A day in the life of LIFE

My homecoming was marred by the mob frenzy that had engulfed Bengalooru. Dr. Rajkumar's demise was indeed saddening but the way disgruntled elements reacted to the same, damaging 7 crores worth of public property was outright disgraceful. An uncalled for tribute to the legend.

On a personal financial front, I ended up paying 300% more than the normal auto fare to my house from the station, lest i be made to walk all the way.

Well, Saturday promised to be big. The GANG, led by none other than the guru himself, Mr. Anand R ( yes the same guy who was featured in "A drunkard, A TVS XL Super and a black out", here the event damager, oops.. the event manager planned a retreat to wonder la. The deputy event manager was Anand's trusted aide G*ut**m alias Botu, the Chuupa Rustum of the gang.

Well, i have, in the past been to amusement parks like Esselworld in Mumbai and Appu Ghar in Delhi, but this was going to be special since the water rides were an added attraction. The rest of the members included Mitsy, Bhatlee, Chintu, Kaari,Simha and Ganesha... All of us managed get into a crampy Qualis and it was a lovely drive a.k.a. Dil Chahta Hai along Mysore Road the only ones missing were any female companions who declined to accompany us for reasons Anand knows best.. I even had a special hair cut before the outing at Green Trends in Chennai at a premium price of 65 Rs. The cool wind was blowing in the face and suddenly Mallika Sherawat was sitting beside us and wanted to join us for the outing. None of us had any objections and on the contrary it was an honor. fortunately for us jipna ganesha [miser]Part 2 was not there else he would have raised the issue of " mallika key liye ticket kaun kharidega ?" We got the sense of pride that we would be the cynosore of all eyes and it would not be long before CNN IBN's crew caught up with us.........The Murder, The Shaadi se Pehele star was amidst us.... and suddenly Bhatlee (our very own Daara Singh) cried out, "stop kissing me"....apparently mitsy (the jhonny bravo) had slipped into a brief slumber and it took bhatlee to wake him up...

We finally reached Wonder la without Mallika though. [sigh]. the revenue collector [who else, Anand] took all the cash from us 500 per head and made us follow him in a straight line like Mrs. Veena Srivastava who asked us to follow her in the class 2 trip to Cubbon Park.

We deposited our precious belongings which included Kaari's Sydney returned "floaters" in the locker and set out on the "Joy rides". After a few kiddie rides like Bumper cars we got some real " Akshay Kumar in Thums Up wala josh" rides and the only two takers for them were myself and Botu, the dare devils. the others were happy with the "Bunty key paapa, Bunty ko toy train mey leykey jao" wala rides. there were a lot of couples who were quite enjoying themselves and we looked at ourselves with the "banjara harry bechara" look. Botu was the most disappointed, he being a Hyderabaadi... [Note: I am not disclosing the original names of these individuals except Anand, lest they be booked under the "anti dreaming for Mallika and not even getting Silk Smitha desperado" Act.]

As myself and botu enjoyed the rides under the able inspection of Anand - the GodFather alias Sarkar, the rest of the gang headed by dissident Chintu, broke off from the main party to check out the "less riskier " rides. after about fifteen minutes, we were in a fix since the two factions could not communicate as all the cell phones were neatly concealed in the towels and baniyaans in the locker...the best way was to get back to Wireless communication - the Tarzan Way... Kaari even started shouting "Chintu Chintu" from atop one of the rides. And like the Kumbh Mela re union, Chintu appeared out of nowhere with the rest of his followers.

After the traditional tear-filled "Raam Bharat milaap", we made our way to the Virtual Reality theatre. After all the neck breaking 360 degree rides, this one surely promised to be a tuss pataki...[something that is less thrilling than expected]

We settled down in the seats, and there was a kid beside me. As usual all the Bangalore beauties seemed to be repelled by us like the opposite poles of the magnet.

The seats started moving in sync with the effects on the screen. The weak hearted the kids, and some gals, started yelling and screaming though knowing fullly well that it was nothing more than a psychological illusion. This made Anand shout out " yeeey, yaak sumney kirchthaiddira, ee gaadi yellu hogalla" in Upendra ishtyle. [ why are you all shouting? this "gaadi" is not going anywhere].

Meanwhile Bhatlee's appetite was growing and Simha was praying that Bhatlee was not a man eating Ogre. As the show got over, I asked the kid beside me, "Majaa Banta?" [did you enjoy it, in Kannada..]. He looked at me as if some alien in space had just spoken to him in an Alien language like Jadoo in Koi Mil Gaya...and he bolted like a rabbit. Till now, it was the beauties of Bangalore who were repulsed by us, and now it was even the kids...wow, talk about magnetic personalities....

Bhatlee meanwhile ran away to order the south indian meals without even looking at the menu. Surprise Surprise... we got an Interface with the Ramaiah boys of our batch...Ramaiah Santhosh, Sujith (my ex roommate in chennai, now in B'lore and ex colleague at Birlasoft) with 5 others who were also a gang of guys with no female presence. some consolation, we thought. After repeated demands from Santhosh, I bored them all, with a new piece of Mimicry on actors, politicians and sports stars....

Once the ordeal was over, it was fun time with the water rides.....

We all changed into our 4 feet long 2 piece bikinis [ not that anyone would be interested]... We took to the water ably supervised by....how could you forget, the David Hasselhoff(of Baywatch fame) of our Gang - Anand....Anand managed the dual roles of life guard and photographer. Soon he realized it was tough enough and joined us in the fun.

In the meelee, my glasses took a dive into the pool before me and with the waves coming in, i knew the rest of the day would pass akin to Dhritarashtra in "Jaane bhi do yaaro". But with sheer coincidence, my foot happened to stumble onto something as straight as a spatula and for once i knew they were my glasses. With gymnastics no better than Jonty Rhodes, I finally pulled up my glasses with my feet...

then on, the routine was this.

Step 1: Remove glasses and place in hard cover into zip pocket of pyjahmas.
Step 2: place kaari, botu and chintus' glasses too.
Step 3: enjoy the water ride
Step 4: repeat step 1.

The slides, rubber dinghies, coupled with a shower of Bangalore's evening rain, left an awesome expienence of bitter shivering, a kick without alcohol and some broken bones, since most slide rides required all us john abrahams to take off our upper garment (to reduce friction) thus being adorned only by our janavaaraas [synonym: sacred thread;janeev;poonal].

After having a hell of a time in the H2O, we finally stepped out, changed into our normal avtaars and treated ourselves to some boiled sweet corn and cappuchino both of which were heavenly in the cold showers.

The trip back home was an adventure in itself. Anand will kill me if I even open my mouth about it. I can just say that the word that resonated in the Qualis was " kai" meaning "hand" in as many contexts as you could imagine. Silent Simha and Botu were the main actors trying to steal away anand's Sony camera and......

The rest they say, was,Iodex, Amruthanjan and Himani Fast relief.....