Thammampatti ((தம்மம்பட்டி) PART-1

 

captured by - @shwetarmanian

It was January 2017. The year had started off quite well; at least until that month. It was just after the new year craze had slowly started to tone down and now everyone was waiting for the Pongal holidays. Unlike my school in Delhi where we would barely get a day of holiday, Pongal here is an extravaganza so you can expect people to disappear for almost a whole week. Everyone was packing their stuff (and by stuff, I mean all the laundry that they were too lazy to wash) with the contentment of not having to look at the campus for the next few days. I was as usual seriously planning to get new movies and series to binge watch even though I was sure I would end up watching the same stuff on repeat.

Even though none of us morons are good with expressing emotions, I definitely do miss my family and home, especially at these times. Not that I am that much of help anyways but still some part of me wanted to be home because of how much I used to annoy my parents for being a lazy seal.

The five of us were as usual chatting in the evening. Sometimes I do feel that we would probably looked like those old grandmas who used to sit in the corridor and curse everyone in their family and street for no reason. Just then, in all randomness Mayaji suddenly invited me to her home in Thammampatti. I don’t know if you consider “You can come to my home and celebrate with us rather than sitting here like a lazy ox and doing nothing” as an invite and but I sure do. Even though this statement sounds pretty decent in English, in Tamizh , especially with her slang, it sounds pretty brutal.

Initially I did deny because who would like to be a nuisance to families, especially during holidays (Also the fact that they already have to deal with Mayaji) , so I thought “let’s not be a burden for them” but then I decided to go eventually since spending few days with them and in the village is much better than living four days in a hostel that looks like a haunted house in the night and ending up in an existential crisis, as usual. So I packed whatever clothing I got my hands on and we went off !.

The bus journey from Thanjavur to Trichy is always a memory to take in. We could slowly feel a sense of relief as our college campus started getting farther and farther and finally disappeared. The evening weather, greenery on both sides of the road, Ilayaraja songs and in the midst of all this, the bus conductor whose voice sounds like he swallowed up a speaker; it all adds so much more to the journey, even if it sounds chaotic.

Then we got down at Pālpaṇṇai (பால்பண்ணை) and then took another bus to reach the central bus stand. Since we had a lot of time left for the next bus, we went on a shopping spree. We roamed around a whole shopping complex only to get a pair of pants for 200 bucks. Even the sales staff got tired of waiting around us and went for other customers. After some time we finally found our bus and before I could turn around to ask her “எரி ஒக்காந்தருவோமா ?” (shall we go and take a seat?), she was nowhere to be found, and I started circling around looking for her only to find her sprinting ahead and just throwing her bag on whatever seat she found empty ; I was blankly staring at her face for the next 2-3 seconds wondering “how did you?”. For the next 5 minutes, that incident kept rewinding in my head and we were laughing the whole time. 

We continued the rest of the journey with our well curated travel playlist that we did carefully after numerous research. To be honest I don’t think any one of us had put this much effort and planning in our academics as we have in our music playlists / movies. I mean, priorities right ?!

No matter how soundproof, expensive and high-quality your earphones are, it still won’t be able to save you from the deafening horns of Tamilnadu state govt. buses. After managing through all that chaos, we got down at another bus stand and no; the journey is not over yet.

See you until the next part of the journey. Thank you for reading :)

 

 

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