Wednesday, January 28, 2009

A Strange Incident In Railway Station

I was in the Coimbatore railway station to catch a train back to Bangalore when a strange incident happened. I could not locate the platform where the train would come so i asked a police man standing nearby. Forgetting that i was in Tamil Nadu i asked him in Hindi. Bewildered, the police man answered back in fluent English that i would find the train in 4th platform. Embarrassed with my wrong perception that police men are uneducated, i walked on to the platform. After wandering aimlessly in the platform, a middle aged man looking like a small barrel with shirt on it approached me and asked if i needed any help. I was confused and little suspicious of the courtesy shown by this stranger refused the kind gesture. This was the second time i replied back to someone in English although knowing the native language. I soon realized that he was there for money and would squeeze out as much money as possible assuming that i was a stranger to this part of the country. At this point i decided to play along and see what all he would do to get money. I also decided that i would maintain "only English" image. When it was time to get into the train compartment, he pushed himself into the crowd and made way for me to enter the compartment. I soon settled down and knew that it was time for give-me-money talk. To my surprise he wished me a happy journey and walked away. I couldn't help asking him what this is all about. This time, to his surprise, i spoke to him in Tamil asking him why he was so courteous? After a smile he said that he was working for the Tourism department of TN and his job was to help non-locals from getting cheated. The police man i spoke to earlier had asked him to help me as didn't look like a person from this part of the country. It was a very different experience and something i will remember for a long time. Now iam curious if this happens in other cities also?

7 comments:

Kay said...

that is such a fab tale...n it happens ONLY in my state Lb!! ;) TN maynot have many "popular" things but it definately has hospitality....
am swellin with pride :D

varun said...

hahaha...yes i agree :)

Kay said...

glad u agree....btw where were u born??

Sachi Kesavan said...

Nice to hear that :)

There r good pple who still exist... oflate i was deviating from this thought for more than a plenty of reasons!! u know wt i am speaking abot ;)

BTW, taking liberty to post this msg in my blog as well...spreading good things r never wrong :)

varun said...

@ Sachi:I know the reason :), Plz use the post in ur blog too

Raja said...

Interesting incident...kudos to TN tourism department...making local appreciate the steps to make travel safer doesn’t come that easy… something that would sure improve tourism…good job varun in brining such things to light

Anonymous said...

feels good to have born in tn.. :)