::BitterTruths::

Two things happened last weekend for me.. At least i understood that only last weekend. The whole lot of migrated people like me in Bangalore city moving to their own native places to celebrate Diwali, every single mode of transportation is flooded with waters of tunga, bhadra and krishna.

First thing first…
A friend of mine is doing a photo story on migrated population in Bangalore with a detailed study on people from norht Karnataka. I was telling him sometime back that its sad to see them, working hard in bangalore for a single better meal a day. It didn’t strike me that I’m also on a migration here. But understood the truth only last weekend when i saw the millions of crowd in the bus/railway stations. If somebody is interested to do a story on the white collar migrations, please reach out to me. I will surely be of some use. .

Second thing second…
I generally don’t plan my trips to pondicherry. All these years, its more of a hop-on trips. I do standing journeys, break journeys, half journeys etc… as i just can’t book my tickets well in advance, like a friend of mine does train booking 60days in advance.

Ok.. now to the reality… I was waiting in the silk board bus stop for some bus. My mind said “dont wait for any specific bus.. just hop on”. My eyes were looking for the bus boards with place names like pondicherry, thiruvannamalai, cuddalore.. salem. I was even ready to take a bus to chennai and travel down 150kms to home. But, lucky me without waiting for a long, i got into a thiruvannamalai bus and even got to sit in Conductors seat. It took more than 180 minutes to reach hosur town, which is just 30kms from silk board. So much of Traffic, diversions and tsunami of cars moving to cross the state border to buy crackers cheap. I saw live, how difficult it is to drive a bus in such conditions, where you have men, women, bikes, cars, buses and trucks crossing in all possible angles. A fellow traveller in the bus was cribbing that he is getting late and asked driver to go FAST. The GOOD Driver’s Reaction: “I Can’t take any RISK here for you to Celebrate Diwali in time. We have NO DIWALI, Cos, I’m taking you to your home“. What a TRUTH. I was taken aback and was thinking about this for a while. I could just think. Nothing more i could do then..