We hit pondy again…Day 1

Stresssseeedddd out……. was how I was till Friday noon. As always, last minute bookings, I had already booked for the cottages and return tickets, but Bangalore to Pondy was not yet booked and we were supposed to take the Friday night train :P

Well 1 thing that always kept me cool was the fact that more than 500 tickets were available and the train was not running full. However, it was done and after scampering helter skelter me, Rajeeth n Meghna finally reached the yeshvanthpur railway stn, where Bharath and his wife were waiting already, to board the train to Pondy. This was the first time I was travelling in an AC class and must say for hard core (train)traveler like me, I did miss the track sound L but its good to hear some nice music and not to mention the cooool bogies….

Slow and steady wins the race is what this train is all about….reaching as late as 930am on Saturday. Anyways, we took 2 ricks from there and headed towards the cottages booked. On the way I stopped over to pick up the first beer of the trip, yes an early morning beer. Once we hit the cottages and put our luggage in the respective rooms, few guys went to freshen up, but I was already fresh sipping on the beer.

What I do when I'm not freeeeee......

What do you do in the police station?

You work along with cops and regulate traffic in junctions?

Do you roam around the city searching for jams?

These are a few very common questions I have to answer off late after I took up the job of a traffic reporter. So I finally decided to write about my work. I would write about my experiences some other time. It has a few hilarious things to it….

So then, Nithin Pawar, Traffic Reporter with FM-94.3 Radio One. Yes the guy giving you the bad news about the traffic jams is me. But I do try and make the news not so bad by trying to give the listeners alternate routes to try and avoid the congestions. I also give the reason for the congestion if any.

The day begins at around 7am (I work in 2 shifts, 7am to 11am and evening 5pm to 9pm) when I enter Traffic Management Center (TMC) gate and tackle Rambo (one of the dogs in the TMC campus, dunno wat his actual name is)…he does not like the sound of my bike I guess. Walking straight into my cabin, yes I do have a separate place to sit, the “Traffic Information Dissemination Cell” in adjacent cabins to my left are the four zonal control room cops, front of me is a huge hall with lot of huge flat screen TVs and many work stations, behind me is the cabin of ACP Traffic and to my right is a wall with a huge Bangalore map on it. So tats my co-ordinates of work. Oh I forgot to mention….all the partitions are of glass, so no sound but clear vision of traffic scenes.