The Devil and the Mean Machine

It was 2:30 AM on 23rd day of December 2006.

My mobile phone wakes me in the impetuous hours of the morning. I had gone back to bed very late at around 11:30 – Out of the Bed with a premature sleep. Still I am hovering around the subject of getting up early but I have forgotten to mention the reason behind the act of getting up so early. Yes!!! It was an outing whereby I was driving to Chennai with my wife as I didn’t get any train/bus tickets. That sentence is a usual one which we can hear from any software engineer in the so called Silicon city of South-west India.

3:54 AM

We leave home to pick up our friend at Madivala as he also wanted to go to Chennai and had the same state of ticketing affairs.

4:30 AM

We pick our friend Vijay successfully in the midst of all the Dog Barks/chases. It was a chilly morning to start the trip with.

4:35 AM

We hit Hosur road and were cruising at 80 Kmph to find some wrong side road travelers. Lorries and trucks come directly on the opposite side of the road and we were surprised with one too many of those. Me being a First timer for Indian road long distance travel, I kept myself well informed by reading a lot of blogs over the internet a couple of days before this planned trip. But successfully we win over that kind of traffic conditions and hit proper NH 7 devoid of any rude travelers to find that we have already reached Hosur.

It was pretty dark in the morning and we are already cruising at around 95-100 Kmph on NH7. But I was able to see a lot of valleys and ghats sections after hosur which was pretty nice with feeble traffic. It is high time that I illustrate about my MEAN Machine which was carrying 3 of us at a very comfortable speed of 100 Kmph.

87 bhp @ 6000 rpm, 1.3 Litre engine, 4 cylinders and a 16 V with multi-point injection. Hatch back with a dangerous combination of a devil that has passion for driving on the “driver’s seat” and a soft natured life partner on the seat beside who is scared to see the machine turn fast so flawlessly at sharp curves and turns. Not to mention about my friend Vijay who was sleeping on the rear seat.

Am I over boasting about a simple Maruti Swift. You bet I am not so… you need to drive it to know it better. It is simply superb to maneuver.
5:30 AM

A sharp left turn and a scary one even for me, takes us into the Krishnagiri area. Now we start hitting zones where we are expected to shed out some weight from our wallets for which we have spent early mornings and late nights at office. I am talking about nothing other than money, money, money. Yes!!! We are at the Toll Booth and we shed Rs25 for the awesome driving conditions that we experienced for the past few minutes. I would not be describing about what we spent on the next 3 tolls on our way to Chennai (Amounting to Rs 35 Rs 45 and Rs 25 in order from Bangalore to Chennai).

6:30 AM

We were near a small village called Kethandapatti (Piece of Personal Info: This town is my mom’s native town). This is the place where Mr.Sunlight checked us out and said a Very Good Morning filled with Fog. Even though Visibility was good, it was very chilly outside and I had to switch on the demister very often to get rid of the fog deposits on my wind screen. This is the only reason for which I used the Air Conditioning of my car. The overall usage of AC was for about 20 mins in the full trip from Bangalore to Chennai for demister purposes only.

7:15 AM

My wife and friend claimed that they were pretty hungry and needed some breakfast but I was very much engrossed in the superb driving conditions and forgot about breakfast.

8:15 AM

I had avoided stopping for breakfast as I did not find any motels. Finally we reached a place called Paramount Inn at Sriperumbudur for a breakfast stopover. Sumptuous Masala Dosas and we were off to Chennai.

9 AM

20 mins after our breakfast we reach Chennai to get stuck in the awful Chennai truck traffic. All our great driving experience got over shadowed by the traffic inside Chennai city. Anyway, we needed to go to Triplicane which is at the East end of Chennai and we were entering Chennai from its west end (Poonamalee).

10:15 AM

After some long hauls inside Chennai city we reach home to find my parents standing in the balcony to greet us. They were 2 relieved souls after seeing us reach home. I did a tin top check of my car to find some unknown scratches from some “cursed highway stones”. Nevertheless, I would never regret a ride like this to escape with minor scratches to my tin topped mean machine.

My mom greeted with some good coffee and we had 2 good days of break to follow.