Tuesday, April 14, 2020

April A-Z Challenge: A Tale of Four Cities [B]

Blog Entry #2 - Continuing the Momentum

Glad to have chosen the A-Z challenge, so at least I’ll have content for the next 24 posts (considering A and B are covered so far!)

BEST buses | Bits n bytes | Besant Nagar Beach | Baiyappanahalli


BEST bus
Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport, aka BEST is the civic transport body in Mumbai.  BEST buses were my second home for 2 years, 11th and 12th grades. I had an all-Mumbai pass which let me travel in any BEST bus across Mumbai and Navi Mumbai (but not Thane). I’ve mastered sleeping while standing in these buses, eating my dabba while standing, and knowing which set of frequent buses will take me from source to destination, usually from college (FYI 11th and 12th in Mumbai is called junior college and not school) to home. Hopping in and out of 352, 373, and 8 express would describe most of my days, while on extremely hot and tiring days, I’d prefer paying Rs. 40/- to gleefully climb into an AC Volvo Bus - an entirely relaxing and enjoyable experience!

Bits n Bytes (Hyderabad)
The closest hangout corner outside campus, my friends and I would frequent this shop for birthdays, treats, and whenever we’d be thoroughly bored of mess snacks! Costing Rs. 60/- in a shared auto for all of us put together, each of us would merely need to shell out Rs. 20/- for a round trip here. This place also popular for cakes being pre-ordered for celebrating birthdays at midnight. Pasta, pizza, maggi, fries, sub sandwiches, and a soft drink or milkshake to go along, this was honestly a refreshing break from eating all the idlis, rice, chapathis, dal and subzis. If you happen to visit Thumkunta, do check this place out!

Besant Nagar Beach
After visiting Juhu and Chowpatty Beaches, I found Besant Nagar Beach in Chennai very clean and the waters calming. Despite having been there multiple times, I haven’t tried any of the food items being sold there. What I prefer instead is to go to one of the nearby restaurants for dinner, such as Superstar Pizza or Chai Galli, after enjoying a long walk along the shore. You can observe families with some kids splashing in the waves, and others demanding they be bought the pink candy sold on carts. You can see couples entering just after twilight, when enough darkness has settled in, to enjoy an ideal romantic ambience. If you come here just before sunrise, you'd see runners jogging along the wide promenade. All in all, going to beaches is an experience to be enjoyed on its own. Spending your time simply staring at the waves, the calming nature of the ocean is sure to relieve you of your worries and stress.

Baiyappanahalli
This was one of the first names I came across (after Thippasandra of course, which has been familiar to me for years now, due to all of us cousins visiting our grandparents’ house there), after which I came across other names of places such as - Suddaguntepalya, Basavanagudi, Bannerghatta, Koramangala, Indiranagar, Devanahalli and more. Other than these words causing Google to go into a frenzy with "could not find any replacement for such unpronounceable words! Please try something else!" each of these places contain at least 4 syllables. Come to think of it, I think that’s why they changed the trisyllabic Bangalore to the quadrisyllabic Bengaluru to be consistent with the pattern. Whitefield residents, watch out! You may soon see your beloved suburb renamed into something with at least 2 more syllables.

Image courtesy: Google ©

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