Wednesday, July 21, 2010

A 10 year old scooty, two girls, hot summer afternoon,a wide Raj Bhavan road and the burning and scorching heat.







                                 It’s been a real long time since I have blogged. Well, it’s my 3rd blog and again I am up to writing about an incident that happened on one of the main roads in Chennai. And incidentally I was with one of my cousin’s that day. My little cousin Andrea was celebrating her 3rd birthday and I was invited. I was apparently in college that day and took a half day off from college. To my luck I caught an AC bus (Thanks to the considerate govt of TN) and was enjoying the ride when my 17 year old cousin Cecile called me saying her phone was dumped with virus and that she wanted to give her mobile for service. Luckily her phone was still under warranty so we  decided to take it so the authorized Nokia Service centre.
                              Being a hosteller in Chennai and  a resident in one of the hostels in the most remote part of Chennai, I barely had any knowledge of the city and its shops. Though I promised my cousin that I would help her in all the way I could, I knew deep inside that it was indeed difficult. I reached my uncle’s place in Saidapet and my cousin was ready to go to the service centre. I had no idea as to how we were going to make it. After enquiring to a few friends about the whereabouts I had decided that the best option would be to hire an auto. To my astonishment my cousin had asked my aunt whether we could use her scooty and my aunt had agreed to this. Driving was never new to me. I had owned a two wheeler license for 6 years but the thought of driving on such a wide road with almost a quarter of chennai’s population commuting on that road made my heart skip a beat. It was an embarrassment if I said I couldn’t drive and I would have failed to meet my cousin’s expectations. I had no option left but to take this risk. She handed me the keys and after a bit of intimidation by my aunt we started the scooty( say a rugged vehicle).  The mechanism to ride the scooty, as instructed by my aunt was this,

 Aunt : Just hold the brake and kick start the bike.
 Me and my cousin ( with weird looks): Okay aunty we will take care.

                We got out of saidapet to the main Raj Bhavan road with much difficulty. Having no idea of any of the shops there we moved on. I told my cousin that I had seen a Mobile store and we could check out there. We failed to realize that we had actually missed that shop a few yards back. We were enjoying our new found independence when suddenly I realized that I had forgotten to carry my license with me. On seeing a cop I raised my scooty and drove with a speed that the scooty had never been driven at. My hands started to tremble when I saw two cops catching people without helmets. I suddenly felt my head was warm which made me realize that it was the heat and I didn’t have my helmet  L. After crossing around 20 shops ahead of The Mobile Store did we realize that we had actually crossed it? We decided to finally take a U- turn and reached the shop. Heaving a sigh of relief and thinking that our excitement was over we enquired and the shopkeeper said that we had to go Nokia Care that was situated on the same road opposite to some college. My cousin encouraged me saying that since we had driven so far we could make it.  We drove and drove but couldn’t locate the college nor the shop. After driving back to little mount and getting scolded by all the people on the road from the auto-drivers to bus drivers we reached a point where it was written in bold letters “WAY TO T NAGAR”. TNagar is like the hub of shopkeepers in chennai. We thought we may find the shop there but to our dismay that option was a waste. We finally landed up buying a few accessories and returning back home.
       While reaching back home we were questioned on why did it take so long? We couldn’t tell them the actual reason or we knew we just could never roam around like that. My cousin just looked at me and winked and I knew that it was the best possible ride I ever had in Chennai. J