Pune Tour Chapter-4

We were again back on road with the same sitting positions. Iqbal started consuming his “mukhvas” after dinner. He is addicted to the “supari mukhvas” and he took the enough stock when we stopped at Gachibowli ATM. Jasmin stretched himself in the back seat. I asked Shravan to start the music. Shravan had good collection in his I-Pod. Also he had specially prepared his I-Pod with selected music albums, for this journey. There was moderate traffic on the road so I and Iqbal were relaxing a bit and started enjoying the music. “Dil to bachcha hai ji” was the song running. The song took us to the memory of Chintan’s marriage. There are some memories which get associated with particular song. Whenever you listen to that song you will definitely remember the incident associated with it. The good thing is; most of the time, the incident is funny JJJ and if you are with other friends, you would definitely like to share the incident with them. The song had changed our mood and we started talking on topics ranging from share market to office girls. Jasmin was trying to sleep but couldn’t, due to discussions. The “hot” discussions were naturally humorous because of the mood set by the “Dil to bachcha hai ji”. Also, it had turned to a leg pulling session and Jasmin’s name was also mentioned along with our own, in the round robin fashion. And that’s the reason, he couldn’t sleep. “Prevention is better than cure” is the best strategy in these situations. And in our group, there is no “cure”; there will be only creatively imagined incident with some songs remains forever.

                                                                                                                The traffic increased slightly and “Toofan” jeeps with four high beam headlights were really annoying Shravan. We were heading towards Gulbarga so were expecting Karnataka border check post. Having two thousand bucks in the pocket, we were not afraid of the check post :(:(:(. And the check post came, but no one asked us anything and we ran away with two thousand bucks safe in our pocket. Now the road was really smooth and there was almost no traffic. It was only two lane road but the smoothness of the road and no traffic made it very comfortable. It was very quite road with deep darkness in all directions so we were enjoying the music to its fullest. The album changed to “Kaminey” movie songs and started “Bhanwra aaya re Fataak!!!”.  I and Shravan are poetic creature by heart so we started enjoying the lyrics of the song. Jasmin was lying with closed eyes and Iqbal was getting bored by our(me and Shravan’s) chat of lyrics. I have sensed his irritation and asked him to pay the attention for the last 4-5 lines of the song.

“Yeh ishq nahi aasan, aji AIDS ka khatra hai,

patwar pehen jaana, yeh aag ka dariyaa hai”

These lines played in the song, Iqbal listened with some interest. Then I explained him that actual shayari is:

                                “Yeh ishq nahi aasan, bas itna samaj lijeeye,

                                  yeh aag ka dariya hai aur doob ke jana hai”

Here, Shahid kapoor is singing this song for AIDS awareness program and it is a parody of famous shayari. Iqbal now fully understood the concept and laughed relentlessly for next five minutes. Actually he got the bigger humor in the “Naiya doob gai” line;););).

                                                                                                                After that, he started taking interest in lyrics so I explained him the greatness of Gulzar and his work from “Chaddi pahen ke phool khila hai” to “Chhaiya Chhaiya” and “Sathiya”. I talked about Vishal Bhardwaj’s(Director of “Kaminey”) TV interview.  In the interview, he said that “Kaminey” is Gulzar’s favorite word and “Gulzar sahib ne is shabd ko izzat bakshi hai”.  Now the song changed to “Raat ke dhai baje”. We were discussing about different lyrics but suddenly Iqbal said, listen to the song – What a line…”Ek lat sulzane ko sari raat guzaari hai..”. He experienced a massive orgasm in that line :D:D:D.  Jasmin couldn’t control and gave up the try to sleep. Again, we were back on leg pulling track. But still, Iqbal was serious and said, “Once we come back to Hyderabad, I need to listen ‘Kaminey’ songs carefully” ;););). We assumed, as a bachelor, he went to the totally different plane of thinking.

My Pune Tour Chapter-3

It was around 9:30 PM now and we just started on Mumbai highway from BHEL circle, Lingampally. Iqbal was on front seat and Jasmin and I were settling down on back seat. Seats were really very comfortable as we were only four people and it was far better than semi-sleeper Volvo seat. It was around 550 km distance and we never had that long tour previously.  Also it was night driving, so me and Iqbal were little scared as Shravan was not looking very confident. But as I mentioned earlier, he was on the driver seat to gain that confidenceLLL. Actually he has good driving skills but the problem was; he was driving in the night and he believes that car cannot be driven on less than 80 kmph speed and 100-110 kmph is the ideal speed. Also we were confident that Shravan will not give driver seat to anybody until he himself feels that “now it’s the real danger to even drive for the 100 meters!!!!” . Jasmin was the other option available for driving. He had vast experience in driving long distance in the night (Don’t ask me, I don’t know the reasonJ). So here Jasmin was acting as an expert to Shravan and was there to take the driver seat anytime.

