Showing posts with label Kuttippuram. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kuttippuram. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Nepal Tour: Part 2 - The Approvals & Kick Start


The fellows came out of the room more faster than expected and we mobbed them to know the outcome. It was positive. Our HOD gave the nod pretty fast. Lot of stories were doing rounds those days that the signing authority mistook the name Kathmandu as 'Kakkanad' which is a place in Kerala. Our friend "Kattalan" was the major creator of such short stories and comic rhymes, which are sure to make everyone laugh. (Name fact: The word meaning of Kattalan is "One who lives in forest". Even though he is living in town his mannerisms does remind us about Tarzan or to be more specific like the George of the Jungle).

We were overjoyed. Tour representatives swung to action. The tickets were booked, rooms booked, the tour package from Delhi to Kathmandu was finalised, everything happened pretty fast.

The lady folks were showing faces as if we had betrayed them by not including for this travel, but some of the expert communicators with the girls convinced them that its better for their safety that we have not tagged them along and the difficulties involved in making this journey. So now they began to feel that it is good to be not part of this tour.

We had to take one of the staff members along with us and luckily our class advisor - 'JAM' was selected as our tour in charge. The D Day approached. Morning, we had to file a report with our Principal  on our itinerary clearly specifying where we will be staying each day with phone number and address. The tour representatives went to meet the Principal with this itinerary. Principal carefully read out each of the hotel names and was really surprised to see that Kathmandu is part of our tour. He immediately summoned our HOD and he denied having seen this itenary earlier. ALAS what is happening. Today evening we have to board the train and Principal has decided not to allow us to go out of the country. HOD directed the tour incharge not to proceed with this tour. It felt as if all the planning, all the excitment everything is going to have a bitter end.

We called up an emergency meeting and the whole class hung together as a single unit and worked out an action plan to come out of this crisis. For us it felt as if the world is going to end.





The sound of our little friend "Chiratta" was clearly standing out. He was infamous for his screeching voice. (Name fact: In our local slang when we hear a rough sound we usually say that the sound is same as that of scratching of a coconut shell. A guy whom no one will ever forget because of his dynamic presence)

It is already noon and the bus which we had booked for our Journey to Palghat railway station has come. Still we are discussing on how to get approval from our Principal after convincing him that everything is safe. Finally our tour rep got a call from his IAS Uncle who had arranged for our travel from Delhi to Kathmandu. He told him about the dilemma we were in and he promptly agreed to talk to our Principal. This seemed to be an excellent idea.

Soon he made a call to Principal. We all went to Principal's room again. Based on his assurance Principal gave the go ahead and we were overjoyed. Suddenly it felt as if we were on top of the world. The fun began even before the tour.

We rushed back to hostel to bring our luggage. We were soon back at the college and was surprised to see that lady folks had something to give us. It was a baggage full of eatables and for a moment we felt sad for not tagging them along for the sake of our convenience. But it was already tooo late and they were not complaining too.

The whole gang before the start of this trip. Lady folks are also there to bid us good bye.





We were soon inside the bus, with excitment filled to the brim. Bid goodbye to the waving hands outside and here we go ...............

We have to board the "Kerala Express" bound to New Delhi from Palghat. Jokes already were being aired from different parts of the bus, most of them surrounded our tour approval proceedings. It seemed as though we were relieved of all the assignments, all those class tests, all those lab sessions, all those series tests, all those supplies, all those boring lecture sessions and we were having a time of our life.

Wonder how such travels suddenly hides all the small small griefs which one has, into oblivion and a complete jovial mood sets in.

The eateries packaged out to us were no more, within no time as the eating machines were double quick in their actions.

The Palghat station was in sight sooner than expected because we lost track of time owing  to the highly animated conversations. We made a rush to the station as we had reached there only just in time. The Kerala express arrival announcement was heard amidst the noisy scenes created by us.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

An All India Tour to Nepal – A memoir (Part 1)


This memoir is dedicated to all my classmates of  Engg. College, friendship of whom I cherish second to none.

Prologue

If I had the privilege to own a time machine, the first thing I would have done is to go back to the olden golden college days, to have fun with my friends, the friends for whom I have a special place in my heart for ever.
As is the case of most of the people, college days are sure to give a lot of memories to drool over ,even after long years in the journey of life. Many a times I had thought about a lot of episodes in college, but the one which comes to mind most frequently is perhaps the "All India" tour to "Nepal".

