A Sunday morning, I had kept alarm at 6:00 AM snoozing it 5 times and then again resetting the alarm to 7:45 AM, I finally woke up at 8:00 AM. I was starting to my friend’s sister’s marriage at Tiruchi. This was my last chance to meet all my college friends together. We, 8 of us from Chennai had planned for a bus at 10:00 AM in the morning and I messaged all my friends and got ready in an hour and started to Koyambedu by 9:30 AM. Santhosh(mls) reached the bus stand before me and was roaming around there, and I could’nt find him for some ten minutes after I reached there even though we were talking on the phone exchanging landmarks. Then I found him finally and we walked inside towards the place where the Tiruchi buses would stand. Shahul, who reached after both of us was already inside near the Tiruchi bus and he called out our names. Then Vijayakumar K(murky) also joined with us in a few minutes. We enquired with the bus conductor the timings and tickets and booked 8 tickets with him, and told him that 3 of our friends will get in at Perungalathur and we will buy tickets for them now itself. Now, we had to wait for G Sriram, till he arrived in a share auto that left him outside the bus stand, that came very slow stopping at all places waiting for people to board, unlike the buses that drop you inside the CMBT bus stand. Then, the bus started by 10:40 AM finally and we alerted our friends Tamilmani, G Vinoth and Shyam Sundar who were about to board at Perungalathur. In another half an hour we reached Perungalathur and they found our bus correctly somehow and boarded.
Although we were in AC bus, we could’nt feel the coldness, it was a so hot summer afternoon that the sun pierced through the windows of the AC bus and it sweat at times during the journey. It was really fun travelling with friends. We were all chatting aloud with a few of the co-passengers giving a weird look (Manusana thoonga vidamataanga pola) but our mls does’nt matter, whatever happens he slept well, until a stop arrived after some 3 or 4 hours of continuous travel in the heat. We had a stop for lunch. After paying Rs.3 and using the “Ultimately Clean and Hygienic Urinals” we entered the hotel. It was not more than a small tea kada hotel that was unclean, but the menu was like Meals – 115 rupees. Oh god we came out to a shop and bought a few biscuit, chips packets and soft drinks at a rate atleast 10 rupees more than the MRP for each product we bought. I bought some snacks worth Rs.45 at 80 rupees and returned to the bus and started munching them for a few minutes until stomach was full. I had bought too much of them that I saved a packet of Little Hearts ;) for the future. At near five in the evening I came across the name boards of the shops in the road sides that read Tiruchi as the district and I was glad that we have arrived, but the bus travelled for 30 more minutes and got into Tiruchi city and we reached the bus stand by 5:30 PM.
I had got an sms from Yogi saying that he booked rooms for us in Saraswathi Cafe near Mayil mark mittai kadai. I dint know any of those landmarks, anyways we had Shahul with us who has been in Tiruchi until his twelfth standard and he showed the way for us. On the way we saw a bunch of good hotels along with Hotel Ajantha where the marriage was about to happen. We met Yogi on the way to our rooms, Yogi was decorated with chain, bracelet, etc. Sunil had already reached Tiruchi by afternoon and he was co-ordinating the room allotment duties, and as we reached the room he was seeing the IPL match, where I could see a new colour of light green (kili pacha) jersey worn by Chris Gayle and the Scoreboard read a whopping 60-0 of 3 overs. It was like a dream with unusual things happening, along with the kili pacha jersey I surely thought it was a dream, but gladly it was not. We waited in the rooms for our other more friends to come, then we went a small mall in the city near Hotel Femina that Shahul showed to us and bought a gift for the marriage couple after collecting money from all our friends. It was already 8’o clock doing these things but the marriage reception was from 6 to 7:30 PM nobody bothered to notice that. We went to the marriage hall so late that the couple stopped posing for pictures and were about to leave. With Yogi’s recommendation we took a photo with them and then sat in the last bandhi to eat at the night. After coming out of the dining hall, we had a chat with the mappillai interviewing him from all directions, he was so friendly and open-minded. Then we came soon back to the room because a few of our friends wanted to watch a Man U vs Chealsea match in which Man U won. Then we watched tv for some more time and slept off.
I woke up in the morning to find almost some ten people gathered around in the room and asking all of us to get ready for the marriage. We left to the marriage hall at 10:00 AM and atleast we reached before the marriage was over and as soon as the mapillai tied the thali, we all sprinted towards the dining hall but in vain, it was already full and they stopped us and closed the door :(. We waited for sometime to catch seats in the next bandhi and ate well. After eating we were sitting in a gang and planning what to do next but ultimately all the people split into gangues and started leaving to their homes. We had no other choice, we came back to the rooms and had some rest and started to catch the 1’o clock bus to Chennai. This time it was only the 4 of us. The rest had some work at some other place. Again we got an AC bus and slept as soon as we boarded it. The previous AC bus was better. It was sweating almost throughout in this bus. Again, in the middle stop we had for eating we got some snacks and I also had the Little Hearts that I had saved earlier. Almost at 6 we reached Vandalore and it took half an hour to reach the next half a kilometre to Perungalathur after which there was a highway and we reached Koyambedu around 7:30 PM. Not much adventures in this travel, as it was sleepy throughout. And again traffic struck on de way home from Koyambedu it took almost an hour for me to reach my less than 5 kilometre from Koyambedu home. Then after that night’s sleep it has been an as usual overall vetty sitting at home eating, sleeping, watching tv, playing games an typing some useless blog posts like these killing time.
