Roundtrip To Kerala And Back

Nothing spectacular about this one. It was a 10-day trip to get some errands done in Trivandrum, so it had precious little travel within the state involved in it. Otherwise, it was mostly work and short runs around town. I also got to experience the new Indigo flights to Trivandrum. Flew in on the early morning flight from Delhi to Trivandrum via Cochin and flew back to Delhi on the flight that has a hopping stop at Bombay. The flight, as it is the case with Indigo, was before time in both cases, but, strangely, the landings were not the smooth-as-butter landings I have come to expect from them. Not sure if this was due to crosswinds since the aircraft was rolling quite noticeably on the final approach in all four landings.

I have been travelling now at least twice a year to Trivandrum for the past five-years and it has been an interesting experience to see the changes on each visit. On every visit, the city resembles a little less of the place that I grew up in and the pace seems to have accelerated rather violently in the past year-and-a-half. The pinnacle of the change for me was a visit to a well-done discount store near the Technopark campus that had rates lower than what I have ever found in Delhi. That, though, finds a sinking feeling in me. This time around, I did not feel that I was in the town that I grew up in. It felt more like one of the many new character-less cities that are clones of each other in India these days.

Of course, most of that is sentimentalism and nostalgia that should not obscure the fact that it is good for the state and its people who have always had to go outside the state to make a good living – unless you were a doctor, engineer or in the government service.