I was speaking to my friend Manju the other day, and she was asking about my new life in a new city. She asked me to blog about my thoughts on Ernakulam. Being one of the few people I have found more fanatical than me about my hometown, Trivandrum, her demand was that I do some match fixing and say that Trivandrum is way better :) . Well I’ll try my best to be neutral, so here it goes.. My thoughts on Ernakulam compared with the other cities I have stayed in for some length.

What I like most about the city is that it is really close to the sea. That scores a big plus in my books. There are plenty of places were you can stroll along the sea-shore or enjoy the sea breeze or just sit there – I can watch the sea for endless eternity. These are things I really missed in Bangalore and Plochingen. This doesn’t score a point above Trivandrum though – plenty of places there too to do the same things.

Plus there are plenty of shopping areas around here. That’s not high on my list of priorities, but it does help. It presents itself as a very bubbly city, which is great for me. It may not be a Bangalore in this respect, but definitely good enough. Both Trivandrum and Plochingen are laid back cities, which also works, but at this point of my life.. hmm.. I prefer ‘bubbly’ over ‘laid-back’ :).

What I really don’t like is the traffic here. Horrible. I survived Bangalore and I thought that was worst I would see. Ernakulam beats all that – with 1/5th of the vehicles of Bangalore – now that’s an achievement! And the driving culture here is even worse. I don’t think I’ve seen it this bad in any other place I’ve been to. I am now even more scared crossing roads – nobody ever stops here!

Another bad thing is that I find a lot of people here imitating cosmopolitanism (if there’s a word like that); despite the city not really being what you would describe as cosmopolitan. It all ends up looking very artificial. I don’t know – KFC-s, Baristas and multiplexes seem like a mismatch here. Maybe that’s just a feeling that’ll go away.

Overall I think the city will grow on me, just like the other new places did. It’s just as good as the other places I’ve stayed in. What makes a city unforgettable are the number of friends you have there and I had a few in all those special places I’ve stayed in before. I guess I’ve already started that process here. So maybe, it’s just a matter of time, before I fall in love with this place too!.

Thursday night. I had gone to sleep quite early thanks to a darned headache. I heard the landline ring. Irritated again that people call to the stupid landline rather than to my mobile (technology has grown, wake-up sheeple!), I got up and picked up the call. It was Bachu, my roommate, all excited telling me that if I don’t want to miss Sachin’s 200 better come fast to Shyam’s house (we are a TV-free home, you see). So I get dressed quickly and run to our very own homely sports-bar.

There’s some excitement going on in there as I reached. Sachin has reached somewhere around 170, Bachu is yelling trivial anecdotes about Sachin, Tony’s not combing his hair or looking at the mirror and even Shyam’s not playing TF2! That was when I knew this was going to be something special. So I took a seat and joined in. As soon as I sat down, Raina gets out. Hmm.. I thought I brought my bad luck with me. Boy! Was I right.

The game was taking interesting directions; with Ravindra Jadeja keen on taking singles every last ball of an over and not giving the strike to Sachin; when I first noticed an unlikely visitor in the kitchen. A pretty big rat; let’s say the biggest I have seen; not that I have seen many. I announced our royal visitor to the other friends in the room; and the usually cool Shyam all freaked out. “Oh! Its going to bite me when I’m sleeping. I’m going to get swine-flu and stuff”.. hmm.. swine-flu from a rat? Well, let’s discuss that later.

So we decide to fight this guy. And by chance it got trapped inside one of the plastic carry-bags lying around. The rest of the party wanted to kill the rat; but I somehow found a bit of compassion towards the animal and convinced them not to do it. Since the rest of us had an excuse that we didn’t have shoes on; we assigned the task of capturing the rat in the bag to Tony. Naturally the rat gnawed away the other end of the sheet and was on its way to its next hiding place.

Meanwhile in TVLand: Tendulkar has no chance to reach 200; but India can still win. If only Mr. Jadeja gave some strike to him. We are all in a dillema now whether to watch the TV or mind the rat. Every 3 balls or so, the little guy would peep out from its hiding place and as soon as we make the slightest of movements; it would go right back in. This hide and seek continued for a while… and then the unthinkable happened … Tendulkar got out :(

While we were mourning the departure of Sachin, our hero peeps out from his hiding place and runs right into the sink drain. Sensing the kill, the brave Tony Thomas strides in for the final act and closes the drain with a mosaic tile in pure ‘Quick-Gun Murugun’ style. That’ll do, we all thought. Shyam runs out to get something to seal our hero shut. But alas before he reached, the little guy, amasses all the power he has; slides out the tile; rushes out; and winks at us proudly for the effort (ok it didn’t; but I’m sure it would have, if it could).

The Indians are sinking to deeper trouble; while the rat is still playing hide-and-seek with us. Finally we managed to trick it to go back to the drain. Everybody quickly swings into action and we trap that darn rat finally. Victorious we set our focus back on the tv set. India may have lost by 3 runs and Sachin may not have hit a double-ton; but we did win our chase against the rat!

