A night out with school buddies ...

The 1st week of June 2006 will hold a special place in my heart. During this week, I have had the privilege of catching up with my school buddies. Occasions such as these are all the more fruitful when they are not planned. The summary of the week was as follows ....

June 6, 2006.
After a comparatively boring day at work, I went home at around 7 pm. My friend Nikhil had also come home by then. We both were supposed to attend the wedding of one of my best friends .... Ajaz. We were together in Bishop's since 3rd grade and he was and still is a jerk. He has almost inherited everything from his father ... his paunch being the most visible physical attribute. He was always known for causing the maximum mischief in the class. I'm glad that he hasn't changed a bit.

Nikhil and I arrived at Yash Lawns and were surprised not to see a single car parked over there. Either we had misread the invitation and come late or we were the first ones to arrive. Fortunately, it was the latter. It was a non-typical Muslim wedding with no Non-Veg food. I had harboured a desire to have sumptuous Non-Veg food but alas it wasnt to happen. Nevertheless, the place was beautifully decorated. The couple arrived just a few minutes later and we promptly went up to them and expressed our good wishes to them. The bride's name is Jaibun ... quite an odd name and they suited each other like hand in glove. Nikhil was fuming coz Ajaz asked him "Kaisa hai Sushil?". That was hilarious.

We had food and waited for our other school mates to drop in. Two of them did - Dinesh and Malay. In school, we were a group of 6 namely Ajaz, Ankit, Aditya, Dinesh, Malay and myself. Aditya couldn't attend coz he was busy with his training at the Taj in Mumbai. Ankit (we didnt know he was married) couldn't attend coz his wife wasn't keeping well. So it was just Nikhil, Malay, Dinesh and myself. Nikhil and Dinesh left early. Malay and I walked around Yash Lawns thrice chatting about the good old school days. Talks ranged from all the canings we received from teachers to all the good looking female teachers to unique copying techniques and secretly viewing porn magazines. How time flies. Malay then dropped me at the gate of my society. Again, we started chatting .... until we realised it was close to 12:30 in the night. Malay left after we decided that we would have a get together atleast once a month.

June 7, 2006
It was decided 2 days ago that some of us Bishopites would meet and freak out. The cast includes Ravi Uppal, Abhinandan Mukherjee, Martin Meghnath, Ashish Dubey and myself. Ravi is pursuing his MS in Mech from University of South California (USC). Abhinandan is undergoing training at INS Shivaji. Martin leads a team of his own at MPhasis and Ashish works at Wipro Spectramind. All lukhhaas of the very first order.

It was 9 pm. Ravi gave me call and asked me to meet him at the Lulla nagar crossing. We both met and couldnt hide our joy coz we were meeting after close to 4 years. He had got his Hyundai Accent. We were just driving thru the city for close to 30 minutes and for some reason listening to Himesh's songs. He is everywhere that man .... whether u like it or not. We went to Ashish's place. Apparently he was with his girl friend at his place and he said that he would join us in 10 minutes time though it took him close to 2 hours to join us. I was meeting Ashish after 6 years. The last time we met, we played a cricket match and lost miserably. Ravi and I moved on to Abhinandan's place at the AFMC. The place was so pleasant to view at. A long gallery culminating into great rooms and an equally attractive stairway. Then, the 3 of us again went on a drive. We realised that we need to pick up some booze before it gets too late and sadly most of the wine shops were closed. We had to go to KP to one of my friend's wine shop. We got 8 cans of Haywards beer and then moved onto ABC farms. We picked up 2 Tandooris from Golconda and then made a call to Martin. He could not find ABC farms for some reason .....

Ravi, Abhi and I went back to Abhi's place and started off with our booze and chicken session. Man it was amazing. I was meeting Abhi for the first time after school ... close to 8 years. Martin joined us in about 10 minutes and all that could be heard was swearing. Each sentence had 2 swear words on an average and no1 was holding back. Ashish also joined us in another 15 minutes time and we were well and truly rocking. 2 Tandooris and 8 cans of beer disappeared in 15 minutes and we knew we were not done.

The 5 of us went back to ABC farms at 12:30 in the nite. But Golconda was closed. We went to some place called Curf or Perf ... Im not sure. We ordered 10 pints and 2 more Tandooris. The waiter told us that Tandoori will take time. So we decided that we will have 5 pints there itself. We chatted and boozed. All those memories of Bishop's came alive. Everyone had something to say and it seemed like we would be there till the morning. The police were on late nite patrolling duty and asked the hotel owner to shut down for the day. The person in-charge over there then got nasty with us. He was drunk and had a very annoying American accent. He was not willing to give the remaining 5 pints which lead to an argument coz we had been waiting for over an hour. Fortunately, there was one calm guy among us ... Martin. He handled the situation amicably and we got the Tandoori as well as the 5 pints. So back to Abhi's place.

The pints also disappeared pretty soon as well as the Tandoori. All we knew was that we were laughing our lungs out. Talks about teachers, prefects, school sports, etc etc kept us riveted. Martin left at 2 am. Then we finished the chicken. Ravi dropped me home. It was 3 15 am. I had the most amazing 2 days ... funnily those 2 days not being a weekend. I have never had that amount of booze for the last 7 or 8 years. Fantamarvellous .... Cheers mates .... Long Live Bishop's.