The GPS Adventure (Part 1)

Pondy trip #2 (in 2 years), which is a shame as we should totally visit that place more often. But our not having visited it too often did although prevent the familiarity and monotony to shadow the fun throughout the trip. So I, with a totally different compadres than the last time, made the second trip ever so memorable. Starting off with an outrageous 'To DO' list, and not enough money to take us to the bus stand, the start was the first oxymoron among the plenty. So we go to the secret ATM, which actually EVERYONE knows of and have lunch at Big (godforsaken) Chik, a place I don't quite like for their unarguably copious amounts of oil in the chicken, and an overpriced menu to challenge fallacy number one, which was a prescience of a similarly to follow trip. JFTR, there was this table behind us with five guys and one girl, resembling a usual Pandava weekend lunch. And "Karna" being on OUR table and not theirs, only added to the analogy and semblance.

Buses to Pondi were ofcourse not as frequent as we had idealised them to be. The GPS Adventure had begun. The conductor was adamant that Shreyas keep his camera bag "under" the seat, without the slightest notion of how obscene the suggestion sounded to us photographers. Fearing his adamantine rigidity, and Tamil Nadu state highways'contours, dismantling the cameras and holding them close was the only solution. The bus was bad, the Tamil movie being played worse, and the cacaphonous background score defied all degrees of atrocity. Anand although came up with what would fascinate, amuse, addict and entertain me throughout the journey. Our journey from a "honestly-couldn't-care-any-less" satellite's perspective. The slight showers added to the aesthetics of anotherwise digitised amusement source. Checking out distance to destination every 2 kilometers or 5 mins, whichever first, looking up ratings of eating joints and reading conflicting reviews of the same restaurant, calling up lodges to book a room, 6 hours and we DID reach Pondi.

The auto walas at the Pondicherry bus station claimed indirectly that anyplace from there, is 80 bucks. The availability of cheap liquor was evident. Anyhow, Mother lodge was a decent place, with A/C rooms and all. Quite a luxurious affair to me who in the last trip had put up in a bamboo hut on pillars. We had although 4 hours to brutally kill, before our all too generous college friends vacate the rooms we were to get. So Rendezvous it was, quite literally, as we ended up dining at the most debated, criticised and fancy sounding restaurant around (apart ofcourse from the French Pizzerias and exquisite sounding places). The food and drinks were really good though. Cubalibre (which Shreyas diluted to homeopathic standards with his coke, and after which he took a moment to blame rolling friction for his mushroom falling off the Sizzler platter) and Chicken Steak go well, is all I can conclude of the meal. And the fact that vegetarians have a miserable life. Very miserable (Thats the thursday apart carnivore speaking, pardon me). Karna (a humble plant eater) decided to eat at Pizzeria, and Shreyas and me walked out to buy copies of Better Photography and Lonely Planet. Having no sense of direction, or celestail GPS to navigate with, we were walking on instinct, determination and slippery roads due to rains. After going so far as the auto to charge us 40 Rs back to Rendezvous, frowning, tired and dejected, we returned to enter Overpriced-by-our-budget eating joint#2. It felt kind of like food court, with the largest round table being occupoed by VITians giving us "the looks". 3 couples being intruded upon by people they don't want to see them with people they don't want to be seen with can only have dismay to wear at an acquaintance gathering.

Samwise Shefin had this ingenious idea to scathe the locale for every possible lodge/hotel and with time to spare, we could not deny his desire. What started off was a good idea of discovering new places outside of guide books ended up in a wit famished search for some Surya hotel where yet another VIT group had put up at. SO after the city closed, in the the darkness of the night impregnated by a stray illuminated bulb we make our way through the labyrinthine crossroads made ever so labyrinthine by the good sir who could not point out "left" in his right mind, and for Samwise having found a deeper meaning in his pun. Hotel Surya turned out to be a good place, with pet ducks and all, claiming "Extra Person : 1000 Rs" in the tarrif card. We already had enough people with us to pay for extras, so we retraced our steps back, to Gandhi Rock beach. That was my (and Shreyas') first time ever midninght photography. With painfully slow shutters, and impossible to pull off immobility for that span, we did get some brilliant shots, lucky even to get lightning in one of them.

This is pretty much what happened on the first day. And given to chose between writing a euphemised post hence doing injustice to the trip, or to write one painfullylong ballad-ic post, I chose to split it into parts. And what do you mean by that is not even an option? Just in case you overlooked, I make the rules here.

To be continued...

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FYI, we are alive

This post is just to acknowledge the fact that we are pretty much alive, for all those (bless you) who might have visited the blog in recent times, and seen the same post staring back at them like a clueless Tamilian local being talked to in Spanish. It is not mundanity, or lack of incidences worthy of a narration, but the sheer abundance of them, and a profound lack of time to justify them in a blog post. (The word "Justify" gives me the creeps as of now. Long story short, was made to make a brochure 5 times, owing to minor errors, and fetishes, none on my part. And the organizers having this profound love for justified texts, and greater affection for conveniently skipping the vital formatting preferences till after I finish with the 5th iteration of the uncreative-on-request MUN Brochure)

And my new room-mates friend has been kind enough to share his inventory of midnight snacks, and munching popcorn at this ungodly hour, listening to Chinese Traditional Ensemble music, I do testify to our conscious existence and procrastinating subconscious. There is nothing sweeter than putting off something for tomorrow. Apart from the heavenly sugar doughnuts. The adjective, of course, relative to the place and availability of anything edible.

