Okay…. So this is the third and final part of Memoirs of my December (awww…. Don’t be sad… there will always be more on ‘Few Words’). This is the part which kind of summarizes my entire winter vacation. So here it goes….
30th December 2010 –3rd January 2011: After Sumi’s treat… he got a bit busy and I too wanted to spend some more time with my family since only a few days were remaining before I left for Delhi again, from where I had to go catch my flight back to Goa. So most of this period was spent at home, having fun with my little bro, chatting with Dadi, and of course, watching Prison Break with mom and dad. However the days were running out fast, and the tale of Michael Scolefield was quite far from reaching its climax, so mom, dad and me were in a race against time (sounds vaguely familiar to a Hindi movie title, I know! ) Now it so happened when the three of us were in the same room, and that room happened to be mom and dad’s room, a fourth member used to join us – my laptop! 7-8 episodes (of 40 minutes duration each!) were what we called ‘regular’ those days…. It was great fun!
New Year also came by. I was visited by Anurag and Chirag during these days. Both visits were short, unlike any meetings we usually liked to have, but all were short on time on this account. Anurag visited me on a cold evening, but all the poor lad had waiting for him at my home were my mom’s evergreen stories, which, from the looks on his face, weren’t appealing to him much at all. But I think mom’s cold coffee must’ve compensated for that… Chirag visited the next day. As always is the case in winter vacations, his university, RTU chose the weirdest timings for some presentations, so even though I had highly anticipated an early homecoming from him (because his exams were over this time on time!), he came to Jaipur at the same time he used to in the years before, a day or two before I was scheduled to leave. We did not play cricket that day (as we usually loved to) , but had a nice long chat in Nishkam bhaiyya’s (my neighbor and oldest best friend) verandah. It was nice remembering the old days with two of my best friends. But if something was missing from these vacations , it was a game of cricket with my gang…. Which I like to call the MCC ;-)
New Year also came by. I was visited by Anurag and Chirag during these days. Both visits were short, unlike any meetings we usually liked to have, but all were short on time on this account. Anurag visited me on a cold evening, but all the poor lad had waiting for him at my home were my mom’s evergreen stories, which, from the looks on his face, weren’t appealing to him much at all. But I think mom’s cold coffee must’ve compensated for that… Chirag visited the next day. As always is the case in winter vacations, his university, RTU chose the weirdest timings for some presentations, so even though I had highly anticipated an early homecoming from him (because his exams were over this time on time!), he came to Jaipur at the same time he used to in the years before, a day or two before I was scheduled to leave. We did not play cricket that day (as we usually loved to) , but had a nice long chat in Nishkam bhaiyya’s (my neighbor and oldest best friend) verandah. It was nice remembering the old days with two of my best friends. But if something was missing from these vacations , it was a game of cricket with my gang…. Which I like to call the MCC ;-)
4th January 2011: It is a cliché, but true…. All good things come to an end, and so did my short stay at home in Jaipur. Prison Break status was about only 7 episodes remaining, which I consider as quite an achievement for mom and dad, considering they were busy the whole day, and we managed to finish almost two full seasons in a span of 8 nights and a Sunday. This time spent with mom and dad is what made PB my most favorite show of all time. Chachu and Chachi had returned only the previous evening, so couldn’t spend much time with them in these vacations L So I boarded the Volvo to Delhi, expecting it to be a journey similar to the one which had brought me from Delhi to Jaipur a few days back, but little did I anticipate that this was going to be one of my most eventful bus journeys to Delhi ever!
Now before I start unraveling the events that occurred during the journey , there’s a small fact which I forgot to mention earlier which I would like to mention now. I use a mobile, just like all of you. In that mobile is a SIM card, just like all of you have. And as a responsible FaceBook user, I had a GPRS internet account created in my Goa SIM card. However, back in Delhi I had come to the realization that my roaming network did not give me the best connectivity somehow, so I switched the SIM cards of my mom’s phone with mine (She also had an Airtel SIM, but her mobile could not be used to connect to the internet). After the switch, I found the connectivity much better so I had kept it that way even when I got to Jaipur, where I was so mesmerized by my broadband connection, that I did not care to switch the SIM cards back to their respective places. Another one of my fundamental duties as a regular facebook user was to activate facebook mobile, which allowed me to receive facebook notifications and messages on my mobile as sms from FaceBook. All you need to relish this story is keep the above two facts in mind.
