's call for producing tickets to be examined. now this also gave me a brain wave!!!
after due formalities with the official i began fermenting the idea i had!! design a tower home!!!
a 7-8 storeyed tower which will be an excellent home. i made a vague mental list of various floors and the function it would serve. but more importantly i had to decide on what type of lift and stairs and escape mechanisms i had to install as that would be vital in a construction of this sort. i thought about ballast driven lifts, hydraulic lifts, even tracked lifts. finally i decided upon a cage lift driven by an electric motor at the top of the shaft.
i also designed a stair mechanism such that it will take the minimum space, it shall go around the curvature of the tower so that no inner space will be utilized. then the escape mechanism. for that the best thing, i decided, would be the sort of poles used in fire stations and by batman in his lair.
anyway more on that later when i will upload the design pictures on this blog.
now onwards with my travels. after some more time in the train the emptiness of my stomach became quite excruciating for me. i did not want any of the dubious pooris or dosas they vended out. but i did buy a pack of 2 bread slices and an omelett which cost me 22 rs!!!! i would say that was daylight robbery in all its dastardliness!!!!
anyway it did appease my gastric system a bit.
while waiting for my onward train at the shornur junction station i witnessed a remarkable sight. it was breakfast time and three long distance trains had just pulled up with a veritable host of hungry passengers that needed vending to. so now this army of railway vendors were thronging this counter were they distributing vada , dosa and chutney. the entire sight was a mouth watering experience for a dedicated vada connoisseur like me. much though i was tempted to savor those rich, warm and crunchy vadas with dollops of those exquisite looking chutneys, i was turned off because of an accompanying swarm of house flies who were quite as great connoisseurs of culinary magnificences as myself if not as self controlled. seeing those little rascals dig into the treasure trove of vadas did take my appetite a bit, but not being a person to be disgusted by such sights, after all i did live on hostel food for 4 years, i finally decided to walk away heeding the voice of my inner self control and dietary attempt, " gokul, lay off!! u just had two cold slices of measly bread and one really louse omelett. you do not have to eat those exquisite vadas. after all they are fried in oil!!!"
now do u see how pathetic a loser i turned out to be.
anyway withing a short while the train came, i embarked and put my tower designs to paper, designs which i will torment u readers with in a day or so.
the journey in the shornur -nilambur route has always exhilirated me. this is a single lane route. only one train operates here. the scenery is breathtaking, the green fields, the awesome hills and a veritable mosaic of colours of a quintessential malappuram countryside. finally i disembarked at my angadipuram destination and caught a bus for manjeri for a 40minute back breaking ride in the regular small size seats of the private buses plying here.
finally i reached my uncle's house at noon. well that was the synopsis of today's travels but not the travails. evening i went with my cousin to watch a movie by suresh gopi, named "osund of boot" an exhilirating detective story with a great message conveyed.
and that is the end of the day's travels and travails.
more of the log tomorrow.
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