It was one of my life’s best weekends…..I had been at home this weekend celebrating my birthday with my entire family (the joint or extended family included).
I had planned this weekend almost a
month in advance. Had applied for leaves from work which my kind manager was gracious enough to grant me. Thanks Usha for that… :-)
The original plan had been that my twin sis, Shruti would start from Pune on the 28th, pass through Hyderabad on the 29th which I would board, and travel with Shru to surprise our grandma and our lil sis. However, due to non-confirmation of Shru’s ticket, we rescheduled and re-planned the journey and had shru come to hyd by bus, stay half a day and then me and sis would board the Godavari Express to vizag. Sounds good right? ….WRONG! the main glitch in the problem was that, this plan would mean that me and sis, would have to spend the mid-night of our birthday (you know, the 12 o’ clock midnight celebration) in the ‘train’. Unfortunately, we had no other choice, but to agree to this plan and went ahead with it. Now, I didn’t want to spend the eve of my birth’day’ sleeping in the side upper birth of a train. So I got two ‘German Black Forest pastries’ packed from the nearby Café Coffee Day and boarded the train.
Come 11:55pm, Shru and I had to request our co-passengers to allow us to keep the lights switched on for 5 more mins, The watch finally showed 12 and we both quickly took out our pastry’s from the upper berth, only to find that the pastry’s hadn’t withstood the hyderabad’s scorching heat and had melted and taken an
unidentifiable shape. Plus, one of the once-called-pastry had decided to have some fun while in its fluidy state and had leaked out into the polythene bag and had caused a mess.
But, I wasn’t going to allow the melted pastries dampen my spirits. We dutifully opened the lids of the containers , dug our spoons into the semi-solid pastries and fed each other a spoonful and wished happy b’day. It was not much, but having my Twin sister with me on my B’day was beautiful in itself.
The next one hour was spent on taking calls from near and dear, and I am telling you, the number of calls Shru took was more than double the number of calls I took, thus proving that she had mooore friends than me…
…but hey…I am happy with the number of friends I have :-D
Anywayz, come 7:00AM and we finally reached Vizag, Dad had come to pick us up at the station. I could clearly see how happy he was to see the two of us after a long time. His smile really stretched from one ear to another.
:-D
We reached home and shilpa got a pretty good surprise on seeing me there too. I don’t know if she was acting , and that the apparent ‘secret’ was already known to her, but if she WAS acting, she was good. She went something like this—“aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah….eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh….bhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai…..tu aaaaaaaaaaaa gayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….hehehehehehehehehehehe…..!!” …the first two-three shrieks made me believe that she was practicing her hindi alphabets, but then the third part of the shriek made me realize that she was expressing her shock and happiness at me being there.
After the exchange of tight hugs with mommy and naani, we settled to have a nice, yummy, lip-smacking, tummy-filling, ungli-chaating, home-cooked lunch consisting of ‘gongura’-chicken….which I was having after a really long.
The afternoon was spent catching up with family members and then the turn of our b’day shopping….
My parents had already decided what to buy shru. They turned to me, and I gleefully and shamelessly asked for the Ray-Ban Aviator goggs that now I possess and that now are on the top of my most-valuable items.( I had been secretly dreaming and fantasizing of owning a pair of Aviators since a looong time).
Fortune Inn hotel was decided as the dinner venue mainly because it had a buffet, and no-one had tried it yet. We wanted to try something new this time. The dinner party was a great success, as almost everyone ended up praising the food. Oh BTW- I paid for the dinner….another thing that I wanted to do since a long time. :-D something for which everyone came and started thanking me like formal guests….i mean cmon guys- we’re familyyy….do we still need THANK YOUs and all???
Shilpa had ordered the cake a day in advance, and it turned out to be one of the most freakin’ delicious cakes I have ever had……FULL MARKS to my kid sis. Luv u !
The next day, I gave a treat to my close buddies, Murali a.k.a Hermit and Aditya a.k.a Shaggy …after some sms-arguments, murali and I finally settled on Subway (our all-time favourite place to eat any day of the year). Surprisingly, all three of us had veg-subs. Although I had planned on having a foot-long- I ended up having a regular 6-inch sub coz’ Shru had prepared Choley at home and I didn’t want to miss that. And it was worth missing on much-anticipated foot-long-sub debut.
We then went out to the newly and under-construction IT park on the hills in the outskirts of Vizag, it was a looonley and well-lit road. Parked the car there and the three of us clicked a few snaps and just hung out there…..it had been a looong time since I had hung out with my close buddies….and It felt so ..wel….cool.
My return was on the night on 2nd May, came by bus, which was very uncomfy as it kept rattling from time to time and the horn (which was a fancy –some song tune one) kept sounding louder inside the bus than outside.
All in all- it was great trip home , and one that was a rare occasion.
Well, I know that this is a looong blog, but I so wanted to write what I did and how I enjoyed on my b’day this year. Seeing all the smiling faces of my family members as me and Shru cut the cake was something I would trade my life anyday to see happen again. Most of you (who am I kidding……the few handful of you who actually read my blog) will have fallen asleep before you read this line….but that’s ok..
I will be posting the pics from the bday weekend soon…and hopefully then, the blog will be a lil’ more interesting read.
Peace out…
:o)
