i don't want to be in b'lor this weekend : do whatever

so it started again: so called planning: trip to Goa

started almost a year back: this time i said i'll arrange for stay in Goa so lets go.. after usual dilly dallying and few days later still nothing was decided. then i realised we forgot about somebody who was staying with the nocturnal group before: Viswajeet Kumar: Viswa

so i call him on his mobile:

zinda hai? - haan yaar!

shaadi ho gayi? - abhi nahi yaar!

bacchhee..? - pata nahi ginne padenge..

to Goa chalega? - anytime in November boss.

thats it.

so the 'plan' is take friday off: board the bus for goa thursday night : back to b'lor on Monday morning. usual whining starts with Muthu saying 'le taking off on Friday is difficult le'. ''m in new company macha' - that he says every fortnight and it is almost true. As the friday nears even Venki starts off his: 'maga we should try something else' - 'something nearby you know we can explore better blah blah' - ofcourse he is in to client servicing.

after passing couple of days like this somebody comes up with the idea of visiting Pondycherry. what... Pondy...? and Muthu again goes 'macha no leave on Friday...' looks like even this plan is going off. at the end of it i had only one thing to say

:'do whatever, decide anything: i don't want to be in b'lor this weekend'

then on Thursday i was told that we are going to Pondy in Venki's Veyron : we are leaving tomorrow evening: i call up Viswa - ask him to come near Silk Board junction at around 5.30 pm so that we can pick him up. he said ok. great thats like it should be. remember: i never spoke to him again after the Goa talk. on Friday i went to office in the morning - 've already taken leave but whats the use no point in cancelling it : they are anyways getting expired for the year.

at around 5.15 Muthu and Venki pick me up and we head towards Silk Board Jn. and get Viswa on board. traffic was surprisingly light on Hosur road. we are off Karnataka border in a jiffy. it is a neat stretch of road after that (Hosur road is too good to be true now: it almost resembles the airport runway now as discovered later in our drive for a coffee).

Venki was still in formals so he decides to change over and also we top-up fuel and air for the Veyron. we resume our journey at a pretty good pace and this time we've got loads of Trance music cds on board.. wow!! but: car's stereo refuses to recognise the format :(. we somehow get it to swallow, recognise and read one of Muthu's... cd.

we reach temple town of Thiruvannamalai by dinner time. we spot a Taurus- the quintessential Diesel Bullet there in the dhabha with engine manufactured by Grease.

we hit the road again by around 10.30 pm. and reach pondy by

around 2 am. searched around for a hotel to stay. after some running around in the town we stopped at a hotel called 'MathruShri..' lodge. i go there and ring the bell : after some pause: scratch.. scratch.. scratch.. 'enna venum' scratch.. scratch..'we need room to stay for the night' 'kitne aadmi' -broken hindi- 4 - hand sign -. all along the background sound was on. somehow we manage to get a room : as we were checking out the room this guy says 'foreigners sleeping.. don;t make noise' - 'angrez so rahe hai..' this had all of us split in to laughter.

all 4 of us huddled in to a single room: difficult to stretch and sleep? who cares we never slept all through the night. we discussed/comicked/mimicked/bisected almost all the characters from the SDM : including professors, attendants, cook and we were laughing like crazy:

• nuclear bomber: man i just wonder at his all smiley-i-just-did-it-what-the-big-deal face just after that sounding discharge
• famous buckets of the campus
• drunkards in clusters
• birthday bashes
• Project Appraisal projects review classes
• Economics classes : demand and supply

(every word has deep meaning : mind you!)

and ofcourse the new character on the block described in the above paragraph 'Khujli Khan'.

and my abs were paining because of the laughter (pretty good abs exercise). in some time it was morning as couple of us trying steal a nap for few mins, cracking jokes and laughing all at the same time. as we peeped out of the window we realised that its been raining incessantly. we were like 'wtf' all our plans will be ruined. we have not even gone to the beach till now: how sad. after sometime we get freshened up and come out of the lodge looking for some hot tasty breakfast. invariably we end up eating idly, vada and had some tea - all the while rain is lashing ferociously. and then surprise surprise!! rain stopped. cool: we ask the chaiwallah how long is the beach: we were expecting like 1-2 kms but he said it is 5 mins walk 'WTF!!' pleasant surprise. but we still take the car: thinking that it might rain again.