Yes, you read it correctly, it was an All India tour to Nepal. Don't think of it as an era when Nepal was part of India. All this happened a dozen years back and now I am going back my memory lane to those olden golden days, going to be with my classmates, going to be part of the classroom again and be part of the All India Tour. Tag along with me and I assure you a journey filled with fun, excitement, some moral lessons and the value of friendship.
It all began here



This is a beautifully constructed engineering college in Kerala and any student can truly boast about the infrastructure right from day 1 of its inauguration. This is the place where all the show begins.

All pictures in this memoir are from the collection of Mr. NJ, who has taken pains to scan the printed pictures. All names in this memoir are real names which we used to call our friends, nomenclature of which has been awarded after carefully studying their behavior in college hostel.


The Planning Phase


The Head of department of Electronics is in the class, sweating out, explaining the bode plot and the control systems, but the important and most brightest of the students are staying outside, on top of the college wall, heavily engaged in a more important discussion. Yeah! the discussion is about the hottest topic. Nah it is not about that beautiful little cutie pie among our juniors, it is something more serious and something more in line with the oldest and self proclaimed mature guys like us can discuss. It was about the All India Tour, the most exciting thing to happen in the last semester of our engineering degree course.

In all our previous tours, the locations were mainly hill stations in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. All of them were in the comfort of a bus. This time we all agreed to have something more interesting.

After a lot of brainstorming sessions, bunking lot of classes and even more importantly bunking those important movie releases in the noon time of the local theatre, we arrived at some of the most important decisions.
  1. Our journey will be in train
  2. We will not tag the lady folk along because of the logistic support needed and also the fact that many of them won't be willing to embark on an adventorous sort of journey
  3. We will cross the border of India. Thanks to the information from "Lime Kumar", whose uncle made a recent trip to one of our neighbouring countries. This was most important for us, because our contemporaries in other batches had crossed only the borders of states in India, and we surely wanted to have the feeling of doing something which they didn't do. By doing this we will have a lot of memories to cherish for long years to come.

To cross India, we had 3 options - to go to Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal, of which the choice of Nepal was automatic unanimous since it did not require a visa to travel to this hilly country on the North eastern part of India. We also were keen to visit a kingdom which is still under the rule of a King.

Our goals are set, but setting goals without a practical solution is as good as a dream, and it is here we learned our first lessons of turning a dream into a reality. Our class rep - "lime kumar" became the nodal person as he had got contacts in Delhi, with the help of which we will be able to draw a plan for the whole scheme of things. An interesting piece of information here -> Lime kumar holds the limca record for the gulping in maximum litres of lime juice in 4 years.

Every night, after a session of great cricketing experience, in a "very big" school ground (hardly 20 ft wide and 20 ft long) nearby our hostel or in our own indoor court named ‘Padang’ (The hostels corridor), we will assemble in Dada's room. A word about our Dada - he was a Dada based on his size, but the moment he opens his mouth, his dadagiri is over, neverthless, this person was very powerful. Many of us has experienced the importance of having a different perspective of the same object because of him. We used to see his heavily loaded audio system in two perspectives, either it will be on his table or it will be hanging upside down depending on whether we are sitting on his bed or whether we are hanging upside down with our legs safely inside his strong arm.

The objective of the meeting is to plan the trip ahead, based on the recently acquired railway time table and one or two tour packages of Nepal tour which we received from Delhi. Another important objective is to get the tour sanctioned as normally only All India tours are sanctioned by the college authorities.

After lot of permutations and combinations the plan was laid out for our trip. Our tour representatives were Mr. Limekumar - for Delhi coordination and Mr. Ottakuth - for making local arrangements. (Name fact: the word meaning of "ottakuth" is "single stab"). Even though the name sounds horrifying, this baby faced gentleman was really funny and he took real pains in setting this itinerary right amidst the varying suggestions and varying thoughts being aired and finally reaching at a well accepted travel plan and a budget estimation.

Next we have to book tickets for the train journey. The advance for tour operator in Delhi will be paid by "IAS uncle" of LimeKumar after we give the nod. But before making all the financial commitments we have to cross a major hurdle. A simple sign on our sanction letter from our Head of the Department.

The onus for getting the necessary approval fell on our tour representatives and the whole class was anxiously waiting outside to know the outcome when the two gentlemen walked inside the HOD's room, just like we all eagerly waited for that last ball to bowl in a one day cricket match which we used to watch jointly with even more excitement than the spectators at the gallery.

Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...