I had to increase the speed in which I approached the monorail station. It is just a minute walk from my office to the Meenchanda monorail station in Kozhikode. If I miss this train, the next one would be only after another ten minutes, which is a big loss. Ten minutes is enough time for Usain Bolt to cover the hundred meter race sixty times, so it definitely is a big loss!! At this age where everything else seems flourishing and growing and purchasable, time seems to be the same scarce thing which it was thousands of years ago.
The trip from Meenchanda to Kozhikode railway station in the monorail is just the first leg of my daily trip back home. I work in an IT company in a park near to Meenchanda in Kozhikode. The ride from Meenchanda to Kozhikode HSRC station takes around ten minutes. If you wonder what is HSRC, it is High Speed Railway Corridor established all throughout Kerala, through which people can commute all along in super fast speed. So, from Kozhikode HSRC station, I need to catch a high speed train to Kochi, it takes around forty minutes (Wow, that's 200 kilometers!!). Then the final leg, from Ernakulam South HSRC to Pettah in Komet (Kochi Metro) takes around ten minutes. And, not the least, the five minutes walk home. If you are smart and following me closely, you would have already calculated that it takes an hour and six minutes for me to get back home from work. This travel time was a big consideration for me to pick up a job offer from Kozhikode, but now I'm used to this.
Finally I got my train just in time, and that connected me in time for the high speed beauty which leaves the Kozhikode HSRC station at half past five. I got into the train, and took one of my favourite side seats. I normally spend the commute time in HSRC very wisely, by opening up my ipad and finishing up my pending emails. There are a lot of kids on the train, they have their schools in Kozhikode because it is convenient for their parents to pick them up. My son is also in same situation, but he does the schooling in Thiruvananthapuram. My wife picks him up on her way back, again the wonders of HSRC. I would definitely call it the eighth wonder of the world, especially since I haven't seen the seven others, I can't perceive how some other thing in the world could be a better wonder than this. Things have changed drastically over the last ten years here.
I went back to concentrate on my ipad. Most of the kids around me are also busy doing their homework in their tablet. Unlike in my days when we carried a 5kg bag everyday to school, these kids carry a 200 grams tablet, which contains their classwork, homework, test results, and even report cards. The report cards are password protected, and the password is SMSed to the respective parents to open and sign them digitally, so no manipulation is possible like in my times. Poor kids, I thought!! They are losing a lot of fun.
Thinking about whether it is safe to hand over India's steering wheel in future to these less experienced beings, I slowly fell asleep.....
Someone shook me, and said "Wake up". Oh crap, may be some random ticket examination in the train. Or did I sit on some handicapped seat? I opened my eyes, surprisingly to see my wife. "How come, you are not supposed to be in this HSRC", I said. "What HSRC, it is time to go to office", she said. Now I really opened my eyes good enough to see around. I'm still in my bedroom.
So, what was happening. Was that a science fiction dream? No, now I got it, I was reading the newspaper before going to bed yesterday. My brain simply trusted all that is said there will come true in the projected time. Well!! Now i realize why they print newspapers in the morning. People have enough time in the day to forget what they read, and avoid dreaming about any of the proposed development projects.
Trusting is very dangerous sometimes. Especially if it is trusting what the government says about development. And when combined with dreaming, it forms a vicious Bermuda triangle....Too dangerous, but too much scope for imagination.....
The trip from Meenchanda to Kozhikode railway station in the monorail is just the first leg of my daily trip back home. I work in an IT company in a park near to Meenchanda in Kozhikode. The ride from Meenchanda to Kozhikode HSRC station takes around ten minutes. If you wonder what is HSRC, it is High Speed Railway Corridor established all throughout Kerala, through which people can commute all along in super fast speed. So, from Kozhikode HSRC station, I need to catch a high speed train to Kochi, it takes around forty minutes (Wow, that's 200 kilometers!!). Then the final leg, from Ernakulam South HSRC to Pettah in Komet (Kochi Metro) takes around ten minutes. And, not the least, the five minutes walk home. If you are smart and following me closely, you would have already calculated that it takes an hour and six minutes for me to get back home from work. This travel time was a big consideration for me to pick up a job offer from Kozhikode, but now I'm used to this.
Finally I got my train just in time, and that connected me in time for the high speed beauty which leaves the Kozhikode HSRC station at half past five. I got into the train, and took one of my favourite side seats. I normally spend the commute time in HSRC very wisely, by opening up my ipad and finishing up my pending emails. There are a lot of kids on the train, they have their schools in Kozhikode because it is convenient for their parents to pick them up. My son is also in same situation, but he does the schooling in Thiruvananthapuram. My wife picks him up on her way back, again the wonders of HSRC. I would definitely call it the eighth wonder of the world, especially since I haven't seen the seven others, I can't perceive how some other thing in the world could be a better wonder than this. Things have changed drastically over the last ten years here.
I went back to concentrate on my ipad. Most of the kids around me are also busy doing their homework in their tablet. Unlike in my days when we carried a 5kg bag everyday to school, these kids carry a 200 grams tablet, which contains their classwork, homework, test results, and even report cards. The report cards are password protected, and the password is SMSed to the respective parents to open and sign them digitally, so no manipulation is possible like in my times. Poor kids, I thought!! They are losing a lot of fun.
Thinking about whether it is safe to hand over India's steering wheel in future to these less experienced beings, I slowly fell asleep.....
Someone shook me, and said "Wake up". Oh crap, may be some random ticket examination in the train. Or did I sit on some handicapped seat? I opened my eyes, surprisingly to see my wife. "How come, you are not supposed to be in this HSRC", I said. "What HSRC, it is time to go to office", she said. Now I really opened my eyes good enough to see around. I'm still in my bedroom.
So, what was happening. Was that a science fiction dream? No, now I got it, I was reading the newspaper before going to bed yesterday. My brain simply trusted all that is said there will come true in the projected time. Well!! Now i realize why they print newspapers in the morning. People have enough time in the day to forget what they read, and avoid dreaming about any of the proposed development projects.
Trusting is very dangerous sometimes. Especially if it is trusting what the government says about development. And when combined with dreaming, it forms a vicious Bermuda triangle....Too dangerous, but too much scope for imagination.....
