Beautiful Surat!!!
It was a bright Monday morning. I was trying to sleep, but the coldness of A/C kept me awake. I was in the train from Surat to Mumbai. It was a short journey of 3:30 hours, which gave me ample time to remember the course of events during the weekend.
November 8 '13
Saturday had an annoying start of day. My college mate Sundar had already asked me a few days ago if I could spare a weekend to go se his work location, i.e. Surat, as it was second Saturday, a holiday in most of the Maharatna and Navratna Companies of India. I had humbly rejected the request due to the appointment for agreement renewal. I regretted this when I heard about the agreement date had been postponed due to my broker's silly mistake.
Now I had to make up for this, more to myself than to my friend. I immediately called him that I was leaving for Surat. He was to hear the news. I checked the schedule for the train which was to leave at the earliest, quickly packed my bag with a few clothes, travel stuffs and took an auto to Bandra.
I did not have ticket for the train, as charts were prepared for all the trains which were leaving in the next hour. I had to go through the network of Ticket brokers in order to finally grab my ticket in Ranakpur Express that leaves from Bandra at 15:05. Buying a ticket at the 11th hour did cost me a fortune. Considering the salary I had then, I couldn't afford that kind of rate for a 3-4 hour journey in a train, but I did. Stubborn me! With ticket in hand and a few minutes left in the scheduled departure I decided to buy some stuff for my journey. I bought some snacks and a book (Secret of the Nagas: Second book in Shiva Trilogy).
My close to 4 hours of journey introduced me to the Indian region everyone has been talking about, mostly in a positive sense. I entered Gujarat.
...to be continued...
