Basically a bunch of crazy things happened on my journey home from the weekend's frisbee tournament which climaxed at the point where I had to literally jump off a moving train and tumble onto the platform. I'm calling this the #GetKaylaHome saga because it was such a comedy act that I was needing to preserve through. Let me begin…
Updates from the National Frisbee Tournament
The tournament itself was a blast as I was in Chennai for the Regional Round of India's National Frisbee Tournament with my team from Bangalore. Chennai is some 6 hours due east of Bangalore, with Vellore just a quick 30 minute detour on the way. So my team rented a small bus (called a tempo traveler here in India), left Bangalore at 10pm Thursday night and picked me up on the way to the tournament at 4am from my house in Vellore at 4am. #Convenient
Morning midst got scorched away minutes after the Chennai sun appeared
The tournament ran from Friday to Sunday and consisted of the top 16 teams from the three major cities of south India (Hyderabad, Bangalore/Mysore, and Chennai). At the end of the tournament, the top 11 teams would move on to face the top 5 teams from North India in January's National Round of the tournament. There's a disproportionate number of seats given to South India because there are more teams coming from this region (kinda like the house of representatives vs the senate). #Merica
In terms of our playing, we had some ups and downs (4 wins, 2 losses) but we pulled out a big win against Airbenders, the #1 Bangalore team whom we had lost to in the championship games in the first two sectional tournaments back in Bangalore. In addition to the games, the weekend was a blast as our team rented out an entire air bnb house and went out late at night to futz around in the city, grabbing dinner and kulfi and tea and ice creams and juice and smoothies together each night. At the field between matches, we played games field games of ninja and save the queen, and ended up ambushing just about every player at some point on Saturday to body pass them into the mud pond which accumulated after the rain Friday night.
I'd say the only down side was that it absolutely poured Friday and Saturday nights, so the fields were soaked to the point where upwards of 40% of the field was straight mud. And I'm talking suctiony, loose your shoes in sink hole kind of mud. The kind where your shoe kinda makes a snapping noise as it unsticks from the muck. It made for some epic pics though (as shown here). So anyways, since I had missed work on Friday and we had already secured our spot in the nationals by Sunday morning, I decided to take the Sunday afternoon train home in order to be ready to hit the ground running with work well-rested on Monday.
So this is where #getKaylaHome becomes my mental mantra that kept my perseverance plunging forward despite the whole universe seeming to conspire in some kind of #SleeplessInChennai kind of plot. It all started after our Sunday morning match when I decided I'd grab the train back to Vellore while the rest of my team would head back to the field for the afternoon's game. It started getting dicey when at 11:30am Sunday morning while packing up from our air bnb, 2 hours before my train would leave Chennai central station, no Ubers were grabbing my cab request. Mind you, the railway station was about 1.5 hours away from our air bnb so I was looking at a half hour window to somehow find a cab to drive me. My team decided that the best shot would be for me to join them in driving to the field to buy time and if still no ubers would bite on my request, we'd actually have the 16 seater tempo traveler driver escort me to the railway station.
So sure enough, a half hour later when we arrive, still no Ubers are coming to get me, so the team jumps out of the bus which has now been tasked with swiftly Navigating dense Chennai traffic in order to get me, its sole passenger, to my train on time. Google predicts that we'll get to the station some 20 minutes before my train leaves, but this does little to calm my fears of what Chennai traffic may have in store. Despite the fact that the driver spoke minimal English, #getKaylaHome motivated me to desperately try to communicate using minimal words to convey a sense of urgency to the driver concerning our journey ahead.
We start cruising just fine, and then the driver pulls over to fill up with gas. I wasn't sure at this point if I had been successful in communicating the urgency and no tolerance for breaks in our trip, but I figured, ya know, if you need gas, you need gas. So I patiently wait as the gas station people pump the gas and then request over 2000 rupees for the tank. By my driver's reaction, I could tell he was insistent that he was being cheated of the price. Now, take a step back a moment - little cultural fact about Indian bargaining. I don't know if it's just supposed to be intimidating or what, but almost all clothing vendors or merchants will have this little button calculator which they'll ring up all your expenses on. Then they'll type in some quick multipliers to represent discounts that they're graciously giving "just for you" and then they'll flash the final amount on their little battery operated calculator screen at you as if the dexterity of the of the complex math is too incomprehensible for you to bargain back at their final offer. So at this point, I see my cab driver grab the gas attendant's calculator off the top of the gas station kiosk and start typing stuff in as if he's bargaining with these guys about the price of gas! They disagree for a bit and then the driver finally comes in to nonchalantly grab some more cash as minutes are ticking by. FINALLY, he climbs back into the tempo traveler as Google's time buffer between my arrival and my train departure has depreciated from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes.
Next, we come to this intersection where google says that going right or left will actually yield the same arrival time, offering the other route as a viable alternative. I dunno about you, but I just feel like in these instances, Google is just running a social experiment to see how many people pick the supposedly 'Similar ETA' route despite the fact that the route you're on is predictably no different. Like, what's the point if they both take the same time? What more am I going to do with this information than second guess my decision every second that I'm I a traffic jam after that point. So Google presents me with such a situation and I decide not to risk taking the other "similar ETA route" and continue on the originally suggested road. At this point we're still in a rather rural area of Chennai and we turn a corner to find the pavement gone and a pure mud road deeply rutted thanks to the weekends rains and the heavy traffic typical of India. I'm not kidding you, it looked like someone had actually built moguls into the road as a sort of competition for the BMX games. My driver refused to move forward and we had to retrace our steps to take the other route as my google buffer was down to 5 minutes.
