Hence i reached Sounak's place.A 2 BHK flat, a laptop and a couple of unpacked suitcases. He had just shifted to the flat the last night. I washed myself clean and we set out for greames Road Apollo, Saunak's office was on the way. On the road, we found a place to eat our breakfast. We were unsure, yet we saw some guys having poori with some masala dosa sabjee. No questions, we ordered for that. The man who was serving understood that these might be some bloody IT folks, though we were not..completely...Anyways, not much of an excitement there, we set out for the bus which would take us to Apollo. Saunak was new to Chennai and did not know the bus details. We found a guy on a scooty, stoped him by and started asking in english. After sometime, he replied back..."Hindi hai kya"? As if he classified me to be an Indian. We were shocked to hear that yet, he replied back in some broken accent that Bus No. 42 would take us to Apollo. We went to the other side of the road and started waiting for the bus to come. During a 5 minute standing time period, i saw about 10 buses passing us by, none of them were 42. I ghushed into Saunak, "Do you really want to go in these"? He said, well if you are in chennai, you have to be a Batman or a Superman to travel on those buses. People were literally hanging out of the doorstep. This was worse than the number of people i saw for the first time on Bonga Local. We changed our minds. Took an auto. It had a meter, which was fully functional. Saunak with his overtly oozing intelligence asked the Auto guy, about how much he would be taking. The guy replied back saying, 80 Bucks. I was like, why did he have to ask him. Anyways, i was constantly monitoring the Meter. It read 3 Kms and i reached Apollo. I knew from the moment i got on to the Auto that, this won't be a very good day for my wallet.
So i came to Apollo Chennai, the place renowned for India's best treatment. My brother asked me to wait near the main entrance. To my shock i found that everything there was first written in English, and then??? BENGALI. It did not take me long to percieve two things. First one that Bengal doesn't have good facilites and second that Bengalies might be one ethnicity that suffers the most due to deases. I met the patient and everything looked normal there. So i was happy. We went for lunch, me and my brother. To my surprise again, i find that he has taken me to a bengali Hotel. The guy was charging prices for ordinary meals as if he was the worst victim of the Inflation and the economic slowdown. I was more eager to end the day, as it was getting under my skin. I took the 11:15, bangalore city express and came back to the place i love being, Bangalore.
The next day, people at office asked me about my experience about chennai. Now how do i tell them...Its all described better with the words above!
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