Fell in love!

Something is wrong with my net connection at home. I have Reliance NetConnect using a USB modem and it has not been working since last week. Now, that is what has been keeping me from blogging (much to the relief of readers). This morning, I called up the customer care and they said something about a credit limit. Ridiculous concept – they give you a USB modem, tell you that you can download/upload up to 2.5GB and that your monthly bill would be 850+taxes (unless you go beyond 2.5GB of usage) and then your internet doesn’t work (even after you have paid your bills well before the due date) and they say, your credit limit is only 500 bucks and you can’t use more than that. What the heck!!!

I had gone to my home town (Coimbatore) for two consecutive weekends (some thing that I rarely do for fear of tiredness throughout the following week). The first weekend of June, I landed at Coimbatore North railway station at 6:30am and it was drizzling ever so slightly – a drizzle that could wake you up from sleep, but not make you wet, a drizzle that is like the droplets of water that hit you on your face when you are walking beside a waterfall. In the distance, I could see all the hills surrounding the city – the hills and the drizzle and the fresh, unpolluted air and the serene city (so far away from the rush and madness of Chennai) and was interrupted by, “Enga ammini pogonum?” – a burly auto-driver who, for some reason, reminded me of Teddy Bear and I fell in love with my home town all over again. The people here are, by far, the most respectful of the lot. Even fathers address their sons with respect – eg., instead of “Enga da pora?” (Where are you going?), they ask, “Engainga thambi poreenga?” The majesty of the hills (the elephant hill right behind my college, the Western Ghats where we used to go for summer camps/treks), finding virgin streams of delicious nectar (siruvani water), taking bath in small waterfalls which requires quite a few kilometers of walk into the forest and the amount of greenery (there are two institutions that keep the city green – The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and The Forest College campus) both within the city limits! All these (combined with the piping hot Chennai during the following week) seduced me into going there for the second consecutive weekend.

During the second weekend (yesterday and the day before), there was no slight, cool drizzle, in fact, the sun was out and although it couldn’t be called hot, it was warm outside and we (myself, my sis, and a couple of my coolest cousins) could roam around the city. We went to the zoo (I know what you are thinking right about now) and then to Pizza Hut – initially we decided to order pizza from home, but I decided against it because of this. :-) Anyways, we had pizza and fun and quite a bit of yelling from my mom who had cooked lunch for all of us and all the food had to go waste! :-)

Here I am back at Chennai and all the heat it offers. I guess the next weekend is going to be a visit to Pondicherry (with friends) or Kumbakonam to a few temples.