Next, Google turns us onto this exceptionally narrow street just as we spot this huge metal bar overhanging the outlet of the alleyway. My driver decides to push his luck and drives halfway down the street, but it becomes evident that we won't clear this hazard. SO the driver begins to maneuver a y turn in this alley which is barley wider than the length of our tempo traveler. All the while motorcycles skirt around us with each back and forth motion the driver makes. We finally get clear of the alley just as my google buffer ticks down to zero. I'd be arriving just as my train was suppose to leave. And we still have 45 minutes of driving ahead of us. #LetsGOOOOOO
Trying not to sound unsympathetic of how tough the traffic is to handle, I try to communicate a sense of urgency to my driver with more facial expression than actual coherent English. I must have succeeded because the driver hunkers down, shifts the tempo to high gear, and flirts on the edge of insanity while navigating traffic. He gains 3 minutes of my buffer back, and I practically jump out the passenger door, not before handing hing a 100 rupees bill and in broken Tamil, I insist that lunch in on me in compensation for his troubles. I fly out of the van, suddenly aware that I'm still wearing shorts from my frisbee match. Now that I'm not surrounded by my Indian teammates, I now stick out like a sore thumb since India women typically cover everything down to their ankles. I had little time to feel self-conscious because I was less than 150 seconds away from missing my train. I'm sure it was quite a sight to see a foreigner in shorts, bags and backpack flailing as I booked it inside the station. My eyes are anxiously scanning for the train platform kiosk to indicate which platform my train would be arriving on. My eyes scan for the train number I had memorized only minutes before jumping out of the tempo, and I sprint to platform 8 sure that any second my train would be leaving seconds earlier than I could jump on. Little did I know, this was a fore boarding experience of what was to come.. I ran alongside the train, scanning for my car, ready to jump onto the nearest compartment should the train start moving.
Fast forward through a rather enjoyable second sitting train ride (aka cheapest seats you can buy on an Indian train). Any time I ride second sitting class, my claustrophobia for Indian crowds, heat, and clamor is counter by the "but I only paid a dollar for this 3 hour train ride" rationale. Plus, this is where get to try out the little Tamil I know in order to communicate with people I'm sitting with. This go-around, I meet these 3 girls and their badminton coach getting off at my same station for a week badminton tournament at a local college. We end up exchanging Instagram handles because I showed them some of my frisbee pictures from the weekend. As the train slowed at Katpadi, we all started getting up to grab our bags. Now mind you, I've got my backpack from a weekend of frisbee, and they've each got a roller luggage bag, plus their bulky badminton racket backpacks.
We had just entered the aisle to exit the car just as an onslaught of people started pouring through the already crowded train cabin. It was like a tidal wave of people bursting through the door: All at once I'm talking whole families, fat middle aged guys, Women with small children strapped to their chests… the dilemma was that they couldn't get to the very seats were vacating because we physically couldn't exit the car. We were at a complete standstill for about a minute as everyone was trying to move in the opposite direction at the same time. I was still about 10 feet away from the exit door when Someone raised their voice, and people started shouting. All of a sudden the train started moving and some people behind me also trying to get off the train started screaming. Could feel the train first lurch forward, tossing all the passengers backward as it then began to slowly pick up speed. I thought to myself, "Oh Hell no, I am not going to the next train station. This journey home is not going to take any longer than it already has." All of a sudden, realized that I must have felt as Moses did as he was confronted with the seemingly impossible task of parting the Red Sea. But instead of spirtually parting the water and walking through on dry ground, I had to manually plunge myself through the mob, with my resolve to complete #getKaylaHome set to complete desperation mode.
I have almost no memory of hesitating when I reached the doorway, because at this point, every moment I waited, the train was only picking up more speed. Despite jumping onto the platform against the direction of the train to try to assist in the transition to the stationary platform, my landing was by no means graceful. People came running as they saw my skinned knees begin to turn red with blood. "Were you pushed?!" they asked in horror. "No, I just jumped," I replied as their looks of horror turned to questioning disbelief. Needless to say, I sat down on the next bus home to Bagayam just as the badminton girl messaged me. She said when she asked people at the doorway of the car where I was, she said they replied, "She jumped" with a look of horror on their faces. I told her that I guess having been traveling for almost 5 hours, I was just not about to deal with the fact that the next station was a half hour away, at which point we'd need to wait for the next train back to Katapdi. Maybe I had taken my #getKaylaHome Mission a bit too far…
Anyways, as I've mentioned before, to cope with feelings of frustration toward these seemingly uncontrollable situations that I often have to face while adjusting to Indian culture, I always choose to reflect on what I've learned through the experience instead of getting frustrated by the circumstances. I guess today it's that Google maps is no match for the unpredictability of Indian roads while calculating the best route. AND, always stand at the doorway when exiting a second sitting train car in India in the interest of everyone's mental and physical well-being.