BLOG-SPOTTERS!!
Its really been an uncharacteristically extended, eye-opening, finger-resting and highly-detailed sabbath for me..this particular going off the record thingy for a copious period of 16 days straight. Although the idea itself seems extremely improbable and outrageous, especially when pitting out of a self-obsessed tweeple(or twee-son???) and electronically-loud web-freak, its pretty flattering to realise that this is proved to be another feather in my desperately-in-need-of-decoration hat, an achievement I rendered myself incapable of accomplishing, especially after bidding an uneventful, non-dramatic and tearless goodbye to one of the most passionate phenomena of my life: My Facebook account.
So, returning back to my usual narcissistic-chattery self, I am giving (myself and the blog, as I suffer from a very undesirable trait of forgetting the miniature details of the best times of my life. I still curse myself for not maintaining a diary or a blog back in the year 2008, which until before this particular vacation, was the most memorable period of my life. My first foreign trip to the beautiful African land of Mauritius was nothing short of a childhood dream coming true, and cursorily, the pangs of guilt for not remembering each and every picturesque moment still chews at me. Consequently, every incident of unexplained spasms of delight, whenever a marine scene comes to life in front of me gets shoved away as mere deja-vu) a detailed account of exactly what I had been upto during the second winter break of my life as an engineering-student. As the adjective in itself conveys voluminous amounts of self-descriptive details to my fellow sufferers, I would, at this point of time, like to clarify that this post will be deliberately and painfully kept free of any expected experienced or non-experienced characteristic engineering-student-ish emotional upheavals.
As my journey to Mumbai for attending Asia's largest cultural fest, Mood Indigo, started with a friend who was supposed to be a co-passenger ditching the plan at the last moment, deragatory remarks about which she would have to endure for a pretty long time to come, and me still being obstinatively positive about attending it, citing reasons that my decisions (especially involving frolic and fun) refuse to depend upon others and thus on a relatively low-key note.
The train journey, on the other hand was a disaster to start with(as can be conveniently testified by a hoard of friends whom I texted, sitting on a train filled with non-acquainted fellow travellers, the full impliaction of my then existing situation in a very declarative SMS, which bore the exact multitude of self-pity, anti-climax and uncertainty about the righteousness of my decision to embark on the 28 hour train journey almost across the country with the self-assigned margin of a bit of exaggeration, without the presence of any friend, my laptop and any good novel). The presumed romanticism of travelling in unprecedented conditions had fizzed out within the first couple of hours of the journey, with myself finally returning back to the firm ground of reasoning the impracticality of my undertaking. There had been actually one fateful period of about half an hour when I had toyed with the idea of alighting at the next station the train halted at, followed by catching the first train back home. During this strategic period, I had belted my shoes back on, bid farewell to a certain Ansari family who were travelling in my immediate vicinty, packed the remaining tidbits of Haldiram peanuts inside my handbag, and taken out my massive luggage bag from the underside of my berth to disembark from the dirty S11 coach of Hatia-Lokmanya Tilak express. At this point of time, I experience a familiar surge of guilt for not maintaining a first-hand account of my travel overtake me as I fail to remember exactly which station was it whereupon I had jumped off the coach and walked towards the enquiry counter when I thankfully chanced upon seeing a familiar face buying water from one of the typical, omni-Indian-station-existent stalls. He was Sumit, a classmate from my own batch of civil engineering. This sight proved to be one of the very few situations where I would have actually been postively elated about the prospect of coming across a batchmate from my college. I greedily seized upon this oppurtunity of acquiring a person who can be one possible co-traveller. I shamelessly went and inquired him about the size, shape and purpose of his group and journey respectively, which turned out to be Shirdi and Goa, unlike my Mumbai trip, but a destination sane enough to be travelled together to, and the rhetoric question about any of them having any sort of problem if I suddenly barged in at their group. Thankfully, if any of them were even one percent reluctant or dismissive about the idea, they didn't show it.
With the advent of one positive thing happening at last, my lost vigour of doing a softer, feminised, Indianised and self-important version of Bear Grylls returned back and I decided to never again feel sorry for etching out impractical plans about life. Somehow, they work out at the moment you decide they are leading nowhere. Somehow you end up feeling like the "protagonist" of something which stops resembling a puppet show complete with string-pullers and ventriloquists and starts being what it really is: Your Life.
Philosophy aside, the boring train journey had metamorphosed, within a turn of about five minutes, into a memorable trip with classmates whose names, until then were residing in the labyrinths of my sub-consciousness. All the typical college-trip fantasies had come to life with everybody indulgingly involved in first a laborious bout of dumb-charades, which was kick-started with movies like Bhaagte Bhoot Ki Latakti Langoti, Thoda sa Rumani Ho Jaaye (one particularly funny thing that happened wile this movie was being enacted was that we guessed all the words of the movie except the word "ho"...the actor actually acted a painfully large sequence of dumb-acts:acted like a dog, created an imaginary slum, made weird noises out of his lungs and nose cooing for the arrival of train and all and took us to the movie :Slumdog Millionaire...and then towards the signature cry "JAI HO" all only to arrive at the word "ho"...lol), Saleem Tu Langde pe Mat Ro, and was concluded with the ones like Dor and Krantiveer, and second in an utterly extended series of Antakshari which continued late into night, resulting in us getting rebuked by a specific "Auntyjee" a couple of times for bombarding into her supposed "Hard Day's Night" :P:D
Period.
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