Also, another deterrent to the frequency of posts has been the new found obsession with photography. It does take a lot of time, so to say. As for KronoS, he has been promising a post for long now. I expect him to post something before 2020. Am only worried because its already half past midnight, and he is showing no signs of compliance. With so much to write of, the ever so diminutive voice from the crevices of the darkest and highly unvisited corners of my mind has a lot of trouble convincing a not so polite and not so ignored lazy git shouting out orders (or actually the contrary) all the time.

On a brighter note, I have started

Reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Worshipping Douglas Adams
Cursing the missing "bullets" tab in the editing toolbar
Working on the galactic revival of TheDarkHumorists
Eating sugar doughnuts
Collecting and reading cover to cover "Lonely Planet" and "Better Photography"
Looking for a good Telephoto macro enabled lense within a laughable budget
Attempting to understand Umberto Eco

That is more information than needed.
The blog is officially alive. So are we. Thank you for your patience for reading through to a conclusion which I mentioned in the first line itself.
Too late.
Your move.


R.I.P.>

The Vuvuzela Alternative

The title of this post is a little unrevealing, but makes up for it in its adequacy to describe the situation. And little would one know that this is an account of a reunion. Intended, atleast. Also, I have delayed this post a week, and for good reason.

So they plan out a school reunion, neat idea and all. Ambitious though, keeping it open for all the batches that have attended the school. What I knew was most likely no one from my batch would turn up. And why I did not trust that instinct is a matter of introspection and solitary scorn. To top that, why I decided to perform there, a humble compilation of 'classic rock' songs is a question that shall haunt the better half of my musical lifetime.

In our immense naivety that dealt with a premise that holds the assumption that the crowd will be what I would later end up calling "Musically literate", we walked into "Garage", a club, so to say, with two acoustic guitars and and a spirit to tribute our God's of rock. The "we" here is me and my childhood friend Debanshu, who is an immensely talented guitarist. That we enter using the service door, was a spoiler alert for a more denuded evening. The first look of the place was scary. Flashing lights and deafening throbs of bass that doesn't follow a sane time signature. We were the first to arrive, apart ofcourse from the organiser.

The entourage of insanely "dressed for the occasion" arrived, in a painfully long wait. And without preamble, found comfort in the incarceration of the dance floor and shot definitely not so dance approved poses to the onlookers and the stray polaroid. There was a mentally depraved and totally unskilled DJ at the console. He took immense pleasure in a masochistic control over the crossfader and was muting out random parts of the song. It was moronic, if anything. But what amazed me was that the people on the dance floor were actually lipsinging the tracks that I had NEVER heard in my lifetime, and had no ounce of regret for my ignorance about.

We sat fumbling with our guitars, eagerly waiting to play some songs, but the gradual understanding of the musical inclination of the crowd was horrific, and we had quite a good idea of the inevitable. So we waited for 2 and a half frikkin hours for the "media" had yet to arrive, that would cover the event in their vile exaggeration and unethical alteration of the truth. Anyhow, we reached the opportune moment, and after painstakingly explaining the modus operandi to drag 3 bar stools from the counter to the dance floor to a really annoying and very primitive attender, were planning on the soundcheck. For those keeping record, there was one mic, to be shared between us, which included alternating solos and vocals. Diana (the prime organiser of the event) conformed to the job of mic-keeping. So here we are, deciding what to play for soundcheck, Pearl Jam or Beethoven. We ended up playing the first half of Fur Elise, classical guitar to a crowd that busied themselves with fench fries and bewildered looks. Not a good sign. I asked them have we any "Metallica" fans here. They were half as silent as a graveyard, and twice as dead. We continued to play 'Nothing else matters' to the last note, to no applause or swaying or any form of known audience activity. Next we decided to play a really famous classic number, 'Knocking on heaven's door' and no one had heard that either. They were consistently unresponsive to 'Hotel California' too, which we stopped playing midway, and no one even noticed. To sum it all up as a classic failure, we ended the show with an own composition called "When tomorrow meets today", thanked the crowd for being silent, disinterested and lame before we walked away.

We had a couple of drinks (The bartender refused to make me a Mojito or a Daiquiri or a Margarita. He had trouble bringing up spring water too. And the moron offered to add ice to it...) and left the place. Now that I look back upon that day, I wonder, would they have even realised had we honked Vuvuzela's rather than soloing on guitars. No. Because what we had was a handsome group of musically illiterate individuals, who cherish looking flashy under UV light and can lips senseless tracks and seem all rave, but will find themselves in a horridly awkward situation were they to be found in a music cafe, where everyone sings along to the "real" music. We all have our comfort zones. I chose the one that is higher on virtue and regardless of ostentation.

Epic fail. To cut a long story short. Anyhow, we posed for the "media" before leaving hoping to see our photographs in the local daily atleast. But, after a week of baited breath, here I was, looking at the review of the "re-union". We apparently played "Purani jeans" and "Yeh Dosti", Diana was a band member, and a party hunk was found quoting that he has vivid memories of the 3 of us participating in singing competitions at school. His statement is wrong on several levels. To start with, we had no singing competitions at school. There was just one (in 12 years). Thats all. No one participated. Secondly, Debanshu is not in the same school, so I wonder how could he have participated in the virtual event. Thirdly, for the love of god, get the names right you half wit morons feeding on maggots and moths. Its "Debanshu" and not "Divyanshu", losers. There was no accompanying picture of either me or him. He has been saved the humiliation of being there. They got his name wrong and invented their own playlist. He can as well deny having attended. I so envy you...

I shall although not deny, the fact that my white T shirt was glowing purple in the UV light kept me hooked and interested just long enough. The fret markings on the guitars also glowed. And the white part of the converse. I was afraid to smile.

Next time I have an opportunity to perform to a similar musically disgruntled crowd, I will consider the Vuvuzela alternative. I should not be denied the pleasure of annoying them. And when they are least interested, FTW!

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