I love the feeling I get when people ask me how I know people from all over the country, I guess the fact that a person who hasn’t ventured away from South India having a friend in Bhopal or in Guwahati isn’t something that is easily comprehended. I was really excited when I got the news that Kush and Dhavan were coming to Bangalore. After all these years I could finally associate their online personality to a real one, this also meant that I should come up with places and things to do to make it a worthwhile trip for them. Strangely, ‘planning’ excites me.
I have rarely seen a story without its complications. Without negativity the bright side doesn’t look so great, so my story has its downs too. So it turns out, l had to shift downstairs during the same weekend. Now that was a hard thing to juggle since my dad required my presence at the same time I wanted to be with the gang. Along with the stress of that, my college’s behaviour which I believe is actually illegal by the way they are operating and the paranoia about the future was something which has been cooking inside my large head. I had to shove all this under the rug. I am quite proud of the fact that I missed only one day with the guys.
Kush was the first to land. His height makes me look shorter than I am. So does his hair. Subbu and Kush dropped by for dinner on Friday and we had gone to KFC near my house, mainly because it was the only option thanks to the chaat loving hive mind. I have been told that I should try to be more positive outlook towards life, so if I am to frame it that way, it was that night that I found out about the worst KFC in existence ( It’s an achievement right?). Also, that experience reassured me about my choice about not visiting a KFC, if it can be avoided, being a smart one. The night was young, conversations were more about trying to reach the comfort zone, but my companions were tired. So we decided to call it quits after buying Kush milk so that he can sleep like a baby. Random Fun Opinion – Pina Colada by Bisleri is an interesting beverage.
After helping them pack a few more things, I ran away from the chaotic packing which was happening at home to Uncle Sathya’s house. So after travelling for around 2 hours to reach a place which is around 12 km away I met Reetesh. He turned out to be a gaming nerd who is actually a chatty in nature – rare combination if you ask me. He might as well as be Santa Claus for gadget freaks, if I have to judge by the number of gadgets he carried. He also had quite a lot of games and maybe some gadgets which he had got for people from Phoren Land. I also met Dhavan, who turned out to be fitting of the description I had given him in mind, except of course, his physical appearance. It turns out, at least personally I feel that he is quite different from his pictures, to be more accurate, he didn’t look like anything like his pictures. Every other aspect was spot on from his online persona. I even met a fellow mallu named Pran , who turned out to be excellent in Hindi and for some reason it is his preferred language, that did surprise me because it’s not very often that I run into mallus who are fluent speakers of Hindi. Pran also turned out to be a huge gaming nerd, to be frank, I don’t think he spoke about anything else other than games. Since I have successfully managed to give an assessment of people I met in a cluttered way I shall move on to more important things.
I am not someone who is familiar with things working out without any planning, so I was quite surprised when we all ended up in Monkey Bar which was the grounds to some interesting conversations and mouth watering burgers. After this we headed back to Sathya’s place, just to leave to the next destination in a short while ( again unplanned, at least for me). We were in Vapour, even though it was crowded. The only thought in my head was – “Why didn’t I come here before?”. You really don’t want to miss out on their Stout + Pizza. I mean it’s so good that I even put it in the title also because I couldn’t come up with something better. I never had beer from a boot until that day, so I was excited like a kid who got his first console. We headed back to CPG’s lair after this, to have more beer ( credits to Kush) because there isn’t something as too much of beer. Now the rest of the night could be summed up in three words – Beer and Games. The only downside was that I had to wake up early and spent my whole day in shifting. Although we had hired packers, the fact that I had almost an hour of sleep the previous night wasn’t something that helped much as I even thought that I will pass out in between. I shall leave out the details of the day since the next day has more lovely memories than just cardboard boxes and sweat.
Subbu had never been to a buffet, so Subbu, Kush, Natasha and I went to stuff ourselves at Absolute Barbecue and I know I succeeded in doing just that, at an alarming rate. But how could we end the day without some beer? This was solved by Prost. Their steam punk interiors combined with the beer made the evening even more awesome. It was then that Kush revealed that he wants to get a tattoo done, and bam, in a few minutes we were on route to a parlour and after confirming that he was serious about it, the process had begun. This was the first time in my life I have seen how it was done and it didn’t seem that painful to someone like me who is terrified of needles. It turned out to be pretty neat. It was time for me to bid goodbye, I got an Uber, and I got to meet the best driver I have got until date. He was fluent in English and he definitely managed to keep me entertained during the whole trip, who also told me that he works as a freelance system administrator. I should mention that he had a 4.9/5 rating – highest I have seen.
It’s quite interesting how life throws unexpected obstacles at you and you somehow have to find solutions to overcome them, I definitely cheered myself up during those days which provided me with a refreshed optimistic attitude to overcome annoying incidents which were occurring in my life, also got to understand some good people in a better way. There are times when one fails to come up with solutions and have no way out, like this one – I have been struggling with coming up with a conclusion for a long time, so
The End.
Also apologies for the title.
