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It all started on a perfectly normal evening when fed up with the daily grind of project report and a generally frustrating semester, we hit upon the idea of a getaway. And the first thing that came to our minds was GOA- that heaven on earth people swear by. No fun blooded youth worth his salt is complete until he has done the proverbial coming of age trip to Goa.
Once we zeroed in on the destination we scratched our heads over the logistics involved in getting there. The fabled Indian railways were useless as they run only 3 trains a week from Bangalore to Goa and they were all hopelessly overbooked. Going by bus seemed an expensive affair and that's when it hit Kauser- why not go by car? Bhattad's first reaction was a la Dil Chahta hai while my reaction was "Pagal Hai Kya"??
After talking to a host of people who all gave us varied and contrasting opinions about everything from Goa itself to the route to get there we decided to take the car and brave any further consequences. Kauser had to do some tough convincing at home to let him take the car and outrageous promises had to be made( "We wont drive over 60," when we intended to drive at twice that speed).
So we finally set out on Wednesday, on what was a hot mid summer morning. Though we intended to leave Bangalore by 1130, we only left college by 1145. What we failed to consider was Bangalore's manic traffic situated. Peenya is a bottle neck. Half of the road is dug up ostensibly to make a road and the other half is narrower than Calista Flockhart's waist. And to make matters worse, a bunch of villagers decided to take matters into their own hands. Apparently an auto driver had been killed in an accident involving a truck which I presume may not have been from Karnataka. as is evident in these parts, a fierce dislike of non Kannadigas coupled with a show of sympathy for the poor auto driver and his family led to the whole highway being blocked for over an hour. Two lines of vehicles of assorted sizes stretched on either sides of the road for over a kilometer each side. It's absolutely unacceptable when people resort to such acts without achieving anything positive except create ill will among people who are affected by their histrionics- innocent and harmless people like u and me who just want a getaway from an increasingly insane world. The police must deal firmly with such anti social elements who are out there only to either get publicity or create inconvenience on purpose.
Anyway we put an inauspicious start behind and put in some decent miles before we stopped at the CCD just before Tumkur. It's a fairly good shop that also serves substantial food like biryani for the hungry traveler in addition to their standard snacks that you can only nibble on while a gastronomic hunger builds up. Someone rightly said that highways are the lifeline of growth. We could see that all along the Golden quadrilateral where a number of shops, eateries and garages had sprung up. Clearly the expressways have altered the life of the sleepy villages that they pass through. Not only did they cut up the villages, separating people and houses by a massive concrete structures, they also bring in commercial development whose consequences are not entirely desirable.
As we busied ourselves with speeding along what seemed a decent stretch of highway, we hit the proverbial Indian road. The highway went from a 6 lane to a 2 lane to a single lane at times. What provided comfort in this particularly badly made stretch (and Kauser always got to drive the bad ones) were a host of windmills around us. Just like William wordsworth in his epic daffodils says," ten thousand saw I at a glance" there were windmills everywhere- silently spinning their lean blades and filling us and in particular pattu with awe( I was glad pattu's space connection didn't turn up for this one ). I was also glad because wind energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy and we were doing something about. Now how well the energy generated by the hundred or so mills here is pumped into the grid is anybody's guess but atleast there was some effort being made to save the planet in this industrial belt. It also was a study in contrast. We were driving what the Americans would call a tiny frugal car yet we were adding kilos of CO2 into the atmosphere whereas all around us these windmills were practically generating energy from the same atmosphere.
All this while we were severely behind in time. The sun was setting and we were not even half way through home. My mom kept calling me and I kept telling her more distance than what we had actually covered to prevent her from panicking and worrying how someone as direction challenged as me would make it home by night. The roads kept getting worse. By the time I started driving at davangere it was dark and the roads had improved but only slightly. The number of motorable lanes still kept changing and I wasn't even sure we d make it before my birth day which was the next day.
We made a stop for dinner at a place which was an excuse for a dhaba. Food was terrible and all the diseases which spread through water that I had studied in high school came to my mind. Bhattad took over the driving and unleashed his fury on the highway. Wejust about made it by 12 and yes, I did celebrate my birthday at home. ( Yipee!! ). I was really relieved when I convinved the blokes not to "make my birthday " at home. They threatened to make up for it on the beach. I consented. Being beaten in front of strangers is far less embarrassing than in your own home, in full gaze of the family.
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