A few years back, 55 months to be precise, I blogged about my feelings on moving to Chennai for work (what was a new place then for me). And from Chennai I move to Anand (in Gujarat, the AMUL place) for a 2 year post graduate course in Rural management. AMUL stands for Anand Milk Union Limited. I always knew that there was AMUL in Anand, but never knew that there was Anand in AMUL, until IRMA happened that is.
Anand is a small city and IRMA is an even smaller place, so I am probably not going to talk about the architecture as I did when I wrote about Chennai. The journey was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that I pulled every possible string to get a tatkal ticket for travel in 2nd AC. No amount of pulling yielded any positive results. I had to be content with a sleeper class ticket and pacified myself by thinking on the rural lines (rural means no AC) and hence I was doing justice to the career I was embarking upon. And when I told a very close friend about this journey in sleeper class, he talked about Shahrukh khan and Swades. My friend and Swades never fail to cheer me up. I never listened to any of the Swades songs in the journey though.
Still the line "Mitthi ki hai jo khushbhoo tu kaise bhulayega" was a pleasant companion through a part of the journey - courtesy the monsoon showers in the western ghats which made my second morning of the journey such a wonderful experience. Damn the AC I thought because of which I would have surely missed the rejuvenating scent of the first monsoon showers. Add to that the excitement of looking at new places through the grilled windows and trying to recollect any references from the geography learnt in school, it only makes the journey that much more interesting. I was hoping it would rain in Anand too, but its a hope I am still nursing.
And even before all this, on the first morning of the journey, the train which was suppossed to turn up at 4 o clock , made a drowsy arrival at 5 o clock. We always like the trains to be on time, but there are times when you want the train to be late so that you can spend those extra few precious minutes with your loved
ones who have come with you to the station. My parents, an aunt and a nephew were there to give me a send off. By the way, hope you were not thinking that I had a girl friend when I said 'loved ones'.
The train was pretty much empty when it started from Kakinada and the open spaces on other side of the window launched me into contemplation. And I ended up with this (which already appeared on my facebook status)
"Anand is a place. more importantly its also a feeling. the place is too far away from home and the feeling, am mostly home to. how much more will i have loved it if the A in IRMA was Anakapalle. both near and far, the single door to anand is now ajar. koooooooo. chuk chuk chuk." For starters, Anakapalle is a place near Vizag, my hometown.
I tried to sleep through the rest of the journey as much as possible. Not the easiest thing to do when being baked in a 45 degree C metal cage for most of the day.
Finally, the point is , I am back to school. New place, new people, new events and quite a departure from a lot of things that I have been doing until now. I have enjoyed my couple of days of stay here and really looking forward to posting a lot of interesting stuff about my tenure here for the next 2 years. The classes haven't started yet and I can't really talk about how I feel about being back to school. Just enjoying the new acquaintances and the gorgeous greenery around here. "Taking in the sights" they say.
