It really started on Wednesday, with those rains which almost put me out of action. But thats already been covered in the last post. So this post continues from Friday. thursday was when we (Dhara, Swap n me) were supposed to go to Esselworld. First Swapnil wanted to back out for some job interview preparation and then Dhara got cold feet seeing the rains. She was dead sure that I'd see the rain and go back to sleep and opt out :). Actually I did tell her to go to office when she woke me up at 7 am, but that was more bcos of me bein in sleep :D.Swap, Dhara n I are the only three who are still in touch from the 8 member group in diploma. Nikita phones me up once in a while but is generally indisposed. The three of us share a unique bond in that we will go out of our way to help the other person and yet love putting each other down. My first meeting with them had Swapnil making nasty comments about my weight and Dhara telling me that I now looked like her guardian and the only reason she's talkin to me is the ITC job. Wierd friendship this.
On friday morning, I gave in to her whining on Thursday and we headed out to Esselworld. Swapnil had a job interview at SEEPZ in the mornin, which meant he would try and join us later in the day. The boat ride to esselworld is really fun. The water is very dirty and the jetty's directly opposite the landfill, but still the magic of travellin over water is fun. Being vacations, sat-sun is not a good time to go anywhere near an amusement park. Thankfully the rain of the previous 2 days had done enough to ensure that the crowd was even lesser.
We got out of the ferry and ran to the gate when Dhara, the genius tells me that her free passes were valid only till March 31st. Considering that she is one of the top rankers of MU, I believe an immediate unbiased probe of the education system is imminent. When people like me scrape through wit difficulty n she gets felicitated someone somewhere must be doin somethin wrong :).
Anyway girl genius who like any other self respecting gujju knows the park inside out. So as per her guidance we sit in the aquadive. She says thoda paani will make us cool. We get out all drenched and from then on I decide the rides. I agrede to the first rainbow outing where we have a couple of Salwar clad aunties sitting serenely throughout the ride. I seemed to be the only person shouting which is really odd. The Zyclone is our next destination and believe me it is quite fun. My ever brave companion suddenly loses her nerves and chants my name, somethin I'm never gonna let her forget :D. We then have to do it a zillion times more bcos she wants to prove that she is definitely braver. Even her dares and worst insults can't make me get into the thunder wonder ride, simply cause the whole place smells of puke. My idea of a fun day is not getting into the thunder blender, I'd rather eat popcorn and watch people scream to death.
The lunch was just maggi n coffee bcos Dhara had some fast n I was feelin too guilty to eat alone. We took inspiration from a small kid who we met at the mirror maze and chalked out a stra
tegy to get through all the rides. I have to admit that I was squarely beaten in the horse racing thingy. We would probably have spent the evening there but for Swapnil who was to meet us for dinner. I simply loved the Zyclone and the Octopus made me queasy, but it was INS Prabal which caught my photo fancy.Dinner was just me and Swap hogging through a veg fare. We tried hard to run up a huge bill since it was Dhara's bday treat, but with her on a fast and swapnil's bird like appetite, we couldn't really do justice. I really should have gone to sleep then but the advent of broadband had me chatting with friends, so many of whom are abroad. My convn wit Kavita was the reason I changed my DP in all the messengers and friend n/ws. She says that it was gettin stale and girls are generally rite bout such things, so at 00:40 in a half sleepy state, I take a self potrait. Rita tells me I look like a bhondu in the pic. I was so tempted to say GIGO, when I remembered it was my picture :D.
Saturday morning began at 10 am when Shirude phoned about the movie meeting. Avi and I wanted to see Xmen
3, but then the US trio of Amar, Hetal and Kavita had prejudiced us against it. Of course Amar was the genius who suggested Inside man. Finally it was Avi, Shirude, Digi, Kau n I who were subjected to Inside man. The movie was definitely quite slick in terms of the plot and the screenplay, but the addition of some unnecessary history let the story down. Denzel Washington was good, though the ending was abrupt. Movie over we all headed home.I had to head home early because of a party given by Anup uncle. By the time I reached home the effect of the two days had given me quite the headache. To top it a problem in the car wiper meant we had to wait ages to get a cab, bfore we finally settled for 2 ricks for the four members of our family.
