I woke up early on Sunday to give me enough time to get ready and also to pack up my stuff to check out of my room. We had decided that since all of us were going to be away for the day in the college, we wouldn’t need to retain so many rooms. We left only 2 rooms so that we could at least keep our baggage and also allow the elders to rest during the day.
We were joined by another colleague of ours, who had come late on Saturday evening. After completing our check out formalities and finishing our breakfast, we boarded the Qualis to go to the College. We reached there in around 30-40 minutes. The campus was quite big and looked very green with lots of big trees around and beautiful landscaping done in front of each building.
We were informed that only 99 people had been identified for the interview. Since the panel was now 8 members strong (we got 2 more from other places), our calculations showed that we would wrap up the session by noon.
However, we could complete only around 1 PM and then we rushed back to the Hotel. En route, we made plans to go to Kalahasthi since we had some time on our hand. We reached the hotel, regrouped everyone and for lunch, we decided to go to another Bhimas hotel near the railway station. The restaurant in that hotel was apparently more famous.
We had a good lunch there and by the time we completed the lunch, it was 3.30 PM. Now, things were getting a bit close for the return home. My supporter and I preferred making the trip to Kalahasthi by cab, but no one would have it that way. But the main thing was that neither of us broached the topic since we knew for sure that it would be shot down like the Scud missile in the ’91 Gulf War. Since it was going to be only a bus journey, I opted out of the Kalahasthi visit and decided to join the parties returning home directly.
We went to the bus stand and were informed by the transport corporations that no tickets were available for any of their services till 8.30 PM. In effect, it meant that we had to just board any of the local services to Chennai. There were even suggestions that we just get on to any bus that is headed towards any of the places on any of the routes to Chennai and then hop on to any other bus from that place towards Chennai!
We all came back to the hotel and checked out of all the rooms. The party headed to Kalahasthi went their way and the rest of us went back to the bus stand. We were able to get a “route bus” that was directly headed to Chennai. Since it had just come in to the bus stand, we were able to get better seats. By better seats, I only mean seats that were not at the back of the bus.
But by no other yardstick, could the seats be described as being comfortable. They were cramped for 2 normal sized adults to sit. The unfortunate design aspect was that, even for the seats away from the door, there was a handle at the edge of the seat. This in effect meant that the person in the aisle seat, wouldn’t have been able to swing himself and make use of the aisle. Hats off to the APSRTC bird heads for coming up with this design!
[To b concluded in Part 6]
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