I and Iqbal had already expressed our fear on the day we finalize for the tour and discussed our ‘plan of action’ to control Shravan’s excitement. So we started talking about how there are two drivers in the Volvo for overnight journey and how they drive on rotation basis. We were talking on high pitch so that Shravan can hear it and also feel the ‘sensibility’ towards risk but Shravan had started the music instead. Now another task was to let Jasmin have his sleep so that when ‘real’ need arises, he should be able to drive it. For that, first we had to complete our dinner.

                                We were searching for good ‘Dhaba’ on highway.  Our previous tours were down south, so we always stored some chips and other snacks stuff from “Hot Chips” in the car bcoz after searching for good north Indian food for two hours on the road, we always ended-up with curd rice in the plate.  This time we assumed that we were travelling on national highway towards Maharashtra so there must be good ‘North Indian Dhaba’ on the way so we didn’t bother to take snacks with us. In fact, we were very excited to have true north-indian taste on our tongue.  We skipped two average looking dhaba in the excitement and driven on next 35 kms in the search of some decent place.  The excitement now turned into worry for me and Iqbal as our primary aim was to give Jasmin a restJ. Everybody was feeling hungry now and not seeing any ray of hope. Actually there were no restaurants coming on the way from last 5-6 kms so I and Iqbal compromised on the quality of dhaba and pretended to starve. We decided to stop on the first restaurant we encounter and after 2.5 kms we were in front of the dhaba which was looking 99% worse than the first two we have skipped. Everybody repented on over-excitement and hesitated to go-off the car. But I gave them the philosophical lecture of not to surrender to greed as this is already the result of the same. I told them, further we act greedy, we might not have even this dhaba. The last sentence worked well and we entered the dhaba with winking smiley from Iqbal to me.

There were 6 to 8 steel tables in dhaba with bill counter in the left side of the entrance. Open kitchen was on right side with 2 person sitting there.  Two groups of people were seating on the middle two tables. We selected last corner table and sat there. Jasmin asked me to give order so I looked for the waiter to come. I have waited for 5-7 minutes but no one was even looking at our table so I decided to better call the waiter and order for the food. Now the real problem for me was; everyone present in the restaurant were looking like waiter, including the group of people sitting on the middle tableJ. It looked like the hotel staff were having their dinner at the end of the day. I remained silent for next 3 minutes. Suddenly, a boy standing in the kitchen area appeared saying, “kya loge??”.  He was smelling very badly with desi daroo and was struggling to balance his body. We wanted ‘menu’ first, but looking at him and Dhaba, we dropped the idea of asking Menu. Instead, Jasmin parked the ball in his court, saying, “kya milega??”. The boy uttered 3 curry names which were available, hence justified our sensibility for not asking menu card J.Out of three curries, 2 of them were non-veg items and even in very very limited choices, we were thinking of what to order. Irritated Shravan interrupted the decision making process by asking the boy about wash room location. “go straight, then left  and then right”, the boy answered without looking at Shravan. Shravan asked again, “kis taraf??”. Now that waiter fellow carefully looked at Shravan, observed him from head to toe, thought something for 5 sec and said, “sidha jake, left lelo aur fir right”. He thought, this guy does not know English, so he explained him in Hindi JJJ.  The height of the situation was; the route explained was ending at the kitchenJJJ. Shravan just dropped the directional confusion and went behind the Dhaba wall. We ordered one non-veg and two veg curries with some chapattis. The same boy went to kitchen, prepared curries and came back to table. His journey from kitchen to our table looked like Lemon-Spoon Game. When the game finished, we got the prize in form of food and we started our post game activity. In the first bite itself, I realized that someone must have followed the waiter’s path for wash roomLLL. I hardly had 4-5 bites and I gave up. He had prepared all three curries in the same bowl with same ingredient, except for chicken and vegetables so everything tasted the same. With the huge disappointment, we left the food, paid at the counter and left the Dhaba with the feeling of; this must be result of Sukeshbhai’s curse for not taking him with us.

My Pune Tour Chapter-2

The households were already loaded by packers & movers and started for Pune on Thursday evening.  I had planned in such a way that when we reach Pune on Saturday morning, truck should be standing there to be unloaded at my new rented house.

 Now it was a Friday morning and we all were in the travel mood or rather “Travel mode”. Engineers never leave their job at the office so the people around them often have to tolerate the technical terminologiesL.  Shravan tried hard to get the registration once we finalized to go by car, and luckily we got the vehicle number but number plate and RC book was not ready.  He had spent the morning in regular car maintenance like oil change n all. I got responsibility of preparing the number plate for the car. My entire day (morning 10:30 to evening 4:30) went in choosing the right size prints. I was not sure about the size of the number plate so I did “Hanumangiri” and took 16 prints on A4 size paper with different font sizes with two copy of each so that even if it rains we will have ‘spare number plate’ to stick. I could afford to do so bcoz it was office printer and I was leaving it J.

 Shravan picked me and Sukeshbhai from office and we gathered at Shravan’s place at around 7 in the evening. Sukeshbhai is eldest and respectable member of our group. He is a mentor and friend of every group member. He was in ‘Family Mode’ so could not join us in the tour. He came there to say bye-bye to us. Also his home was on the way so we planned to drop him at home and take the highway thereafter.

