A little tribute to ECR*

there is innocuous charm in running away. so what's if it's a half-day get-away for an academic assignment. The sweaty bus-rides of chennai have become my latest fancy. The thrill of getting to the destination in the most absurdest of ways. It calls for handsome cliches but the irony lies in their actuality; wind in your hair resulting into exorbitant goosebumps that succeed.

It is an interesting feeling to be leered by locals while forming their queer assumptions about you, ranging from being a foreign national to a local hippie(how i revel in these). Their juvenile giggles and in your face stares. My encounters have so far been ingratiating in multiple ways. Whoever defined communication in the diaspora of language needs to be sleep-shaken.

I board buses riding on my instincts but often aided by locals who swell with pride in helping a pseudo distressed traveler. The bus-conductors ensure you don't sneak into privy slumbers through jarring Tamil videos that trail in your memory like fancy-dress ghosts. The village women do it subtler ways which means an overdose of jasmine injected in to your laryngitis and the passage beyond. I seek unimaginable comfort in the male fraternity that dare not ogle at you in a women-dominated vehicle(whoever talked of Tamil nadu being a matriarchal society)

In such good-willed environs one can't help dropping his guards. All the reasons that make my solo-trips a refreshing piece of memory every individual time. Today after my trip to crocodile bank which is some 42 km away from chennai, I felt enormously well-suited for roads. The roads that guarantee a bounty of experiences. The ones that lap you after adopting thousands before you. The roads that defy the purpose of gigantic buildings and redefine living all together.

* East Coast Road connecting Chennai all the way to Cuddalore.