When we had 'Bombay to London' Regular Bus Services ❤️

When There Was an Acute Water Scarcity All Over Chennai!

Chennai Stares at a Major Water Crisis

Headmaster’s Surprise Rounds

Bus Services from Bombay to London

14th November 1994

#MCCSchoolDays #memoriesfromdiaries #newspaperinlearning

Just the previous week, our Headmaster had requested all of us hostelers to use water judiciously, as Chennai was reeling under an acute water crisis.

His words proved true today – as water ran dry in all the taps in our school. Luckily, a few of us early birds had the luxury of having our morning bath today, and then we had dutifully saved a bucketful of water each, for our emergency use, as well.

Rapid urbanisation and poor water management were some of the reasons attributed to this water crisis across the city and its suburbs.

This was in the year 1996.

However, within a span of five years, there was a great improvement in the groundwater levels in Chennai, thanks to the mandatory implementation of the rainwater harvesting for houses and buildings in 2001 by the former CM of Tamil Nadu Dr. Jayalalithaa.

In fact, Tamil Nadu became the first state in India to have implemented the rooftop rainwater harvesting (in each and every house and building), in the whole of India.

Five years after the scheme was successfully implemented, there was a visible and perceptible change in the situation. Groundwater levels in Chennai rose almost 50 percent and the quality of water improved as well.

This morning, [14th November 2023], yet again, I read in the Chennai Edition of The Hindu, about poor water management, leading to gallons of water being let into the sea.

Coming back –

The late risers, my friends Nokul and Gary, took a cup of water each from my savings! 😊

We had a new Math master, who fumbled while teaching us to solve problems. Hence the guys in class laughed at him. [something that we shouldn’t have done!]

We didn’t have lab since our lab attender Ramasamy was on leave, and hence the lab couldn’t be opened for our Chemistry practicals.

Morning breakfast we had booris which was not that good! Afternoon we had coconut rice, which again, most of us didn’t like at all.

Physics master Nedums asked for students from the hostel who were absent today to class, since seven out of 11 hostelers were conspicuous by their absence in class, today.

Back in the hostel - some of the mischievous guys in our dormitory used to regularly take utmost care to fuse the hostel main lights, so that, whatever mischief that was done within the hostel wasn’t visible to the warden. 😊

Suddenly, there was a rumour that our Headmaster was coming on his ‘surprise’ rounds to the hostel. So a gentle hush and a solemn lull fell on the entire dormitory, cubicle after cubicle. 

And it really took a while for the silent spell to subside! 😊

Then, we all assembled - as usual - in the cubicle of Karuppiah, our class topper (Karups as we called him), to write our Zoology practical drawing assignments, followed by our Chemistry assignments.

This was the time when we used to have a lot of interesting conversations that centred around cricket, football, chess, Tinkle, Hardy Boys, Archies, Tintin, Asterix, etc.

Girish, was an enthusiastic chess player, and an eager-beaver reader. He had this good habit of collecting interesting tidbits from the newspapers, magazines and digests, and then sharing it with all of us in our post-dinner sessions or during our early morning coffee time.

Today, during our homework time, he shared with all of us the fascinating news that there was a regular bus service from Bombay to London many decades ago. Some of the boys scoffed at him for that, while others curiously enquired about the news.

My friend Girish was indeed right. There were regular bus services from Calcutta to London, followed by services from Bombay to London as well.

The bus started its Calcutta (today Kolkata) to London operations with 20 passengers on board. The bus departed from London on April 15, 1957, and reached Kolkata (formerly called Calcutta) on 5th June.

The bus journeyed through France, Italy, Yugoslavia (as it was known then), Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan before finally reaching India.

Christened “magic buses”, there was a great demand for such buses, across the metros, and spurred by the demand, travel operators operated many more of such services from Bombay to London, Delhi to London, etc. 

Image and facts courtesy: TN Govt Archives / curlytalesdotcom