So today was fun as well. I hadn’t yet gotten out of my Hogenakkal mode (see earlier post) when I got a blast from the past. Hitesh Uchil called me up, stating he’s in town and is free to meet. Now I hadn’t met him in at least 5 years and so was fairly keen on it.

I called up Vishal and got him to join in, and so he arrived home at around 17:00. Hitesh called around 18:15 letting us know he’d arrived at Forum mall and that we should head out.

We reached there by 18:30 and settled into a nice long chat at Cafe Coffee Day opposite Forum Mall. It was good catching up after years. Vishal was, infact, meeting Hitesh after to 12 years! The conversation ranged around old friends, school teachers and general news from Dubai.

Around 19:30 we moved on to Satyas for some snacks, and then from there onto McDonalds for dinner. Had a burger, and then headed back home after dropping off Hitesh and Vishal at their respective rides.

All in all, a good day. Hopefully Vishal will send me a photo to upload on here.

Yesterday some old friends (24 years and counting) and I decided to head out on a road trip to Hogenakkal Falls near Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu.

Shabbir, Shenaz, Vishal and I left early in the morning at 06:30 and came back at 20:00. It was a lot of fun, and I missed Shruti a lot throughout.

There were many funny incidents, many jokes were made, stories shared, and some booing as well.

Some incidents / jokes worth mentioning (may not make sense to all, but you can always ask me for context):

• Vishal: I saw this Chinese iPhone the other day, for only 5k man!
  Shabbir: You mean you saw a Ch(a)i-phone?
  Peals of laughter.
• Me [on seeing an actual chicken cross the road]: Why did the chicken cross the road?
  Vishal: So that it could end up in Chicken Soup for the Soul? (what???)
  Crazy laughter ensued.
• Shabbir and Me teaming up to throw half a ton of river sand onto Vishal, and him having to bathe for an hour with 4 rounds of shampoo to get it all out.
• The puncture that had as take a detour and spend 2 extra hours on our way to Hogennakal. Shabbir and I worked on it, while Vishal chilled out in the heat (lazy bugger).

There is a saying in Hindi that goes:

Teen tigade kaam bigade

In my weekend exploits, here are the teen tigade:

But there was no kaam bigade action in this story. It was all pure awesomeness.

The weekend essentially consisted of a lot of meets between us. I shouldn’t miss out mentioning Shenaz (Shabbir’s wife) and Shruti and our baby (who were missing but always on my mind).

Matches were seen, good food was had and general merriment was made. Quite a memorable weekend given that we were all spending quality time with each other (together) after years.. possibly the first time after 1997 (when Shabbir moved to India to live in Pune).

I’m looking forward to many more weekends of fun, relaxation and good memories.

So it all started out with a phone call, which Shabbir made to me to tell me that PC (Pawan) was arriving in town, and that Vishal was already working in Pune.

Now this was new, considering that we would all be meeting in one place after about 9 years (11 if you include Pawan since he left in 8th grade). So we decided to make it happen, no matter what.

So that fated day, 18th of March, me and Shabbir met up a little in advance to catch up, and proceeded to watch Taxi 9211 is a fair copy of Changing Lanes. After the movie, we got a call from Pawan saying he was already in town. We raced out to pick him up, after which we proceeded over to my place to wait for Vishal to come along, since he was arriving after work.

Vishal came soon enough. Then began a roller coaster ride of memories, teachers, fellow classmates, and what not. A great time was had, and we went out for Pizza and then came back home and chatted up till about 3:00.

Sadly everyone had to be on their way by around 9:00 in the morning, so we had to cut the reunion short. I’m sure there will be another time in another place, when we have our day again.

You may want to see a picture of the reunion gang.

.. aur guitar,
muhalle ki woh chatt, aur mere yaar..

And so began our 10th grade class reunion. We were grade 10, division K: 10th K. The guys who showed up were as follows: Beslin, Shine, Myself, Sunil and Sudhir. I was hoping for a larger turn out considering there were around 10-12 of us in the city at that point in time.

That aside, what really mattered was that we were there – together – after close to 9 years. It was our time once again, and we all returned to being the boys we once were. We were telling each other stories, laughing without a care in the world. Everyone around us was wondering if we were high on drugs or booze, but little did they know we were high on memories *wink*. We talked about everything under the sun – how each of us was either enjoying or plain hating our job, what we had planned for the future, how much fun we used to have in school, which professors we liked and hated (and why), different incidents which had left a mark in our mind, etc.

It was interesting to see the different walks of life each one of us had chosen, having been given the same opportunities in life.

God knows when I’ll see them again, but I do know we will always pick up from where we left off.