Well, it's 0130 on my watch and I gotta make tracks for Chennai airport. Am at this cool 24-hours cyber cafe at Chennai Central station - uploading my latest poem, 'Chingam 1' (written yesterday in Trivandrum).
I came in at 11.15 pm on the 6328 Korba Express from Trivandrum. It was a pretty comfortable journey with me sleeping flat out on the top bunk between 3 pm to 8 pm after a decent Chicken biryani. Talk about exhaustion!
Well, it's plain to see. I've been backpacking since 0555 on I-day (India's Independence Day, 15 August, 2008) when I scampered southward on the 2638 Nizamuddin-Tiruvananthapuram Swarna Jayanti Express to bag a few poems for my next volume.
Thank heavens for Cyber cafe's like this one - and the guys who man them through the night. At this time, on the margins of night and daybreak, all your friends have gone to sleep - so you'd be better off blogging.
At railwire it's Rs 20 an hour and they give you little railwire cards which you have to scratch on the reverse to fill in your user name and password. It says here on the reverse of the card 'If you have balance time on your card, preserve the card for your next visit until the expiry of card validity.' Which means Indian Railway plans to open up many more such centres. Hurrah!
30 minutes/ 256 kbps Assured Speed - Engage. Experience. Enjoy. That's the ad on the frontside of the card.
On my right the guy has just lay down on an unfolded carboard carton and gone to sleep. 'Tell me when you are leaving', he said before he dozed off. I am the only one here. I've been here almost 2 and a half hours now. The experience has been terrific.
But a word of caution - if your card runs out when you are blogging, you stand to lose your stuff if you have not saved it. (Hopefully it would have been automatically saved.)
When I ask why no one else is using the cafe, pointing to the hordes of people sitting vacantly at the station, he says they only come to sleep here. The 'pol-lees' will shoo them out soon. Because of the recent blasts in Ahmedabad.
But I guess whatever the divisive forces, India and its people will continue to trust each other.
I guess we are wired together - come what may.
I came in at 11.15 pm on the 6328 Korba Express from Trivandrum. It was a pretty comfortable journey with me sleeping flat out on the top bunk between 3 pm to 8 pm after a decent Chicken biryani. Talk about exhaustion!
Well, it's plain to see. I've been backpacking since 0555 on I-day (India's Independence Day, 15 August, 2008) when I scampered southward on the 2638 Nizamuddin-Tiruvananthapuram Swarna Jayanti Express to bag a few poems for my next volume.
Thank heavens for Cyber cafe's like this one - and the guys who man them through the night. At this time, on the margins of night and daybreak, all your friends have gone to sleep - so you'd be better off blogging.
At railwire it's Rs 20 an hour and they give you little railwire cards which you have to scratch on the reverse to fill in your user name and password. It says here on the reverse of the card 'If you have balance time on your card, preserve the card for your next visit until the expiry of card validity.' Which means Indian Railway plans to open up many more such centres. Hurrah!
30 minutes/ 256 kbps Assured Speed - Engage. Experience. Enjoy. That's the ad on the frontside of the card.
On my right the guy has just lay down on an unfolded carboard carton and gone to sleep. 'Tell me when you are leaving', he said before he dozed off. I am the only one here. I've been here almost 2 and a half hours now. The experience has been terrific.
But a word of caution - if your card runs out when you are blogging, you stand to lose your stuff if you have not saved it. (Hopefully it would have been automatically saved.)
When I ask why no one else is using the cafe, pointing to the hordes of people sitting vacantly at the station, he says they only come to sleep here. The 'pol-lees' will shoo them out soon. Because of the recent blasts in Ahmedabad.
But I guess whatever the divisive forces, India and its people will continue to trust each other.
I guess we are wired together - come what may.
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