Wednesday, January 03, 2007
A gifted happy birday and more- Part I
First things first. I am not sure if Blogger has a rule of deactivating people's blogs if they do not write a post for a certain period of time, but I have tried my best to find out by not writing for so long. It's official now, your blog can survive inactivity for at least 2 months and 11 days! You guys can thank me later for conducting this extremely critical and dangerous experiment for the greater good of humanity.
I am not even going to attempt to explain why I haven't been writing on my blog. I'm sure that by now everyone remembers my usual excuses by heart! Will come straight to the events(pre and post) surrounding a landmark day in the history of the world, the 30th happy birday of yours truly. The buildup to the occassion was full of remarks from various 'friends' about how old '30' is! I often went into a flashback mode, remembering Jeetendra starring in the 30-plus capsules advertisement, and me and my friends talking about how people over 30 would actually be needing pills to survive the day! This was nostalgia I could easily do without. Anyways, as the great Lord Budhha said,"Que Sera Sera", so I started planning on my happy birday celebrations quite happily.
While planning the celebrations, a logistical difficulty came in the way. I was leaving for Bangalore on 28th evening(28th being my happy birday, which one was it??? Ohhh yes, 30th!), and so couldn't throw a party for my office friends on that day. Chose a compromise formula: Party for office public on the 27th to herald in the day, and party on 28th night for personal public in Bangalore. In the process, the personal public who were in Bombay and hence couldn't be at either of the parties would have to settle for just my best wishes!
27th night: 9PM onwards.
Venue: My boss' house.
Some 10 people went to my boss ka ghar straight from office. I didn't want to take everyone out for drinking since 2 such parties would have broken my back financially, and I would have had to girvi rakho my do beegha zameen in my village but I would not be able to reclaim the land ever, beacuse hand-held rickshaws are no longer present in Calcutta! Nothing much to report from the party, had fun, got lots of gifts, cut a cake at midnight... Will come to the consolidated gift-list a bit later.
28th night: 10PM onwards.
Venue: Firangi Paani and Sahab Sindh Sultan in Bangalore.
Reached Bangalore at around 9.20PM, our flight having been delayed by around an hour. Two people had come to pick us up, some 6-7 had been drinking in Firangi Paani(a pub) since 8PM. The plan was that we all would have a couple of drinks there, and then go to an attached posh Indian restaurant called Sahab Sindh Sultan(I think)! Anyways, we reached the venue at around 10PM, and then....the legendary partying spirit of Bangalore kicked in. Met up with everyone and had just started drinking when a waiter from the restaurant came and 'requested' us to move to our table in the restaurant since the last food order was at 10.45! We tried to stall, but one of the greatest unsolved mysteries since Creation is: How do you reason with a stuck gramophone record, otherwise known as a Bangalore restaurant waiter? 10.55- we were out of the pub and inside the restaurant, being forced to give 'last orders' at gunpoint. The funniest part: We were kicked out of the restaurant at exactly 11.45PM since 'the cops were coming'! Viva Bangalooru!!!
Thus started our Bangalore New Year's Trip. This was just the beginning. On this trip, we were a part of our own version of Bigg Boss(Big Brother's Indian version), and Animal Planet. Watch this space for more on what I have labelled as 'Our Big Fat Soap Opera'.
May the Force be with you.
I am not even going to attempt to explain why I haven't been writing on my blog. I'm sure that by now everyone remembers my usual excuses by heart! Will come straight to the events(pre and post) surrounding a landmark day in the history of the world, the 30th happy birday of yours truly. The buildup to the occassion was full of remarks from various 'friends' about how old '30' is! I often went into a flashback mode, remembering Jeetendra starring in the 30-plus capsules advertisement, and me and my friends talking about how people over 30 would actually be needing pills to survive the day! This was nostalgia I could easily do without. Anyways, as the great Lord Budhha said,"Que Sera Sera", so I started planning on my happy birday celebrations quite happily.
While planning the celebrations, a logistical difficulty came in the way. I was leaving for Bangalore on 28th evening(28th being my happy birday, which one was it??? Ohhh yes, 30th!), and so couldn't throw a party for my office friends on that day. Chose a compromise formula: Party for office public on the 27th to herald in the day, and party on 28th night for personal public in Bangalore. In the process, the personal public who were in Bombay and hence couldn't be at either of the parties would have to settle for just my best wishes!
27th night: 9PM onwards.
Venue: My boss' house.
Some 10 people went to my boss ka ghar straight from office. I didn't want to take everyone out for drinking since 2 such parties would have broken my back financially, and I would have had to girvi rakho my do beegha zameen in my village but I would not be able to reclaim the land ever, beacuse hand-held rickshaws are no longer present in Calcutta! Nothing much to report from the party, had fun, got lots of gifts, cut a cake at midnight... Will come to the consolidated gift-list a bit later.
28th night: 10PM onwards.
Venue: Firangi Paani and Sahab Sindh Sultan in Bangalore.
Reached Bangalore at around 9.20PM, our flight having been delayed by around an hour. Two people had come to pick us up, some 6-7 had been drinking in Firangi Paani(a pub) since 8PM. The plan was that we all would have a couple of drinks there, and then go to an attached posh Indian restaurant called Sahab Sindh Sultan(I think)! Anyways, we reached the venue at around 10PM, and then....the legendary partying spirit of Bangalore kicked in. Met up with everyone and had just started drinking when a waiter from the restaurant came and 'requested' us to move to our table in the restaurant since the last food order was at 10.45! We tried to stall, but one of the greatest unsolved mysteries since Creation is: How do you reason with a stuck gramophone record, otherwise known as a Bangalore restaurant waiter? 10.55- we were out of the pub and inside the restaurant, being forced to give 'last orders' at gunpoint. The funniest part: We were kicked out of the restaurant at exactly 11.45PM since 'the cops were coming'! Viva Bangalooru!!!
Thus started our Bangalore New Year's Trip. This was just the beginning. On this trip, we were a part of our own version of Bigg Boss(Big Brother's Indian version), and Animal Planet. Watch this space for more on what I have labelled as 'Our Big Fat Soap Opera'.
May the Force be with you.
