The day was 13th October 2007. The sun began its journey around the earth (lets ignore Galileo for the sake of a dramatic beginning) assuming that it was seeing the same usual sights.
Not so my dear friends. Adithya was in for a mild shock, since he would have seen the Pattamadais in Besant Nagar begin their first road trip in India.
Without any more beating around the bush, I'll get to the details.
We originally planned to leave the house by 6.45 AM. We did make an earnest attempt, but the car officially left the house only around 7.30 AM. Just before we locked up our main door, I asked my father to get a couple of rusks, just in case Jimmy showed up when we started. I am not bringing in this rusk just to prove a point that I feed the hero of my street. Its just a point to be noted for future reference in this travelogue.
I somehow managed to get a few bhakthi paattu CDs. But these were never used, since my parents believe strongly that listening to music distracts the driver totally.
I started off with nearly a quarter tank of petrol. Raghu had mentioned the previous night that the price of petrol in Pondicherry (which was en route) was quite less and so advised me to fill up my tank there.
Some 30 minutes after we started, we were motoring along the ECR at a fair speed. Of course, I had to be on my best behavior in terms of my driving, since its taken me around 5 years to convince my parents to come with me on a long drive. So, I never really crossed the 80 Kmph mark, didn't overtake a vehicle unless it was clear that not even a leaf was moving on the other side of the road for the next 500 metres, didn't honk too often, didn't mutter under my breath (swearing was obviously ruled out) etc.
Anyways, we planned to have our breakfast somewhere along the route. While we were near Mahabalipuram, we started looking out for decent eateries. There were quite a few that had put up hoardings on the roads but none of them proclaimed themselves to be 100% vegetarian. So we continued to look for one such joint.
I did spot some signs for a motel that was 100% veg. When I mentioned that to my parents, somehow they started scanning the left side of the road and didn't find anything. The motel was on the right hand side and while crossing it, I told them "dho inga irukku". For what I thought was a vague reason, they continued to look for something on the left side of the road. When I told them that it was on the right hand side and that I had crossed it, I was asked to drive along and stop at the next joint that was on the left side of the road itself.
Kapish? The basic idea was that I was supposed to stick to the same side of the road and not make a turn cutting across traffic flowing in the opposite direction, never mind even if there was no traffic. Yes, that was the reason.
So, I had no choice but to motor along hoping to find the next decent place to eat. It will surprise you no end that it took me another 100 odd Kms to find such a place. More about that in Part 2.
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