My time at the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme also took me to many towns and cities within India. I particularly enjoyed one trip to the city of Trivandrum in the state of Kerala. Kerala is located in south India and has a wonderful climate and a very peaceful feel about it. I had made this trip to Trivandrum with a team of 6 boys from our training base in Madras. We traveled by train and arrived quite late at night. Anyone who has traveled on trains in India knows the chaos when you arrive at your destination. Dozens of bag carrier’s hassle for the opportunity to carry your bags for the few rupees you must pay. Some of these guys balance 2-3 large bags on top of their heads and walk through swarms of people, carts and the inevitable stairways before getting outside the station.
More chaos develops outside the station when you now negotiate for transportation to your hotel. The difficulty is that you are negotiating a transport fee to a hotel you have never been to before and have no idea the exact distance it is from the station.
When you do finally make it to your hotel you can still be told that there are no rooms available and you must continue to look around the city for other accommodation. Trivandrum was no different on this trip and it was about 1:00am in the morning when we finally got to our two rooms and prepared to get some much needed sleep.
On this occasion I was sharing a room with Bhaskar Chowdury and Anirban Baruah. We quickly organized our bags, got into bed and turned the light off. What followed next I will remember forever and it has become the source of much laughter whenever our old team gets together. Laying there in the dark, after a long train journey from Madras we each took our turn saying our goodnights. When we had finished saying goodnight I let out a audible sigh and said “aah, bed at last”! Suddenly a deafening bang shook the small room and gave each of us a huge fright. The noise had come from outside and we rushed to our window to see what had happened outside. We stood looking out the window in disbelief. Our hotel backed onto the local railway station but not only that, we were directly outside the area where the carriages were shunted together in preparation for their journey. Every ten minutes this enormous collision of carriages took place just outside our window!
After Trivandrum whenever I reached my destination I always checked the view outside my window to see who my neighbors were for the coming week.
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