The party at Anup uncle's house was quite good and inspite of the pain in my head I seemed to be enjoying myself. Dad, Anup uncle and Appu uncle have been friends since time immemorial and when they get togther its pure magic. It's also the time when we get to be treated like adults in our parents' presence. There was Poonam aunty, Sudha aunty and Ayushman who's now almost as tall as me. Chinmay's in LSE so he really couldn't join us. The usual group was joined by Ms. Sharbani (who I have met before) and Trina her daughter who were nice enough to give me details of contacts in Cal.
The food was very nice and the party went on till quite late. The best part was getting a gift for joining ITC from Anup uncle's fly. It was a nice wallet just what I needed since my purse is quite destroyed from the rains and the esselworld aquadive.
Sunday morning saw me getting up with what most people would call a hangover. For me, it was more like game over and I don even drink :(. I didn't want to move and really had no interest in eating another morsel when my darling mother reminded me that we had to go to my sister's house for lunch.
Our car probably wanted the sunday siesta as badly as me because the driver door simply refused to shut. Then the engineer in me decided to fiddle with the mechanism and voila the door was fixed. Instinct now says that we really shouldn't have taken the car out cause no sooner than we reached the halfway mark, the car conked off in front of a garage. Must say that the car waited till we visited my granny (Dad's mom) who's currently at her younger brother's house. when she heard that I was leaving on 7th she hastened to bless me and ward off the evil eye. I on my part kept smiling. we really are a generation who has no idea about any of these traditions and/or superstitions.
Getting back to the car, most cars will probably allow you to drive the car till you cause some damage to it. The Palio which shares its platform with the Alfa Romeo, Lancia and many other world class cars has a robot which stops you from hurting the car. Fiat might have the worsr service network in India but they sure know how to design cars. The problem was the clutch plate assembly which requires some amount of time to rectify, so again we caught a rick and headed to my sisters sasural.
Bittu's MIL is quite a nice cook, which is really lucky cause her cooking is quite injurious to health. Though she deserves credit for helping me learn to cook. Necessity is after all the mother of invention :). Besides Dhananjay my BIL, his parents we also had Dhananjay's bro Daya and his family which includes Asha his wife and their kid Nidhi who is quite the brat and quite adorable.
Finally I broke down on Sunday evening and my mother and father decided they would allow me to give the building weddin a miss. Frankly I'm trying hard to be the ideal kid these past few weeks. I've been home and try not to complain even when Saanses and Bahus try to murder each other in front of my eyes. Maa on her part is making all these delicacies and now that the time to leave for Cal is coming near, I'm suddenly being given cash, the most scarce commodity during the past 2 months. Of course being home meant that I tried cleaning my cellphone which almost resulted in it conking off. I do believe peopl prayed for my lil cell bcos its all fine and as a reward for its resilience, I upgraded the mem card to 512 Mb. Of course making it fine necessiated a visit to the local cell repairman on Monday morning. The guy was most happily disecting it away and listing umpteen problems when my ears caught him using a mall word with his companion. A few mall words later, having established my mallu lineage, the cell problems came down to one small lil component, though it would still cost me 300 bucks. I decided it was a small prize to pay for my inherent foolishness and walked away with a fully functional cellphone. On the way back I visited the garage guy, explaining to him how badly we missed having the car. I also hit upon an extremely talkative maharashtrian rick guy and we were soon deep in conversation about vehicles and garages.
I thought that was probably the end of all my probs when my mother reminded me that my home PC had conked off. the problem was soon dentified as a heatsink which had simply dropped off. Of course there's still the problem of buying and configuring a LAN card for the broadband. The MTNL tribandits who probably had me phone every telecom engineer in their employment refuse to be of any use. It was left to me to connect it and determine the username and password from experienced users like Swapnil. I probably should have broken through the password ala the hacking of PP's Thinkpad in 4th Sem :D. Funnily the mtnl triband router is far more secure than the thinkpad :).
If things werent bad enuff Dhara decided to drop in and tried her best to influence my mother, telling her that I was busy spending my entire vacation eating and sleeping when I should have been doing some wrk. Thankfully she left after she got the essel pics in her thumb drive and Maa was finally convinced by me that I had really been trying hard to make the PC alrite all this vacation.
Now I still have loads of packing to do and there's still some installation wrk on the PC to be done. But all in all most of my meetin up wit friends and relatives is done and now its only mission cal.
Beginning a new adventure,
Luv,
P.R.
