• Saturday, March 10, 2007 

    The most eventful B'day ever

    The most eventful B'day ever

    Not many people get to celebrate their b'days in a manner that I get to do, not that I throw a huge party its just that 31st December happens to be a day when the whole world is partying and celebrating and this year was no different and the best part was I got to celebrate it with so many people it was real fun. If u've talked to me lately few of the things I would be continuously blabbering about are, this assignment, that report, some quiz, some other exam, life has become very predictable at IIM B and you can rest assured that more often than not I'll be busy in one of these if not more, however our exams ended on the 30th, knowing better than to escape the "bday bumps" I had planned to stay behind for the midnight bash, so after a pseude dinner and a couple of beer bottles down in an uptown Italian restaurant ( Little Italy - Indiranagar and I aint ever going back there, never ever, not that it pinched my wallet too hard, and believe me you, it didn’t spare me much on that count, but the freaky place was a vegetarian!!!, now there is a limit to what a man can stand... I'm sure all non-vegetarians would unite with me to say a vegetarian meal while eating out is a waste of time and money)... back to the story ...after a pseude dinner and a couple of beer bottles down in an uptown Italian restaurant, we raced back to be in time for the dreaded "hooshing". I was there on time but the best thing was more than half the batch had already left for home and after the token hooshing we had the most civilized of the b'day celebrations ever at IIM B. I actually got to cut the cake and people actually had pieces of cake to eat and when we were thru we left the cut pieces on the mess table, people must've surely thought it was a joke.

    I had an early morning flight and had to leave at around 4 in the morning and so I decided against taking a nap (getting up would've been very difficult with 3 days of exam sleep still pending + a couple of beers in my belly). After an uneventful journey (except that it was my 1st time ever in a flight) we reached Calcutta and a few phone calls (and a little more) and a couple of hours later I was sitting in the same restaurant where some of us had given our placement treat at the end of that memorable 1 day cal tour for all the winigies. Jha was there with me, Suvro joined in a little later (later I came to know another bastard wingie Uddu was in town but had not bothered to inform us) and as far as motu is concerned not even the guys who live in cal know about his whereabouts, and the bugger is so dormant over the group that his absence was almost taken for granted. Anyways here I was celebrating my b'day with few of my best frnds and of course I don’t remember how much we gulped down this time but it was soon time for my train and off I was to catch the train. Jha was there to see me off and maybe it was the amount of alcohol , or maybe jha has that magic, but it did feel a little like the time all the wingies were seeing off every other guy one by one, its been almost 2 years, with some I've met once, with some maybe twice, with Dhingra of course a lot because of our common connection with Mumbai, but now that’s lost too, and with most I haven’t met at all and I don’t even know when all the wingies will set foot together...

    Back to celebration mode there is more to come, Mom Dad and Cacha had come over to pick me up and there was a party of a different kind lined up a family party for a change, some of my (infinite number of) cousins (and their kids) had come over from US some other had come over to meet them in all it was a large gathering with 3 generations (1 both above and below me) coming together. I did cut the cake again, we played lots of party games which both the kids and the oldies enjoyed and for the middle generation it was great to be involved in all those moments like when a nephew or a niece or an uncle or aunt enacted / cracked the dumb-charade clue. Winning is fun but as they say its more about participating than winning, specially when it comes to such occasions.

    As the countdown to New Year ended we celebrate with firecrackers and hugs and smiles. Finally my B'day ended, so did an eventful year and a New Year set in with new promises, new boundaries to be challenged, new horizons to be explored...

    However there is just this little that I still have to add to that particular journey, we started early and reached Ranchi by brunch time, with no one else at home dadi was at bua's place. We were meeting for the 1st time after dada's death and even though they hardly came across in each others way but they were the only two people around the house all the time and decades of getting used to each other for better or for worse, it was a big loss for her too (this dadi is widow of my dada's elder brother and has been living with us almost since she was married, my dada had drawn his last breath in October last year... the previous blog...) and I think one of the 1st words from her were "babua, dada ke pujo ke samay na aa sakla" (son, you couldn’t even come for the last rites of grandpa...). Anyways I wont get into the emotional angle here, the last post was supposed to do that, this one was meant to be different. Bua is a grandma now too and it was the 1st time I saw Mannu bhaiya's daughter, she's such a sweetheart made absolutely no fuss in making friends with another "Chachu". 4 generations were there together laughing and smiling and as I took the wheels and we said bye to bua, there was just one more thing on my mind, next stop "home sweet home"