Thursday, June 01, 2006

Cochin Diary

I stay in a flat with four of my friends, in Cochin. This account of our morning schedule was written a long time ago ,soon after we moved in.
It's six in the morning and the alarm rings. I wake up swich it off, feel really lazy and think i'll sleep for five more minutes. Merlin's alram rings and i realize that my five minutes has as usual turned into half an hour and as usual, again, Nithya is already in the kitchen. Regretfully, tearing myself away from my warm bed, i get up and waking Merlin, go and help Nithya in the kitchen. The coconut that we bought last night in a fit of culinary extravangce has to be broken and there's nothing around remotely capable of doing the job. I try the iduki for a long itme but it dosent seem to even make a dent . Each of us takes a turn but nothing seems to shake the unbreakable coconut. We then try the marble slab in the kithchen and obviously i am the one who ends up breaking off piece of the marble. We finally decide to do what we should have done long ago - take it up to the terrace and break it on a stone there. So merlin and me set out to the seventh floor to break our coconut. The job is done in less than a minute. We come back triumphant, its already seven and we have to rush.
Merlin and Nithya have a bath while i scrape the cocnut and gowri cooks the brinjals. Before we realize, it's eight and we run out of the house, scattering all things in our path. We rush to the bus stop and wait- we are just in time for heaven... "Heaven??" u ask? actually thats the name of our bus, proudly sporting a sticker that says "Welcome to Heaven". What kind of a bus could this possibly be you wonder? Renaming it "Hell" is a well-worn joke by now. Resembling a tin can on wheels we wait in perennial anticipation of the time when it will fall apart. In fact its a wonder that it still hasn't, considering the way its driven. The bus arrives, bursting at the seams,and we somehow manage to squeeze in and try holding on soemwhere tightly. In less than a minute we are off on our ten minute roller coaster ride. The driver dosen't know the meaning of the word 'slow'. He either drives at breakneck speeds or brakes to a bone jarring halt, with us holding on in fear of our lives and wondering when we will head out of the windscreenand hoping at the same time that we will not be squeezed to death. All men are equal to him, he tries his maximum to kill them all. A few lucky souls get space to sit in between, but soon info park nears. We fly around the last curve and we get down, happy that we have survived today.

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