Officer on Tour Meets Black Beauty

Someone up there must have heard me whine about not getting any opportunity to travel anywhere here forget about places described in Conde Nast Traveller. Two days ago I was dispatched on a trip and I returned only today. It is a sort of huge letdown reading about Majorca and Provence and instead arriving at Guntur. Yes, it was Guntur where I was sent on just a day’s trip. As it is, there is nothing much to see at Guntur but I wasn’t there on a sight seeing trip. It had something to do with my job and was an official trip.

I was so desperate to leave Hyderabad for a day at least so the prospect of going to Guntur held a lot of appeal. But I missed the opportunity to observe the country side by making wrong travel plans. I chose to travel by overnight train which had me in Guntur at the unearthly hour of three in the morning. One of the advantages of working in the capital is that one carries a lot of clout in the districts. There was a small retinue to receive me at the railway station. I had told them specifically not to take the trouble of receiving me and that I was perfectly capable of guiding myself to the guest house but they did not pay any heed to it.

I was there to attend a meeting and as government meetings go it was pretty boring. The department I work in is a boring one so it was no surprise. The only bright spot was the lunch which was good so I had a rather heavy meal. Later I had great difficulty suppressing yawns which is sort of tricky when one is seated on the dais facing a small crowd. I tried to appear attentive though my brain had gone to sleep long back.

With the meeting taking up the whole day I had no time to go anywhere. The only thing I was glad about Guntur was that the roads appeared to be extremely smooth without any potholes worth falling into. All the potholes in the state seemed to have concentrated in the capital city only.

A little before dinner we went to a few stationery shops near Hindu College where, in one shop called ‘Raynar’ I bought an elegant black fountain pen. It was a new brand ‘Swarna’, the person at the counter told me it was their brand. Whatever, I was glad I found something to carry back to Hyderabad.