We planned for an extended non-work team outing ( the team's strength lies in non-work related matters ) to Kodagu, sometime last year which had to be indefinitely postponed due to my sudden flight to Kathmandu. I had missed the Periyar trip as well, owing to another reason which I dont remember now. Maapillai Senthil's marriage gave us a platform to showcase our skills in eating, drinking and talk "lollu sabha" lingo. Jaanu, the PM that he is, booked the tickets but was also wise enough to extract the fare upfront, knowing our liking to acknowledge debts over email, phone or in person, but doing nothing after that. Being a working day, we had to come to office in business overalls. I slipped into my sandals while Raghav opted for his ultra cool all purpose Skechers. Basha and Jaanu were laying the bait for Nextel ( by including non-existent tasks in a KT plan ), which had to be submitted by the weekend. Basha, fearing that Jaanu might not be on time, asked Raghav and me to wait at the food court and we duly obliged by snacking on a dahi chat. Basha came and was all excited, which he blatantly displayed by barging into the shared auto to the peril of the two girls who were already seated. Unfortunately the tiny bag he was carrying hindered his lunge towards the space between the two girls. From MadhyaKailash it took us around 45 mins to reach Koyambedu, and we talked about JMX, JBPM, Powerbuilder on the way ( if only you believed that we could have discussed all that.. )
Paddy, the man with the right info for the right occassion, was waiting for us at the rendezvous point. Without much ado we went in and ordered what each of us wanted. The waiter there felt really sorry that he couldnt offer what we wanted, much to our dismay. Jaanu joined us shortly and so did Nanda and Vetri. We finished our dinner and boarded the fully ACed KPN with berths. Raghav and me observed that the birth above us had a slight hammock like bend, and it didnt take us too long to realize that the reason for that was Basha.
We reached Salem and had the usual early morning T, and before long, we had a Chevy Tavera to take us to the lodge. Very rarely does one have the need for hot water to take a shower in Tamilnadu, and the lodge guys were liberal in providing hot water alone in the bathrooms. We braved that, and got ready in a jiffy to go to the wedding hall. Our Maapillai was beaming, and that gave us confidence to go right upto the dining hall for the pre-thaali breakfast. One normally doesnt have to stand right in front of the dining benches expecting the incumbent diners to vacate the bench, but we didnt mind it, since that was the norm. To keep a tab on the swelling waistline, we restricted ourselves to moderate servings, except for Nanda and Paddy. We were in time for what he had originally come for, and we were one of the first to give the "moii" to Maapillai and pose for the customary photograph.
Soon after, we set forth for Yercaud, while Basha was thinking of the best reason for his absence from work. We stopped on the way to get some DVDs to kill time, and we were overjoyed to land our hands on the much treasured "Mariyadhai" starring puratchi thalaivar. "Pasanga" DVD was the second option we had. The usual fare of nicknames, lollu sabha, slapstick comedy was on, but nothing came close to the "handwass" and the cellphone shrug from Gabtun. Jaanu, the spoilsport, ensured that we stayed awake through the movie. We couldnt take it and relied upon Zandu Balm to keep us sane. At At the temple, we bent and proceeded to visit the cave dwelling diety while Basha chose to contemplate on his life by laying on his back on the compound wall with a cool breeze to pat him to sleep. By now Raghav had got into his famous "pajamas", while Paddy daddy got into his cool bermudas.
Basha recommended GRT, and I was happy to alight and use their toilet and also order 7 glasses of water. Even though we liked the view and all that, we decided to check out another hotel. I recommended getting their visiting card, so that we could call and order our lunch, when we were ready. This simple act of goodwill for the sake of my co-travellers, was to be the butt of jokes for this trip :-) Sometimes, people are ungrateful, and this lot sure was. We killed time at the grand palace, harassing the waiters, changing channels, commenting on everyone under the sun, but it was pure fun.
Our return was set for 10:30 PM, so we decided to catch up on a movie at Salem, and we felt overjoyed to know that we had two movies for choice - Mirrors, and Angels and Demons. We stopped in between for some T and bajjis, and we felt liberated to drink T by siting on chairs by the side of the road. When we reached the theatre I was shocked to know that the tamil dub was being screened and I begged the rest to check out some other "real" tamil movie. But knowing this lot, I knew they were looking forward to the comic tamil sentences and not to the actual movie itself. I felt like a goat being dragged to a slaughter house, but felt at peace to realize that its been a while since I have slept in a movie. The gang empathized with me when I asked, if they were going to screen "Kal Kisne Dekha Hai" in tamil. The power went out a few times, the audio was supressed ( local censoring ), the AC wasnt as cold as we would have liked.
Post movie, we settled the dues with the driver which worked out to 2K and proceeded for a light dinner. By our standards, it was really a low key affair at the restaurant. It had started raining and we boarded the same bus which we had taken for the onward journey. Paddy and Nanda got a kick out of scaring one poor soul who wasnt sure if he got onto the right bus and kept asking if it was going to Chennai. The wicked weasels, kept talking about the places enroute to Madurai to make matters worse for that chap. We drifted off to sleep, dreaming about work next day, "engal aasan" ...zzz...zzz
