London to Chennai...by train!

On the 14th day of the 8th month of the 9th year of this millennium, I boarded a train at an unearthly hour at London's St. Pancras International station. In my sleepy, groggy mind, I had no idea that in a few hours, I'll be one of the millions of people who have travelled from London to Chennai Central station. By train.

Allow me to give you some perspective. The normal flying time between London and Chennai is 10.5 hours, and that's if you get a direct flight. I covered the distance in 2.5 hours flat.

Before I start gloating over the achievement, could someone please tell me if Chennai has been renamed Paris? I'm aware there is a Parry's inside Chennai, but have they named the entire city after that corner? I ask, because, when I got down at Chennai Central, for some strange reason the name board read Paris Gare du Nord. I was going to Paris for a holiday with the wife, so you may say, if it said Paris Gare du Nord and you wanted to go to Paris Gare du Nord, it must be PGdN. Wrong. It was Chennai Central, I'm sure.

Here's why. We got onto the platform and immediately noticed the following:

• It was almost uncomfortably warm;
• None of the sign boards were in a language we could understand;
• The tracks were littered with, well, litter;
• The station was extremely crowded;
• The people looked at us as with more than a hint of suspicion; and most importantly,
• The toilet at the station charged us 1 Euro to take a leak in a dirty, smelly loo.

Now tell me, was I wrong in thinking I'd dosed off on the wrong train and somehow landed in Chennai Central? I only realised I'm at the intended destination when I left the station. There were no auto drivers fighting over who got the honour of my business.

Once outside the station, we had no doubts in our minds that we were indeed in Paris. Except while driving. The city was reasonably clean, well laid out and the buildings were simply amazing. The roads were comparatively wide (you must remember, I'm comparing the roads to London where roads are no wider than an old man's komanam).

However, Parisian drivers are a different thing altogether. They have the patience of a bee in a bottle - much like their Chennai counterparts. If you don't start moving at a brisk pace the microsecond the signal turns green, you can be darned sure that the driver behind you is going to glue his/her hand to the horn. This comes as a bit of a shock considering I've come from England where the drivers would allow you to complete your tea party and say tally-ho to your friends before a polite toot to draw your attention to the fact the signal changed to green last year and you're holding traffic up.

Quickly recovering from initial confusion and shock, I made swift progress and landed up in Disneyland, where we were lost in the magic of the place, with only the heat reminding us of Chennai.

PS: I just got back from a foren trip, so I am going to write a number of posts on crazy things that happened/occurred to me while in Paris :)