THE GREAT TRIP DOWN SOUTH

Went on a trip down south after a gap of nealy 20 years.

The Social Side

What did I see different?

Mobiles and computers have changed the face of many of the small towns and cities. The roads down south are wide and good. Maintained well. But public transport left much to be desired. The people in Madras still have a male female divide in buses. At least you can now sit together if you are family. The auto richkshaw and taxi drivers are still a menace. They charge anything from 50 to 20 rupees for a distance of 1-2 kms. They still use the same abusive language, and I can't understand most of the words they use. Almost all men think they are Rajnikants! And irrespective of the price of gold there is still a huge crowd in the jewellery shops!

The Scenery.

As I said many of the small towns have been transformed with the advent of information technology. So the small temple town of Srirangam now sports multistoreyed wedding halls, with a/c rooms. Almost eveyone owns a vehicle, otherwise they hire a call taxi. The scenic cauvery river , which trickles down during the summer, waiting for the release of water from somewhere upstream, is full of people cleansing away their sins. But instead of the cleat water we once saw, the water has plastic bags and other trash dumped into it.

Coorg the destination.

Amazing place. Though it is slowly yeilding to mordern day pleasures, the city ( known as Madikere) is great. YOu can speak Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam and English and get around the place. People are usually courteous and the weather very very pleasant. Even though we landed bang in the middle of the rainy season , we had some fun walking around the coffee plantations. The leeches too had fun at our expense. Whereever the eye could see, it was miles and miles of coffee plants.

Karnataka in general:

The Autorichkshaw guys have learnt a thing or two from their Tamil Nadu counterparts. If they sense that you are an outsider, then they just quote any number that comes to their mind. Then that is the fare.

We make such a song and dance about changing boards from English to Marathi etc. But in Karnataka they have quietly changed all boards to Kannada. With the result you cannot go anywhere without a transalator! YOu are just left staring at the buses wondering where the hell it is going to ! Long live Kannada!

Bangaluru is the same too. Now added to the traffic mess is the advent of flyovers.

The Flyovers.

Just like we have in amchi mumbai, the people there too seem to have a fancy for flyovers. At Chennai many of the places are so crowded , and so much of traffic jams because they are trying to squeeze in flyovers, wherever they can.

They are half finished, and sometimes you don't even know where they are meant to being and where they will come down ultimately.

Happy to be home.

After the long trip, it was heavenly to be back in sweaty , noisy humid, overcrowded mumbi.