So, back to the day…. Mom and I boarded the bus. Those of you who travel regularly or have recently travelled in the new Volvo buses would know that Volvo has now fitted two tv screens in its buses for the sake of entertainment of passengers during journeys which take more than 4 hours. They even charge around a hundred bucks extra for this service in the ticket. What they fail to do , is the monitoring of what exactly is shown on the tv screens for a hundred bucks in the name of entertainment…. Yep, you’re right….. the bus driver’s all-time favorites! Since it was an early morning bus and winter time, I couldn’t see anything out of the bus windows except thick and dense, almost opaque fog. So when the tv screens turned on and the words ‘DVD player’ came onto the screens, I turned all my attention towards them, hoping for a latest Bollywood flick to turn up any time. I was in a rude shock. I heard a trumpet playing and the words ‘VENUS presents’ in a font as old as windows 95, splashed on the screen. What followed it was worse – ‘Khiladiyon ka Khialdi’. In my mind I screamed ‘Noooooooooooo……!’ , but I somehow kept my composure on the outside.
Akshay Kumar was performing fight sequences which might give Rajni a run for his money. However, instead of drawing the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the people in the bus, all it managed to get was ‘hahahas’ from the sleep deprived co-passengers of mine. After seeing this response, the driver decided to switch off the movie after 40 minutes. “Thank God!”, my mom and I cried out aloud. But perhaps it was a bit ti early to thank the almighty, as the second movie of the mighty Akshay Kumar began rolling on the screens. My mom and I looked at each other with helplessness as we acknowledged the fact that we were in for an Akshay movie marathon! We arrived at the RTDC midway an hour later and were thankful for a much needed break from Akshay’s antics. Having grabbed a snack there, we were on the bus again, toward Delhi, with our beloved Akshay Kumar. Two things: one that I had net connectivity on my mobile and the second being my fondness for Akshay Kumar, led to me picking up my mobile and logging on to facebook. Now, these days, facebook had become a means for me to share stuff with my newest friend, the one whom I had taught nimbuzz in part I. Somehow, she always used to and still does have a funny reply to the situation I am in at a given point in time, which amuses me quite a bit. So, I log in to facebook, go to messages and read her message which was about ‘Vivah’ (Shahid Kapoor one) being an awfully boring movie. I then messaged her what kind of movies I was currently being put through. After sometime, I got a reply from her. Sometime later, mom’s mobile buzzed too. She took it out of her purse, looked at the message she’d just received, and after a momentary look of confusion, a smile broke across her lips. I thought, ‘Wow, mom and dad going hi-tech, since when did he start smsing her? ‘ (my mom- not a techie at all, so her receiving smses which made her smile was something deeply amusing for me) . Anyways, my chat with my friend continued. We talked about nimbuzz, our respective blogs etc. Mom kept getting smses and kept smiling. I thought ‘Nice going mom and dad, lage raho.’ Then I looked out of the bus window, the fog had cleared, and outside I saw acres and acres of land covered with bright yellow mustard (or sarso). Looking at that beautiful yellow mustard landscape, with a tinge of fog in the background reminded me of the song ‘Tujhe Dekha to ye jaana sanam’ from DDLJ. All I wanted to do was get down from the bus, get a guitar from someplace (learn to play it somehow) and play it in the mustard fields with SRK-like grin spread across my face. And of course this day dream also included my Kajol running towards me with open arms. I conveyed this sentiment of mine to my friend, and here's how the conversation went :
Meanwhile, mom received an sms and started laughing quite loudly, so that people around started staring at her. I wondered ‘Wow, dad’s sending jokes even’. However, I was too involved in my chat to read dad’s joke at the time. So my chat continued, so did mom’s smses. By that time, we had reached Delhi. Akshay’s movies had not stopped, neither my chat, nor mom’s smses. When our bus reached India Gate, my chat ended, so did mom’s smses, and the ever famous song of Akshay Kumar started playing in the background, ‘Na hum Amitabh, na Dilip Kumar, na kisi hero ke bacche….. hum hain seedhe saadhe Akshay Akshay…. ‘ . I don’t know if it was the irritation from the song, but somehow it suddenly struck me. Mom’s smses and my fb chat were too dubiously synchronized. Mom had begun staring at me with amusement and out of the blue, she asked me ,”Who is she?” . With sudden realization, the truth dawned upon me… It was not dad whose smses were making mom smile all the time, it was facebook! My SIM was still in mom’s mobile, the same number which was enlisted with facebook to sms me. And it was not entirely facebook’s fault that mom had come up with that question or in fact, that mischievous grin on her face. You see, if you’re a boy who’s just passed his teens, the one who is rated as the most eligible bachelor of your family by uncles and aunts and cousins who derive and uncanny pleasure from such remarks then for your parents (who for some reason, decide to do away with all their maturity in situations like these) , to see you converse with someone of the opposite sex is analogous to a cricket fan seeing Sachin Tendulkar walk towards him with a pen and paper in his hand!
