Hubli, Here I Come

I live in Chennai, a city where smoke-spewing government buses and autorickshaws are more efficient as fumigating machines than the contraptions used by Chennai Corporation during their annual exercise to drive away mosquitoes during the dengue/malaria seasons.
I also drive on the roads of this great city; roads that appear to have been inspired by the landscape on the moon. I curse too, just like my fellow city dwellers, of the inefficiency of the city administration; of the inability of the garbage collector to clear the dustbins on time; of the inability of the traffic cops to regulate traffic; of the bad condition of metropolitan buses and of the lack of basic infrastructure in the city.
But there are places worse off than where we stay. This is just my experience, the good and bad:
Eyes wide shut
Having left Chennai the previous afternoon at 1:30 p.m. it was quite a long journey and I felt tired despite having gone to sleep early that night.
But it was not an uninterrupted sleep as I had wished. Twice a truant cockroach woke me up by playing hide-and-seek with me by crawling between my bedsheets. Once raindrops dripped onto my head through the closed window and the other time then a kind gentleman sleeping on the upper berth dropped the contents of his pocket right on my head and woke me up in the middle of the night to help him find it.
My fiancée and her dad came to meet me at the station at 6:30 a.m. I was quite groggy when I reached the Hubli station and had to sleepwalk till I reached the auto stand. A long queue of autorickshaws stood outside the station - old ramshackle Lambrettas - that had gone out of service in Chennai long ago.
I proceeded to sit, but my fiancée motioned me not to, for then I realised the bargaining and had not yet begun. The auto driver demanded a hefty Rs 60 for a mere 5 kms, which I thought was too steep even by (CAFS) Chennai Auto Fleecing Standards. Anyway, we got into the auto after bringing down the price to Rs 45.
Ride of a lifetime
Day 1: I have always been uncomfortable sitting in autos that had bucket-type seats. For they make me feel like sitting on a closet. Nevertheless, that was only the least of the problem that lay ahead. We hit the road at 30 kms per hour. Mangal made me sit between her and her dad. They had a good reason to do that. As we approached the road along the Hubli Airport, they clung on to the autorickshaw harder than before. Being the uninitiated one, I did not attach any significance to the change in their posture as I sat dozing with the suitcase on my lap.
Within a few minutes I began to feel the auto wallop like a horse let loose from its stable. I was rudely woken up from my semi-slumber. It was akin to being tossed inside a spin-drive of a washing machine, minus the water to cushion your fall. My stomach churned, twisted and turned as we happily bounced down the "pit-holed" roads of Hubli.
As the journey progressed, so did my agony, since the roads appeared to be getting steadily worse to a point where I had seemingly managed to defy Newton's Law of Gravity by being perpetually in a state of suspended animation.
There appeared to be a strange pattern to the law of perpetual motion which I appeared to be experiencing during this apparently perpetual ride in the rickety auto: At slower speeds we bounced up and down but at higher speeds we oscillated left-to-right, which made me wonder if all three of us would ever reach our destination without facing the prospect of finding ourselves thrown on the road and the poor driver realising that his passenger had "left" him long ago only when he turned around to get his fare.
Truant traffic cops
Day 2: We got into the bus to travel to Dharwad, a 20-km ride to my granddad's place. We passed some breath-taking scenery of lush green paddy fields and mountains but I regretted not having taken my camera along to capture these awesome sights. But my thoughts were disturbed as we passed in front of the Hubli court. We waited for 25 minutes as the deputy chief minister made a surprise visit to the festivities marking the Karnataka Day.
The cops couldn't’t handle the traffic or the half a dozen cars accompanying the VIP's motorcade so they did something easier - they just towed away all the parked cars on that road and made way for the VIP and his henchmen to park their cars. This led to altercation between the traffic cops and the owners of cars that had been towed away. This in turn led to a traffic jam, which I am all too familiar in Chennai. That delayed our progress by 45 minutes, while my granddad waited for us at his place fuming at our delay and the delay we caused to have our lunch.
IT is a boom
Day 2: The brainchild of a previous chief minister, this IT park is housed in a lovely building that looks more like a shopping mall from the outside than an intended office space for major IT firms. Some folks, I am told, bought plots and houses around this building, hoping that the land prices would shoot once the IT boom hit Hubli. That was five years ago and they are still waiting for the boom to happen. Good luck, folks!
Story time
Day 2: Having visited my grand dad's place after nearly 15 years, it was time to recount old memories and the days of yore: The games I played with my cousin brother and how my elder brother at the age of three walked out of the gate and got lost with only my grand mother's photo around his neck to identify him. It was story time, I an adult but eager as a child, to know what my grand dad did as sub-inspector in the Customs Department prior to the independence of Goa from the Portuguese. The number of times he traversed through thickly-wooded forests on the trail of Portuguese smugglers and how he busted smugglers and their hideouts. It was like going back in time, when your parents used to tell you stories while you lapped up every word before your bedtime.
Mangal gets a fright
Day 3: The last day we went on a walk a few kilometers together early in the morning to lush green fields where a little pond appeared to have attracted buffaloes and several birds that I had never seen prior in my life. I could identify only the woodpecker but others appeared to be too exotic for me to identify.
Mangal talked about how we ought to get a house near a green field and amid pastoral surroundings. A house that should overlook a mountain, where the radiance of the sun should reflect from the water of a nearby pond and where the sound of chortling birds and the fragrance of flowers of homegrown garden should wake us up every morning.
As she kept speaking my attention drifted, as usual, and my eyes fell on a yellow band that lay near the slushy lake bed a few feet away from us. I realised that it was a snake that had been disturbed by our talk and our movement. He quickly slithered into the thicket. But not before I had pointed out to Mangal, who in reply, shrieked and pulled me away. We left in a hurry, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, notwithstanding, the snake or Mangal’s avowal of never venturing into a field again.