10 minutes bag packing program was in execution and as always I took the least time. Shravan is famous for his long planning and preparation in the group. He showed it again by completing the packing previous day itselfJ. So I and Shravan started sticking the number plate with gum-tap. Fortunately “Hanumangiri” had paid us and it was perfectly looking like a genuine number plate. We put our bags in the car and started towards highway with Shravan on the driver seat. Suddenly I realized that police at the border crossing will not accept my debit card if we were caught. I instructed Shravan to take us to ICICI ATM at Gachibowli. On reaching ATM, I told everybody to remain seated in the car as I didn’t want any delay but unfortunately two pretty girls took time inside ATM. Actually as per Hyderabad standard, any average looking girl was pretty and also this species were rare in the area. After 5 long minutes wait everybody came out of the car. That’s it!!!!  Another 15 minutes of unplanned task hit our schedule. I collected cash and we again started now to Sukeshbhai’s home. In this half an hour, we (me, Shravan,Iqbal and Jasmin) felt the pain of Sukeshbhai. He was like die-ing to come with us. But at the same time he had to conceal his urge. It is really very difficult for any man in “Family Mode” to see bachelors enjoying bcoz at that time he is missing that stuff and at the same time he can not even express that he loves to do all that and he is in “Majboori Mode”. We reached Sukeshbhai’s apartment but refrained from visiting his home. I was afraid that in case, Sukeshbhai couldn’t control his urge and opts for last minute jump-in to tour. So we left his home from the gate with very slow voiced bye-bye from Sukeshbhai.

My Pune Tour Chapter-1

The worst thing of any journey is; it always has a destination. This time it was a tour for my house shifting from Hyderabad to Pune as I got a new job in Infosys. In those days, my wife was at my native place and I was fully loaded in “Bachelor mode”. Initially, I had planned to go by bus as probability of getting the tatkal train ticket was as low as rejecting the Infy offer that too of Pune location for any Gujju working in Hyderabad. I talked to Iqbal to help me in the shifting process and as always, he was ready to leave his “Fevicol sponsored” computer chair in the weekend for giving me company.

                                But these were the days when there was a first car bought in the entirely middle-class friend circle. Yes, Shravan had just bought the Indica Vista, a very good car with the image of being cab vehicle. I am using “very good” bcoz Shravan is very sentimental about Indica being called as cab. Actually none of us would ever dare to call his car a cab.  He is ‘senti’ type personality but it was not the reason to not to call it a cab. After all he was the first one who bought car and we already had two amazing tours within AP in the same car.

On hearing my week-end plan, Shravan immediately suggested to go by his car. But to go by car, we need two other members to share the diesel expenses. We all, including Shravan, the car owner, were short of money on those days due to different reasons and the worst thing was it was month ending. First, Iqbal told me that if someone else is coming to Pune then he would rather stay at Hyd as he was coming to Pune only to help me in shifting. Jasmin, the care-free bird, had only one reply: “if everybody is going, I am in. Just inform me when we need to start”. I called him care-free bcoz even his bank account was touching new low when he made that statement.

Another problem was it was a new car and permanent registration was not completed. We all were software engineers and by profession, we always think for the worst case first. So, here we evaluated that we need to cross the state border twice, AP – Karnataka and Karnataka -- Maharashtra, total four times considering return journey. And if we were caught without registration at any border, it will be addition of maximum of 2000 bucks in our expenses. Nobody was in position to bear even  normal expense of tour and these extra 2000 bucks was enough to make the decision easier to whether to go by car or not. I almost prepared myself for the semi-sleeper Volvo journey with Iqbal. The situation was like; if everybody is ready then Iqbal is not ready and if no one is ready then Iqbal is ready. His problem was simple; he could not afford to spend money without reason in the scarcity. “Uske andar ka Gujju abhi zinda tha !!!”.

Shravan was always ready to go for long distance as his car was new and this kind of tour would give him confidence of driving for over-night station :). He too had a condition to make: “I don’t have even ‘footi kodi’, right now”.  
                                                Everybody was well aware of the enjoyment that they can get in going by car, but the only thing stopping them was money. Also, we already had two tours and this one could become too much.  There were so many “yes – no” and “no – yes” between us for the entire day and at last we somehow decided to go by car. I had spared some 8000 bucks for house shifting emergency and was ready to give it to the tour till next salary. Means, I will give money for the tour and whatever per head expenses will be, given back to me on the salary day. Even this was the dilemma situation for Shravan :) .  But we went ahead only on the confidence of salary day. “Jo hoga woh dekha jayega” was the attitude we all had.  Actually, we took two days for this kind of simple decision only bcoz of the same attitude shown in the first week of salary :):):).  The beauty of this kind of attitude is; you can go ahead with the same attitude till end as nothing will be in your control so there is no other option left behind :):):).

Hi......Friends

Hi Friends,

I m here to vomit my random thoughts creatively.
Wish me good luck.

-- Thinking Smiley