Day2 - Eat eat eat...

I and Kashyapa went on a newspaper hunting spree in Solapur. Something that I (even Kashyapa) cannot forget happened on the platform. The platform was full of vendors and passengers. As I and Kashyapa were heading back to our compartment, a young man from inside one of the compartments came to window and spat mouthful of water onto the platform as if it was his private bathroom. People on the platform standing near that window jumped in all directions to avoid being hit by the oral missile. The man went back to his seat and life on the platform returned to normalcy. U really cant help these things. Can U?

Most of the morning we spent trying to get to know each other. I, Lakshmi, TC and Guru were classmates before. But I had hardly met the other 4 (Goutham, Chethak, Kashyapa and Tholpi). Goutham proved be a not so serious as I had initially thought. In a sense, he was a typical engineer, like, his love for RX 100. He could also talk about a camera like an expert. (Dont ask me if he is really one ;) ). And he was total manager when he spoke about his clients, his company etc. I was really amused to hear that he had submitted his resignation to his manager when he was declined 2 weeks leave for this trek. For most part our train journey, he was wondering as to what would have happened in his office after his heroic resignation.

And his friend Chethak was an "Amazing" character. He was a software engineer who also did part time Paurohitya (priesthood). To add to it, he had the looks of a model. But the most charecteristic feature of his was his story telling abilities. Over the next couple of weeks, he enthralled us with numerous stories. He specialized in crime Diary kind of narration (Ravi Belagere style).

The day was dry and hot. But much better than what we had expected it to be. Traveling through Maharashtra and MP in the month of May, we had expected it to be sizzling hot. But at no point was it unbearable. However, we did sweat profusely and consumed gallons of "mineral" water.

To go with water, we had banana, cucumber, vada pav, etc. We seemed to have unlimited supply of sweets with my and Kahsyapa's kobbari miThai, TC's "sweet puDi", Chetha's badam burfi, my box of chocolates, etc. adding to the sweet reserve. :)

Our staple diet mostly consisted of chapatis, to be precise, lots of chapatis, to be more precise, about 130 of them!!! :O Kilograms of varieties of gojjus, multitudes of uppinakayi, dashes of cheTnipudi, dozens of packets of sauce/ketchup were also consumed along with the chapatis. Well, thats not all... we also had heaps of puliyogare which our cheif vendor of perishable foods (yours truly;) had brought!!!

Manmad wishing us good luck :)


Sumanth

PS: With inputs from Kashyapa