There were lots of good food that we got to share, banter right through the late hours and some solo singing that I could not stop doing. I think I would have bored the young ones with my old bunch of songs.
The onward journey to Kerala took off well. We were at the Chennai railway station pretty early and had enough time to settle down into our seats.
When sleeping time came we had some snoring music from fellow passengers. As it has always happened in the past, I could not sleep after belting out many solo numbers.
My mates would have thought that I was putting up a stunt when I had opened my laptop and books in the train, to study my course material. It was a serious attempt though it seriously flopped :) because singing and studies never go hand in hand for me. I always tend to make that mistake. We reached Tiruvalla station and then the place of stay and were put through a good stint of hospitality. The food was simple and good. A few of us went to the Parimala Church that was close by and offered our prayers.
Soli Deo Gloria was the name of this occasion of music on September 1st, 2019 at the CSI St.Thomas Church at Thalasherry, Tiruvalla. It's a Latin term meaning 'Glory to God alone'. This church has Anglican roots. It's notable that Ambalacatta, Quilon and Thalassery were the places where Tamil Christian books were printed by European missionaries in large numbers for more than 300 years. The CSI churches have always been on top when it came to choir singing and four part harmony and we could see it in the way their choir was organized and in the arrangements that were made. It was really heartening, whenever that feeling that we had finally made it to this place, kept touching our hearts. We had had an invitation last year for the same occasion, but it had got washed out due to the very severe flood situations in Kerala.
The base group where I belong to, had some challenges to iron out during our mock singing sessions but the final show went through really well. We pulled it off really well. This was not a competition. A few others teams that I got to hear also performed really well.
A bunch of us were to return the same day as we had to report for work the next day. And so we had planned early all the logistics to reach the railway station so as to not miss the train. Once our singing was done, we slipped out of the church, collected our luggage and food packets and got into a van that was kept ready for us. We just had twenty minutes with us to make it to the station and then scramble on to the right platform. A few in the returning bunch constantly kept tracking the train approaching the station.
After the van had moved fifty metres from the church, we had a beautiful twist as one of the members had left her mobile phone back at the church with another person in our team :) So we stopped and waited for her to run and get back. This tremendously added more thumping to our already pounding heart beat :) What was supposed to be a small regional TV show was now taking the dimensions of a Bollywood thriller.
She got back and we were soon on our way. We reached the station and lost a few minutes trying to understand which platform our train would come in. We got the information and validated it with a few vendors at the station and had to take the over-bridge to get to the right platform. Once we were there we heard the announcement that the train was waiting at a distant spot for the signal. Two other trains went by and we had spent a good thirty minutes there waiting and chatting. Meanwhile, a powerful shower of rain had also come down.
We couldn't change to some casual clothes before we had left the church as we were hard pressed for time. Once the train came, we got in and did that first. The return journey was pretty good. We had long hours to sleep as the train was to hit Chennai only around 10.30 am. Our talented keyboardist treated us with a big bag of food that his parents had brought to the Kottayam station. That served both for dinner and the next day's breakfast. We also had the food packed by the church for dinner. So, we all went to bed with a full belly.
It was a sad to get back to Chennai from God's Own Country but when duty calls, we have to.
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