So what’s so blog-able about this? Small moments like this; tend to be lost in bigger memories of the past. I just wanted to treasure a few ‘big’ small moments… so that I can be all nostalgic in the future :)

A few years ago, I had an email conversation with my friends regarding life in Bangalore. Most were of the opinion that it was just too trashy and mundane a life and that the main reason for that was the city itself. I had more or less concurred with those thoughts there. But many days and months after, I think I’ve slowly started coming into terms with Bangalore.

I come from a sleepy suburb of the small city of Trivandrum, with all its old world charm. Compared to Bangalore, the hustle-bustle, the traffic and the noise is almost non-existent there. So I was brought up, being used to a bit of peace and quiet. The transition to the metro life of Bangalore was quick, and it wasn’t a very easy one. It was like you had gone fishing beside a serene lake and then suddenly getting kicked into a Metallica concert.

One thing Bangalore gave to me (and a lot of us) is freedom – financially and otherwise. Used and misused it, and in the meanwhile enjoyed it a lot. It gave me new meanings to life and allowed me to see things in other dimensions. I appreciated all that but still it never felt like home. I could never imagine a settled life here. There was always a feeling that I was a stranger in a strange place.

But that was some time ago, and time changes perspectives. I spent last week in my dear own Trivandrum celebrating Onam with my family. It was good, but strangely for the first time really, I started badly missing Bangalore – the congestion, the traffic, the crowds and everything associated with it. That was when the realization came that I had indeed accepted Bangalore as my new home. Bangalore has now become the routine, and Trivandrum the (welcome) aberration. They say home is where the heart is… I guess I have learnt to give some part of my heart to Bangalore… 3 years down the line.

Went for a trip to Nandi Hills early in the morning today. We wanted to see the sunrise there, and we were lucky enough to reach there on time for that. Contrary to my expectations, it was a real nice place indeed. So close to Bangalore, yet so far from the hustle and bustle. Too lazy to write a long blog post, so I leave you with some pics. Didn’t come out as good as I expected, but trust me, it was more beautiful than what the photos could record. :)

Photo Credits: Espresso and Me! :)

A typical Sunday in our house would be not much to speak of. It would only rank slightly above watching paint dry. So this particular Sunday we decided not to put to the dust bin, like so many before it. Someone had told about this place called ‘Sivasamudram’ and partly to quench Ranjith’s dying thirst to go on a trip on his Apache we decided to give this place a try.

We were pretty punctual to start off with, planned being a 6 am start and realizing a 7 am start – pretty good for our standards. We took the Mysore road from Bangalore, knowing that it is probably 30km extra. We had a quick bite at one of the many ‘pure’ vegetarian dhabas en route and rode along. The road was excellent and the guys had a great time ripping along. We left Mysore road at Maddur towards Malavalli. That also meant pretty much the end of proper roads. The road from then on were glorified country roads at best. The traffic though was light and the scenery awesome. It was hard to believe all this was less than 100 km away from the hustle and bustle of Bangalore.

We reached the place by around 11 having taken some lavishly long breaks on the way. It was not that difficult to find as there were plenty of signs to guide us. Sivasamudram’s claim to fame is its two waterfalls and the fact that Asia’s first hyro-electric power plant is situated there. As we were not very interested in the latter, we headed straight to the first of the falls – ‘Gaganchukki’. The waterfalls were just grand! The sound, the view everything was amazing. But there were just too many people and it seemed highly commercialized even for Indian standards. We spend some time there taking snaps.

The second waterfall, the ‘Bharchukki’ even though visible quite clearly from here was actually an 18km drive away. That place looked grand again, but was more crowded and dirtier (I mean extremely dirty) than the first one. However again the view just made up for it. There is another waterfall quite close to it and you can go down and have a dip in the water if you want to. We did go down, but the water was too crowded to warrant a dip. A word of caution though – going down would seem quite easy, but bear in mind that the farther you go down, the greater the panting you’ll have to do while you climb back up ;)

Just after noon we started off back. We made a horrendous decision to take the Kanakpura road to Bangalore. The road was just about navigable at best. It took us a lot more time even though the distance was much lesser. On the way, the only notable incident was that the Splendor (our other bike) lost its headlight. So we had to guide Bachu all along back to Bangalore. It was a little bit too tiring for my liking going on a bike. Well, I am more of a car person I guess :) Anyhow it is a nice getaway if you wish to kill some time when you are in Bangalore. Its worth it, just to soak in the peace and calm of the villages despite the crowd at the destination.

Route: Bangalore – Maddur (via Mysore road SH 17) – Malavalli (SH 33) – Sivasamudram (NH 209) 134 Km
Alternate (highly not recommended) : Bangalore – Kanakapura – Malavalli – Sivasamudram (NH 209 all the way). 119 Km