Its gonna be a long post.To savor the taste,sound and smell of real India you will have to travel in a sleeper class that was the lame reason Dad gave on booking the back ticket from Bangalore in a sleeper class.I don't think the statement has much to do with the love for the ordinary lifestyle it has more to do with monetary gain for it costs just 300 bucks for a sleeper class ticket whereas it costs nearly 2000 for a three tier AC. The changing phase of India was clearly visible on the ticket booking pattern for,there were seats available in sleeper while it was all filled in 3 tier.People are opting for luxury travel as compared to cheap travel and people are ready to shell out any amount of cash for the same.Students,housewives,singles,executives travelling alone can be a major safety issue and AC class promises a safe journey at affordable rates.AC travel offers clean toilets,bed sheets,pillows ,blankets,good food as compared to its poorer sleeper counterpart.Dad had to pull in all strings to get a tatkal,where in which you will have to pay the fare from starting station but,even a last minute booking will assure a seat.We got in Island express from Ernakulam town.There was a family already occupying the whole of six seats.The journey was kind of a reminder that people are not welcome to the whole privacy thing even now.Playing your mobile at high volume or showing the family snap to your fellow passengers,invading the leg space man it was tough.Even my poor Ipod couldn't save me from the noise level outside my bubble.What helped us to cut out our misery was the fact that the journey was an overnight one.At about 9 Dad indicated that it was bed time though 12 is the usual timings for us.We reached Bangalore 10 minutes before the indicated timings,another rare feat if it was about 5 -6 years before.Indian railways have gone a long way from its dubious reputation of being the snail service to a more time conscious service.Things have changed for better and I have only good things to say about their punctuality.

Its my first time to the garden city and i was on a tight schedule,after attending my GD and PI we went for a quick round through the city.I couldn't find much difference between Cochin and Bangalore,may be the cleanliness and the dressing sense,it clearly indicates the free spiritedness of the pub city as compared to the conservative eyes down in queen of Arabian sea.Don't ask how, but, we got stuck at Big Bazzar and with my mom's fascination for any thing free we decided to buy in tops under "BUY 2 GET 1 FREE SCHEME" thanks to the far sightedness of the employees my dad had to stand in queue for about one hour.Initially one of the dresses we selected was returned back owing to its unisex tag,well then why the hell have they placed it in the ladies section? okay,next the billing section didn't have a clue about the whole offer thing and they were calling in staff from every department.If they don't have a data base of their own offers why the hell do they give any?What we saw was poor display of retail management.Even the employees,had a tough time in understanding English as all they knew was Kannada and literally i had to put in every word in hand signals for them to understand.After the awful shopping experienced i logged to go back to the shops back in kerala where, you get personalised treatment + less tension. I rate the shopping experience as 2/10.

On our way back,we were booked into the seats 1,2,4 and after 10 minutes the toilet began to stink,topping it were a pack of guys who were stationed near our seats,the crowd got worse and after 30 minutes there were nearly 25 guys[ think they were going for some excursion] near our seat.Sleeping in such a scenario was out of question and the train was an overnight one an added misery.Leaving me and mom alone dad disappeared into the crowd,after about 15 minutes he came back with a jovial smile"we are shifting to 3 tier AC".Phew!!! may be dad had too much of the savoring the real India idea.We were back into the comfort of the cool chill and the rest of the journey was pleasant.Though we did smell and see the real India ,it was too much to handle may be because we are accustomed to small luxuries in life.Its difficult to burst out of it and join the crowd.India really looked gorgeous from within the glass window and that's all i wanna experience right now,anything above or below it too hard for me to digest.