After reaching the beach front we discover that it is a rock beach but we had already missed out on supposedly beautiful sunrise. sea waves hitting hard on to the boulders, morning sun and cool breeze: made it really a pleasant place.

after spending some quality time there (read: not speaking much and sitting on the rocks staring the horizon, doing nothing) we started for the another beach :
Auroville Beach. some 15 kms from the city. now this is where we really enjoyed a lot. we left all valuables in the car including camera. just carried the shorts and towels and voila we jumped in to the waves. this is the first time ever that i was really enjoying on the beach. man it was good. we were trying venture as deep as possbile in to the waves: and these waves - red in colour - were carrying the sands and lashing it on to our body - like sand blasting. after some time of play the waves would stuff out shorts and kaccha with loads of sand :lol and we would have to unload it everytime we run back on to the beach. it was hilarious. we did this for better part of the day. in the afternoon we were feeling hungry, tired and with real bad sun burns. how we wish Shrivijay could be there. he would've definitely carried the sun block cream lol. we went hunting for a good restaurant and found one i think.. actually i don't remember what we ate or where - i can remember only that we were dead tired and hungry - remember we have had no real sleep from the time we started our drive.

post lunch we went back to room and wanted to sleep for a while but you know what when one is tired he should sleep asap. if you delay for long you'll not be able to sleep even if you want to: it is like your body is accustomed to the state it was in and we struggled to get some sleep - but no use. by evening 6 we got ready to go out on to the rocky beach: this time again we took the M800- come on it is just 5 mins walk from our lodge : lazy bums. cool breeze, some nice girls on the stroll and 4 stags staring: typical scene. by 8 in the evening everybody is hungry again : so we head to the near by pizza hut and hog. after all this.. isn't it a time for good night's sleep? no way : after all we are nocturnals.. in the night we spoke to the lodge manager for extension of check-out time but they said it is strict 24hrs per day's rent: if we stay any longer we pay more. so rest is not hard to imagine: after spending some time in the room chatting up and packing we leave exactly at 2.45 am.. to where? we don't know.

we crank-up the car and drive to... the same rocky beach. we went to this 24hr cafe on the beach.. had nice hot kappa with some brownies

after that we spent time on the beach trying to capture some pics of the sea waves with the puny cybershot camera. now it was 3.30 in the morning and time for us to start our journey. after some discussion among ourselves we decide to take Chennai road. suddenly plot became clear : we would head to Mahabalipuram - another beach town near Chennai. so let's go. we reach Mahabalipuram early in the morning : it was still dark and raining. we park near the temple and wait for the dawn and skies to clear. but we had poor luck: we missed the sunrise here too as it was raining heavily and sky was cloudy. after the cloud cleared up we went in to the beach. this

one was a typical beach: but had high and clear water waves. we took few pics, did some long jumps, got caught in the rain and that is it. we decide to call it a trip and get back to the waiting veyron to return to Bangalore.

this route has some amazing no wait AMAZING roads that i have ever driven. it is enjoyable and not boring like some other highways. as we did not have any plans for the stops it was like drive constantly at fairly high speeds(for the car) non stop as long as the driver/car/passengers can take it. in most of these trips Muthu is the one who gets to sleep/rest nicely at the backseat: listening to Techno-Trance. [though he likes Progressive but he doesn't have a choice as it was my collection on the cds]. and on the road it was usual dog fights with some higher capacity cars but on this drive we were surprised by one old M800 which overtook us as if it were a 1.6 ltr sedan: interesting. we had our lunch stop at Krishangiri and we were back in Bangalore by 5.30 in the evening.

PS: phew that was quite a long one: after the first one, i thought 'll control the length but sorry can't help it