#16315 Kochuveli Express

As usual, I crashland some 30 seconds before #16315 Kochuveli Express leaves platform5 and board coach S4.

#25: George Tom M25; Yours Truly.

#26: Emmanuel Jose M22; New to Bangalore. Asks me where I work. I give my one-word answer. Dude then rambles on for the next 30 minutes about Indiranagar and all the places along the way till Electronics City. Metro. Telecom Industry. Recession. MAS and Kairali. McDonalds and KFC. Shopping Malls. Kallada’s Volvo vs Shama’s Volvo vs Airavat. Android and iPAD and Kindle. Train touching Andra Pradesh before entering Tamil Nadu. Basically, me, some 4 years back. And I hate that guy.

#27: Santhosh Madhavan M28; Gets on to his funky winnow-sized phone the moment the train leaves the station. The next 2 hours, except when the signal breaks and our man religiously regains it, has a 70mm smile fitted on his face. Talks in extremely hushed tones, with frequent loud giggles. Valentines Day hungover cheap flirt, I conclude.

#28 & #29: Lindo Varghese M26 and Titty John M26: #28 takes out this laptop with, <wait_for_it>, 2 headphone ports. #29 adds his headphone too to the equation, and we have 2 best buddies staring into the screen enjoying a pirated print of ‘Pranayam’. Glued to the very same position for the next 3 hours and then #28 closes the laptop, saying “Aliya, we should have seen this in the cinema”. Was it tears in #29′s eyes?

#30: Maya Thomassukutti F25. DOES NOT CARE TO BOARD THE TRAIN!!!

And thus, for the nth time, Indian Railways teamed up with that son-of-a-son Murphy and pulled a hard one on me, this weekend, like every other weekend.

An Elephantine Elephant Herd

A huge herd, at least 55 strong.  Looked like they wanted to cross the road and migrate to the forests of Andhra like their forefathers used to do.

Just that the old small road is now a national highway connecting Bangalore to the cities further south. And that there is no forest whatsoever on the other side for many kilometers. They stay in the nearby forests and instincts bring them closer to the road in the night. Villages are petrified, crops damaged. People are on watch-towers (read tall trees), posted up there to give alarms to the villages if the herd moves in their direction. Crackers are burst, and they all shout in a crescendo trying to send them back to the jungle. Forest Department is torn among the man, the animal and their fatigue as most of them haven’t slept properly for weeks. Experts and research papers give various solutions. But no one is sure what to do.

With forest cover dwindling and we guys using the last remaining patches for over-grazing/over-fishing/over-mining/over-partying, there is no surprise we have such huge elephant herds literally waiting at zebra crossings. We need to do something; do something fast. The ball is in our court, but then, when was it in the elephant’s court ever?