Doesn't remind you of anything.

This is not going to be a blow by blow account of Saarang '09. This is not going to be a travelgoue sorts post too, wherein I tell you everything with a linear narrative. This is not going to be one of those posts wherein I describe whatever I saw, or heard, but rather what it did to me. In short sentences which are no way connected to each other. Each one, as unique as the other(Whatte statement!), coming together to give me Saarang '09.

*The train to Madras with all of them, the stupid assface Camera guy, the orange sky, Singing aloud, and lipreading. Staying awake talking all kinds of stuff and looking at a bedsheet with cows all over it.

*Kicking waves at the beach, getting wet to the point that no one will notice if you pee in your pants. (Disgusting? Then don't read)

*Pusky's case of mistaken identity.

*Vini. The before, the during and the after. How I found out she can't squirt water out her mouth the way I do. The tender coconut experience, the bundle of joy that is Vini. The wolfhowl signalling departure, the song and the jig. I'll be a better host next time, V.

*Scrabbling with Suraksha. I realised six hours of scrabble can't make me get tired of it. It is untruest if I say the weather was bearable that night. Frigging cold.

*The junior gang. An assorted set of crazy fellows. Vidyuth, Rohit, Adit, Kalpesh, Tariq and 2D Fun to be with! Be it the 1 o clock Jughead special or the Kuruk Open Quiz OR the 200 bucks they swindled!

(One of them whose name begins with a V, actually asked to have names mentioned :P)

*All the quizzes, with the slightest exception of the lone wolf. I'll expect to go on stage for SPENT next year.

*Dance workshops. The ones we missed. The partner hunts with Saurav :)

*The IIT girls who dress  up for every other thing. Eaglebutt and Miniskirt and Bandanna girl. 

*The IIT girls who became boring after a day and a half.

*Nacha's birthday. The slow-mo run and the group hug. Nacha's elated expression. Photos! Feeding chocolate cake to the stag.

*Nithya Sivashankar's comedy of errors. (Anyone who asks details will get the Vada-bonda conundrum which also you won't get details about. )

*Sleepwalking. Scary shit. One minute I'm walking to the hostel and the other I'm holding the watchman's register in my hand.

*Sleeping with the left shoe on and the door open with the phone ringing loud.

*Our lawn. The phone's funeral. All the times we were there. Mahesh, Nacha, Saurav, Kalyan, Preeti, Preji, Nithya, Shrey, Swati, Nirmal and me.

*Limbo!

*Sudden moodswings which left me blank and grumpy.

*Shorty, who I atlast got to know better.

*My Nike Right shoe sole which got torn.

*The tight schedule due to which we missed paintball and other events, we'd normally have attended.

*A weird night at HSB 264.

*The slacker group of the walking party. Yay to us people!

*Bleak. Demon Of the fall. Lotus eater. Deliverance. Drapery falls. Opeth. Headbanging. Shrey. Sore throat and stiff neck.

*Saarang Village. And the EVAM play. Riding Karthik's bike. A bike after 2 years.

*Mental voids. Periods of black-outs. 

*A pleasant surprise in the form of a school friend from the 9th. :)

*Earphones and then ight air for company, singing "I'm still alive" loud to anyone who wants to hear at 3 AM on the 26th.

A Saarang which tilted towards the "awesome" side. A saarang to remember. For myriad reasons which I can only try to put in words, the reasons which I felt and one needs to be there to feel, in that campus, secluded from the rest of the world.

The homecoming

Saarang '09.  Saa-rang Oh-nine. 

Douse me with cold water. Like now.

P.s : Sleep made me change this long post to a teaser.

Hex Omega

See you on the other side of Saarang '09. :)

I nodded off to sleep to "Sad but true". An addition to the list of firsts.

Metallica. \m/

Song in a crowded bus at 7 PM : "Kalaama..Kalaama...Kalaaikkalaama!"

I rest my case.

Update : Word combo of the day - "Appalingly romantic :P"

Kochuveli express

As I lay here on seat 51, upper berth, propped on my elbows in front of my dad's laptop, which has super-laptop battery time(upto 8.5 hours),with my feet half dangling out into the gangway, changing my position once every ten minutes or so to save myself from backache, all in an effort to stay awake till my train reaches home at 0020 Hrs the next day, but at the same time knowing that I can't because the laptop will last for another 1.5 hours only, I don't know why I resorted to this post. Is it the number 51, or the green banana I had?

