Good memories!

Was just bored sitting in my hotel room in Hyderabad, I had exhausted my call list and my next appointment was a couple of hours ahead, looking through a folder of snaps on my laptop taken last month and voila, I had a new post.

Last month on Gandhi Jayanthi to be precise my gang of friends from church (we actually grew up together for the better part of a decade) decided to go on a picnic on the holiday. Picnics and timeouts are so rare that even a single day outing was a real godsend and so we decided on a single day trip to the Golden Sand resort outside Mahabalipuram.

The van left late as usual and we had the medley of songs and loud jokes spicing up the journey and we hit the venue 2 hours behind schedule. I must digress to mention that D got up early in the morning and made yummy biriyani for us for the trip and we had a good quantity of junk food too.

So when we landed there the first shock that awaited us was that the prices had gone up 50% since our telephone call two days ago, so we had to shell out more money for entry. Anyway we hit the beach (Golden sand for all its moniker is just a normal beach resort, only thing golden are the prices) and as it was the birthday of one of the gang we gave him the Birthday Bums, (the origin of this painful exercise is a mystery to me and I still wonder why should the birthday be such a pain in the ass for the birthday boy / girl) we ditched cricket for a brief while (as the girls complained) and decided to play Kings.

I cant forget the lunch breaks in high school when we would hastily gobble our lunches and rush to play Kings, Knockout and Leg by leg when not succumbing to the charms of cricket. Somehow Kings was my favourite and the mad game wore out our lunches in 20 minutes flat every day. I guess that’s the big reason why I gained weight when I left school.

Anyway after a grueling and exhausting game of Kings we realized that we had a King but it was a girl and since we did not want to dilute the equity of the game we decided not to change the name of the game to Queens (Yuck, perish the thought!).

Then Shock no 2 awaited us as the resort staff informed us that outside food was not allowed and we had t eat at the restaurant. The weight of D’s biriyani played on my mind when we grudgingly agreed. We decided to hit the pool before lunch and as most of us didn’t know swimming including me we had an absolute riot doing everything else but swim in the pool. Shock no. 3 stipulated that we could not be wet when we entered the restaurant nor could we enter with swimsuits though the restaurant was pool side, so we showered quickly and hit the restaurant where the steep prices put us back. We ordered a basic meal and we shock no. (I lost count) saw the yuckiest of food being placed before us, even a thattu kadai serves better food.

After lunch we decided to hit the beach for some mandatory cricket on every trip of ours when the next shock awaited us a big North Indian family was busy munching away home cooked sandwiches under the nose of the resort staff and when we looked back in to the resort yet another north Indian was sitting in wet shorts and naked waist up eating his lunch. Our limited food left a very bitter taste as we decided to make tracks home.

The next shock will be seen in the picture, our van driver who initially did not know the route and I had to be the navigator did not even realize that his fuel was low when the engine chocked. He kept blaming everything else despite me telling him that fuel was down and the nearest pump was 10 kms away in Golden Beach. The driver was disbelieving till the vehicle ground to a complete halt. The driver looked lost till I suggested that we flag oncoming vehicles and buy diesel from them, which we eventually did.

We reached home, late, tired and upset that the resort sucked big time and very very happy, because the trip brought back the joys of friendship, bonding, outdoor games, singing, and all the small joys of life that we give a miss maybe due to work maybe due to studies or maybe because we do not have time for anyone but ourselves.

The bottomline: If you can't remember your last time out, do it right now!