the day started with a phone call… or the alarm, i don’t remember exactly. little later my friend called me up for help about buying some stuff on ebay. he wanted to buy a mobile. there, in the list of items, i saw a wrist watch with an inbuilt mobile! it was in my mind to have something like that from very long. i had considered having that in the past but the cost then was about 30K but this was only about 6K. though it was a china piece, its applications were immense. all i wanted was a working mobile that can be strapped on to the wrist. i was almost ready to hit the buy it now button when i realized i should have a look at the seller’s profile. i found that he was from chennai, only 2 hours away from where i was.
we had a placement training programme that day for which attendance was mandatory. so i set up a friend of mine to attend that for me when i was away. i packed up and left for chennai at 3 pm supposingly to return buy 11 pm max.
i first headed for the railway station but missed it by a kilometer. i walked back to the station only to find that there was no train to chennai until 6 pm in the evening. i went to the bus depot and took a bus and reached chennai at around 7 pm. after struggling for about half an hour, i found the sellers address. the movement i saw the thing that brought me to there, i was taken aback! though it resembled the pic posted on ebay a bit, nothing in it seemed special when seen in live. it had a poor interface, loose keypad and a very low quality camera. in few words it was a piece of crap! i din’t want to be rude to the seller so i said to him that i liked it but would come again to buy it. i left thanking the movement i decided to come to chennai and see it for myself before buying. if had ordered it online, i would never be able to forgive myself. i started back to college at 8 pm and the trouble starts now…
i went to the chennai central railway station and enquired about the next train to katpadi station (the station near VIT). the guy in the counter, told me that the train was cheran express on platform no. 10 at 9 o’ clock. i bought the ticket and went to the train and what i see in there?, there was a layer of people sitting on the floor and there was another layer of people standing over them! i wanted to get out of there and take a bus back to college but the chennai’s bus depot was very far away from there and also the train was a superfast so it would get me to college within two hours. i boarded the train it started. after patiently waiting for 2 hours, i find that train won’t stop at katpadi station at all!!
the next station was after 1 hour which sounded something like jagglurpet. i got off the train at 1 am and was going towards the counter to take a train back to katpadi when the platform ticket collector halted me. he asked me the ticket and which i gave him. he said i have to pay a fine of 250 bucks as my ticket was only till katpadi. i tried to explain him how i was misinformed about the train but he won’t listen. right when i was about to pay the fine, he said, “you seem to be a student, so just pay 150 and i’ll manage!”. idiot, i knew exactly what it meant. however, i gave him that as it was saving me a hundred. a train came at 1:45 am that brought me to katpadi station at around 3 am. instead of exiting from the main entrance of the station, i took a shortcut towards the college and ended up on the main road that lead to VIT. there were no autos or buses at that time. i could have walked but there were many dogs at a distance. i waited there for almost half an hour then came few bullock carts. i requested one of them for a lift and reached the college main gate another half an hour later. it was a tough time explaining the watchmen what happened, particularly with the bullock cart ride.
the movement i stepped inside my room, the time was 4:30 am. i din’t even have strength to explain what happened to my friends. i curse the movement in the morning when my friend called me. so much for a help!!!
