Places and Cities I visited

I would use this blog-space to list the cities that I visited over past 30 plus years, I would share some of my memories while I list them down. I would put them in chronological order, the earliest being the first.

Silchar, Assam - The town where I was born and lived first twenty two years of my life, probably the best period of my life. Its approximately 10 years that I am living away from Silchar to make a living. But that does not seem to reduce my obsession with town, I still day-dream to go back and live there in 'our typical sylheti style'. Well before I get carried away any further with my emotions, let me share one of my earliest memory with town that was a moment of pride too.
October 1985, my family went out of Silchar for a South-India tour for three weeks time. During the period when we were touring Trivundrum, Kanyakumari, Madurai, Bangalore, Mysore, Tirupati, Calcutta, Silchar was devastated by one of the biggest flood for the town and the valley. We came to know about this when we were on our way back to home and wrapping up last lap of the tour in Calcutta. Along with the bad news what came as a good news was our home was out of the reach of the flood water. By the time we came back, the flooding was over. Though I was little upset with the fact that I had to miss the excitement of the great-flood. As I entered into the city on our return, I noticed a big green sedan car standing on the road side. It took me by surprise to spot such a big car in my small town and now I was convinced Silchar has moved into the group of best cities on India. As a nine year kid, this green car made me feel proud my home town. On later years, I spotted the same car many more times on the streets of Silchar, it was green Contessa Hindustan Motors car.


Gauhati, Assam - My earliest memory with this City dates back to 1985 when we were going out for the South India tour. The most amazing thing that I found was the dozens of the trains waiting on their platforms side by side one after other. I vaguely remember, I stopped for while on the overhead bridge meant for the passengers to reach their respective platforms and wondered how many different places and directions these trains were destined for. I suppose my father must have dragged me by my hand to get me out of that state of pause.

Trivundrum, Kerala - It was the same trip of 1985 when I visited the town. Only thing that I remember is people lighting their cigarettes from a slowly burning rope.

Madurai, Tamilnadu - Another place from the route of the same trip of 1985. I remember the Aftab Lodge where we stayed and the reservation that my parents had for staying in a hotel owned by a Muslim. But the room waiter did a good selling and convinced them its just the name that is Muslim otherwise it is pretty much run by Hindus. That brought the necessary comfort for my parents. In the same hotel where my younger brother who was just 5 years then, had locked us in the room from outside and vanished for some time. My mother and grand-mother had completed couple of rounds of shedding tears over losing him for ever before he could trace his route back to the hotel door and opened it up.


I would list down the rest of the cities from my list one by one in the coming days.