weekend-la evida poyee? (another long post!!!)

Whenever I think of cochin (Kochi), the first thing that comes to my mind is this video from the movie ‘kathanayagan’ in which 2 guys are duped by a boatman who promises to take them to Dubai and leaves them in Cochin instead. If you grew up watching tamil movies you know this already. But still worth a flashback!

So, we were at Ernakulam last weekend for a friend’s wedding and stayed an extra day to roam around the city. Thanks to a 14 hour bus journey and absolute lack of planning from my end, we almost missed the wedding. But we made it finally though I was being a nervous wreck (you would be too, if you had to drape a saree over full-length track pants! red ones!) Anyhow the groom is our mutual friend (there aren’t many in that category btw) from ancient college days. As much as I get upset about people who look just the same after a decade or so, I had to make an exception for this wonderful couple and feel genuinely happy for them! I would have loved to take them out for dinner or invite them home or something. But then, Indian weddings! sigh…

So we got back to the hotel and for a change I fell asleep while the TV-maniac I married was watching some Malayalam movie. He likes Kerala, I think. May be we should settle there. Anyway, once I woke up, we went for a walk alongside the backwaters to marine drive and into some mall. We even checked out a movie hall but hello! it was friday evening and Christmas at that. The streets were crowded and it was rather hot; that was one thing I didn’t know about Kerala – its hot and humid and the beach is not what we (the chennaivasis used to marina and elliots and tiruvanmiyur beaches) think it is. But the nicest part of the evening was when we sat by the water in silence and thought our own thoughts – me about the water and the sky and the shadows; the man about the ships and the cranes and light-house… the not so nice part of the evening was that we walked all the way and back and couldn’t find a single stall that sold fried fish. In fact in the 2 days I spent there I didn’t get to eat the kind of fish fry I was desperate to have. What kind of a coastal city is that? I am so not settling down there.

The next day we took a boat to Fort Kochi and from there to the Beach – there is neither a fort nor a beach according to me. But I did have ice-cream in a plastic ball after no less than 15 years. We took pictures of anything that caught our fancy, including a crow that was smartly surfing on a piece of sponge and other miscellaneous items floating near the shore (I remember a slipper, a bulb and a bottle; he claims the rest were all the plants we studied about in 8th class Botany, looked like junk to me!). His fantasy of eating in a food court in the pavement of a quiet street got fulfilled too; though it was terrible food, he took pity on the boys running the place and ate dutifully while the other ‘patrons’ were snarling at them. Then we took the local bus to come back to the hotel. He is trying to put me on an austerity drive I think.

The last leg of the journey was ironically the most interesting; we realized the Bangalore bus we were to take doesn’t come into ernakulam; we had to wait in some junction outside the city and stop the bus if we can. So we left a lot earlier than we planned to and settled comfortably in a bus-stop. The next 2 hours we were exchanging all the koundamani / vadivelu jokes we knew and laughed our heads off. Just when the cops would have considered arresting us for public nuisance, the bus came and thankfully it was a comfortable volvo coach. I slept like a baby till we reached Bangalore, oh no wait! we stopped at some place for dinner – potato wafers and water, that is – can’t blame us – the moment I came across ‘pees masala’ in the menu, I had to give up! (shudder!) And like that we were back home  discussing what went well and what didn’t. He must have had a point to make but I guess his tiredness took over finally, cos I really don’t know what he meant by ’tishtushness’… I didn’t ask him either, LOL!!!

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