So, mom kept pestering me about this topic, quoting things from the chat as she read them to me from her mobile (which only irritated me further), until we got home, and I snatched the mobile out of her hands. But my mom, was afterall my mom, and found a new way to further drill me by narrating the incident to her mom, my naani, and both of them shared a laugh or two about it (yeah… how cute for them, how damn funny for me! ) I was a bit anxious as I had to return to college the next day and about the fact that the holidays had come to an end. But luckily for me, my friend had learnt how to use nimbuzz, and she had some words of comfort and encouragement for me that evening before dinner. I did not tell her about the leg pulling I had got from my mom in her name, but when I narrated it to her a few days back, surprisingly she had the same response as my mom, she started laughing (as she told me) in her lab .This eventful day came to an end with… yep… a few episodes of Prison Break after dinner. The next day, I boarded my flight back to Goa for the new semester….
So friends as you saw…. Iss kahaani mein action tha, suspense tha, pyaar tha, dosti thi…. Bas cricket nahi tha…. But still the memories of these vacations are special for me and I’ll cherish them in the times to come. Adios amigos, this is Devanshu signing off…….!
Me: Wanted to get dwn d bus nd get a pic clicked there
She: Matlab u cn thnk f sumthng bettr dn khiladi set, challngin d dirctr
Well, i cn do dat 4 u, nytym,
Ma colg z sumwht in midst f these kindda thngs
I cn capture dat nytym
Me: It wasn't just that. It was the weather as well
Perfect setting for ddlj
She: Ahh, bacha to filmi ho gya
:p
Khiladi dekh k
Meanwhile, mom received an sms and started laughing quite loudly, so that people around started staring at her. I wondered ‘Wow, dad’s sending jokes even’. However, I was too involved in my chat to read dad’s joke at the time. So my chat continued, so did mom’s smses. By that time, we had reached Delhi. Akshay’s movies had not stopped, neither my chat, nor mom’s smses. When our bus reached India Gate, my chat ended, so did mom’s smses, and the ever famous song of Akshay Kumar started playing in the background, ‘Na hum Amitabh, na Dilip Kumar, na kisi hero ke bacche….. hum hain seedhe saadhe Akshay Akshay…. ‘ . I don’t know if it was the irritation from the song, but somehow it suddenly struck me. Mom’s smses and my fb chat were too dubiously synchronized. Mom had begun staring at me with amusement and out of the blue, she asked me ,”Who is she?” . With sudden realization, the truth dawned upon me… It was not dad whose smses were making mom smile all the time, it was facebook! My SIM was still in mom’s mobile, the same number which was enlisted with facebook to sms me. And it was not entirely facebook’s fault that mom had come up with that question or in fact, that mischievous grin on her face. You see, if you’re a boy who’s just passed his teens, the one who is rated as the most eligible bachelor of your family by uncles and aunts and cousins who derive and uncanny pleasure from such remarks then for your parents (who for some reason, decide to do away with all their maturity in situations like these) , to see you converse with someone of the opposite sex is analogous to a cricket fan seeing Sachin Tendulkar walk towards him with a pen and paper in his hand!
So, mom kept pestering me about this topic, quoting things from the chat as she read them to me from her mobile (which only irritated me further), until we got home, and I snatched the mobile out of her hands. But my mom, was afterall my mom, and found a new way to further drill me by narrating the incident to her mom, my naani, and both of them shared a laugh or two about it (yeah… how cute for them, how damn funny for me! ) I was a bit anxious as I had to return to college the next day and about the fact that the holidays had come to an end. But luckily for me, my friend had learnt how to use nimbuzz, and she had some words of comfort and encouragement for me that evening before dinner. I did not tell her about the leg pulling I had got from my mom in her name, but when I narrated it to her a few days back, surprisingly she had the same response as my mom, she started laughing (as she told me) in her lab .This eventful day came to an end with… yep… a few episodes of Prison Break after dinner. The next day, I boarded my flight back to Goa for the new semester….
So friends as you saw…. Iss kahaani mein action tha, suspense tha, pyaar tha, dosti thi…. Bas cricket nahi tha…. But still the memories of these vacations are special for me and I’ll cherish them in the times to come. Adios amigos, this is Devanshu signing off…….!
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