SON, WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME :
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I was probably just about to enter my teens then and summer vacations meant a trip down to Coimbatore to spend a couple of weeks with my maternal grandparents, uncles and cousins and this time was not any different. Two months of time to kill. Cell phones were part of science fiction movies and...
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entertainment primarily consists of travelling & outdoors. Television was always restricted to those 2-3 hours of bland meaningless babbles when broadcast did happen, of which a good half hour is spent in aligning the receiving antenna in search of good signal which is always around and never found. It was one of those nights and an adhoc idea floated around to visit the Nilgiris the next morning. I was caught off guard and started fantasizing my trip on the "OOTY TRAIN", presently called NMR (Nilgiri Mountain Railway), only to be disappointed as the plan was brutally dismissed considering paucity of time. Who wants to enjoy the journey when the destination in sight. In my frustration, I kicked off the receiving antenna and I guess started receiving alien signals probably later intercepted in the making of Krrish, the Indian version of ET.
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Fast forward a quarter century (Phew!, thats a while), things have changed now. Television is 24x7 and the number of channels exceed my counting ability. Watching the road is happenstance and is an event only when we are tired of looking at our mobiles. Everyone looks like a spy straight out of a Ludlum novel with gadgets and wires hanging out all over the place. Certain things never change and my undying desire to travel in the NMR is one such constant. The last few years I have been blessed with a set of like minded folks who share the same idiosyncrasies as mine and an NMR travel did become a reality, which is for a recollection at a later stage. However the ride made me realize what my father stressed earlier 25 years ago, "Son, we do not have the time". How true! The beauty of the NMR was breathtaking and it was clear as day that the 5 hrs riding the train uphill from Mettupalayam to Udhagamandalam is indeed not enough. So when my crazy group decided to take a hike along the tracks to Coonoor, it was no brainer and the decision was made.