January has been awesome so far. Two weeks in, I've found myself having to attend only two out of five days of college per week. This will repeat next week thanks to the festival of pongal. This week's story however started with me bunking tuesday to get my driver's licence for both a geared motorcycle and "Light motor vehicle", as they put it. Getting a licence has been every driver's nightmare, atleast in coimbatore, It is not the driving part that is tough but the waiting part which is excruciatingly long. I had taken my LLR at the RTO office near nilgiris, but for my licence I was asked to go to the Thudiyalur office. And I had no two wheeler with me too, so Dad called up a friend and he came with me for the bike test. And resourceful me did not know how to traverse an eight without resting my leg, but that is forgivable when you consider the fact that I haven't ridden a geared bike before. I'll never know why they friggin want 8s when you'll never face such a situation on the road.

So there I was practicing toe-shifts and half clutch releases and bucking my way through a makeshift 8 we made using two stones. 15 or so trials later, I had a perfect 8. Then I go meet my licence guy and he asks me for an extra photo which his colleague conveniently forgot to tell me about over the phone. So I go to this dabba shop where they click you with a digicam and print you out on photo papers and charge you 25 bucks for two lame ass passport size photos, get the photos, stick them and go to pay the required amount. Sounds simple right? Only there are 30 other people in front of me and the person incharge hasn't come yet. Added to this, was the Lotus Eye hospital Eye camp which HAD to happen that very day. Initial dismay turned to suppressed excitement. Tell me. What do you do if you see two hot doctors?! (One of 'em was probably my age give/take 2 years. Smart & pretty. Ahem) And oh, they had this amazing RTO office gum too, which is kinda gooey but doesnt stick on your fingers at all!

So now let me fast forward to the part where I finish both tests and I am waiting for my licence. The room chooses to smell like urine and the guy makes us wait till 3 3o PM, A day I went without lunch. Then I get my licence and I see my dad's name printed as RAI instead of RAVI. Argue, hassle, proof show, name change, get licence, go home, Beat. Licence in hand and Two Ilaneers, 1 tea, 1 samosa, one vada and 1 fanta in me, God knows how.

The laptop shouts at me meekly through a pop-up - "1 hour 25 minutes remaining.". I get up and stretch.

And now, it is time to answer the question. "Why am I on a train?".
My paternal thatha, died 11 to 12 years ago on a Vaikunta Ekadasi. A glorious day to die on, say everyone. Every year my dad goes to do his duties as a son. This year, for a change, I go too. this year, it was bangalore. We keft on Tuesday night at 11 PM in a KPN sleeper bus, which threatened to topple at every squealing turn. I slept, anyhow and when I woke at 5.30 AM and realised we'd reached B'lore in a matter of 6 hours, it chilled me; that coupled with the fresh morning breeze.

We meet the relatives, chit chat a bit, and the omam commences. Devasam food was prepared in the kitchen. The food at this time every year is to die for. Pun intended,

After food, contented faces and filled stomachs start the second round of chitchat. Old stories revisited. my dad's standard sharanyan story to the relatives, talks about the cousins, what I'm going to do, ooking at my uncle's Zune, asking about the Wine kegs in the neighbour's house; It was fun. We had to leave at 4 PM thanks to the winding roads and traffic jams of the bangalore that is today. I sleep in the cab out of exhaustion, for 30 minutes only, but I slept well, good enough for it to evade me this long.

I will be reaching Coimbatore in approximately 2 hours. In 25 hours I'll have been to bangalore and back. Thankfully tomorrow's a holiday. This visit was peculiar, In the sense that, the famed bangalore "chicks" were nowhere to be seen, probably because it was a weekday and not everyone had their thatha's devasam as a reason to bunk college.

47 minutes of battery life remain. I don't think I'd last that long because my shoulders are killing me. I'd planned on uploading the pics I'd taken there as well, in this post and posting it before the laptop went kaput. Let me see if i can achieve that. ;)

Heh, Upside down photo of the wine barrels with the stone wall. It looked medieval.

My Uncle's zune

The guardian tree which looked over everyone as they tried thier 8's

Peacock plantain tree. :P

Tilt your head 90 degrees to the right for an amazing dusk sky.

Peripa's neighbor. Nice walls+pipe
Barrels of Wine. Minus the Wine

Walls of stone

The light from the screen bounces off my face one last time before windows plays its shutdown tune.

Over and out.

A long time coming

Here's the time when I have to get used to writing the year part of the date differently. 

2008 was good.

(Clockwise from centre : Ball pen graffiti on the ast page of some note book, Shadow, Take diversion sign that we drew on the sidewalk, Karthik and me at anaikatti, Those two ;), Us on the road, Stone fced nitha, Early morning meet, A recent escapade, Snow world bout, Naruto and gaara,awooooo!!! and penny (Wolf whistle!))

2009, you're welcome!

Courtesy

P.S : Garfield update at the bottom of this page. Finally!