is this right bus stop ? Nostalgia

Is this the right bus stop? Yes. Going by your dress, it is !

My tayiji ( periamma) always wore nine yard pudavai ( long saree ) in conventional style.

Tayiji's home was in Chalakudi, about 32 km from Trichur. Our village Venkitangu was on Trichur- Guruvayoor route, around 20 km from Trichur. They would change buses at Trichur on their way to Venkitangu.

Though she and my cousins used to board bus to Trichur on the way back from the 'short cut bus stop', they were not confident of locating the 'short cut bus stop' while traveling into Venkitangu. They would alight at a junction further away and walk back.

On one of their trips to Venkitangu, after their bus had traversed considerable distance, the bus conductor blew the whistle. After the bus stopped, he called out to my tayiji and asked her to alight. My cousin also got up but both were perplexed as the place looked unfamiliar.

The conductor asked, " You bought tickets to Venkitangu, right? "

My cousin confirmed the same.

Then conductor said, " Passengers traveling to Venkitangu in conventional nine yard saree alight at this bus stop. Please get down and ask around. "

It indeed was the "short cut bus stop" !

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coconut, the wonder fruit - Nostalgia !

Image
An article in BBC News on line saying coconut is a wonder fruit  has brought up a lump in my throat. As kids, we used to love watching coconut climbers doing their job. I would say they were the early Nadian Comanecans.The global public had to wait till 1976 Montreal Olympics, to get an acrobat exhibit the coordination and aesthetic beauty of coconut tree climbing in the form of Nadia Comaneci. We tried to emulate the free style method of the climbers but ended up with bruise marks on our chests, calf muscles and inner thighs. The higher our freehand climb took us, deeper were the bruises as we used to "give up" in exhaustion and hug the tree dearly to slow down the  fall. The payment for the climbers was partly cash and partly in kind - it was related to the number of trees climbed and not related the yield. So in summer months, the cost per tree comes down as the yield is much more. In the lean months, it was a tug of war between grandma and the climbers as th
Read more

School days

I found the first follower of my blog- Thomas Mailainathan ( Jegharaj ) my school mate as well as my college mate. We studied in Madras Christian College School where I was in Malayala medium in 6th and 7th standard and then shifted to English medium. Thomas M was in English medium through out his school days. We were in different sections. I got to know Thomas M in NCC Airwing in 9th standard. We attended a 10 day camp together. The toilet facility at the camp being bad, we used to eat very little food to avoid nature's call. Water was also in short supply and I took bath only twice during the camp. He won a corporal rank in second year of NCC and became a sergeant in third year. Holding a poorer rank , I ended my NCC stint in thea two years. We spent the five years in College of Engineering in the same section. I had met him on a few occassions in early 80s after graduating from college. He did surface through our batch yahoo group. I got to know him better as a famly man and bre
Read more

At war for cricket

I have worked in private sector all along. I have no idea what it would be to be in a war scene or war like situation. I have seen curfew over en extended period of time in 1985 at Ahmedabad and was literally under house arrest unable to move out of our apartment building in 1992 in Kanpur for three weeks after the Babri Masjid was razed to ground. Those were tense days and they tell me how tense and terrible to be in the midst of war both for armed forces and the civilian population caught in the crossfire. I am getting such a feeling now on the eve and during the one day cricket match between India and South Africa at Jaipur. There has been traffic checks in all important junctins for the last three days. Police forces including reserve battalions are all over the place. The ticket sale has not been too good what with so many level of checks of persons buying the tickets. The process was to be an entirely on line affair but was so slow that some tickets were diverted to over the coun
Read more