One of my best friend's wedding ! (31-05-2004)
After frantically clicking and typing through irctc.co.in (indian railways online ticket booking) for about three hours earlier in the week only to find obscene waiting list figures, I finally decided to hit tutocorin(also, thuthukudy in tamil; I am not sure which one came into existence first) by road to attend my friend Ramaseshan's wedding. Poor ramaseshan, the moment I told him that the chances of me making it to his marriage were bleak, he took on the responsibility of getting me tickets. So, next day evening there he was pushing an panting in front of tidel; collected the tickets for me 'n konda from him, did my regular ranting about the job and quickly we parted. Sunday evening gave konda a buzz, agreed to meet at his place and leave from there. Walked up to adyar depot bus stop, I was dressed easy in my nike t-shirt, light blue jean, a pair of brand new reebok floaters and the trade mark sun glasses :-). We reached the bus stop, bumped into couple of TeeSeeUs girls, I don't know why but one of them with a snicker said "ohh.. you are the guy that sits next to the fancy Machintosh machine" I mean I felt that way :-). We boarded the ECR express that took us to koyambedu market and a 10 minute walk across the road took us to "vivegam travels" bus station.
We quickly checked out the bus that proudly displayed in bold letters "Luxury semi sleeper", found it pretty good over all. We reached the bus station nearly an hour ahead of time, so had to kill time somehow, we started talking,big time talk ! ranging from current affairs to personal life, religion, geography..etc. It was really embarrassing when one gentleman sought our help to change the SIM card on his mobile phone; bloody hell it was a nokia 8311 and we could barely open the battery cover, after seeing us struggle for about 10 minutes the guy decided to relieve us of the responsibility.
The bus started promptly at 5:30 from koyambedu, 30 minutes into the journey, they played this tamil movie "Villain", terrific ! the movie started with a song, the song quite literally tore the speakers apart; interestingly a close look at the speakers and it read "Sumsang" :-). A well-orchestrated masala movie filled with songs, gyrating dances and superhuman fight sequences at regular intervals. The highlight of the movie was kiran's cleavage I managed to count the number of times kiran's cleavage was shown; it was a whooping 12 times ! One of most memorable scene in the movie was in the climax, kiran is tied to a cot and the villain is attempting to rape her, ajith's second act as a handicap is filled with trepidation and is unable to help kiran; eventually he collects himself and manages to throw a knife at the villain who dodges the knife much like in the "Matrix" and guess what, it misses the villain but manages to cut the rope that restrained kiran to the cot. I never thought K.S.Ravikumar would produce such an inane stuff, I regarded him among the top 5 directors in tamil, but this one was a total let down.
The bus stopped at vizhupuram for dinner. We got off and went into this hotel(hotel classic) like thing and were escorted to a table; a long banana leaf to start the proceedings was neatly laid down, I quickly checked the menu and was completely taken aback when the waiter said that they had dosas, briyani, etc. but only "kada"(goat,or is it lamb ?), "era" (is a kind of fish I guess) as side dish. Phew ! Konda was perplexed for he did not understand the "situation" in hand, I told konda that I’d prefer eating in a vegetarian hotel; just next to this hotel we found a veg. hotel, which had some thing edible, everything was fine but I would have rescued atleast three four species of insects from drowning in my sambar. I didn’t have a count on how many I swallowed, though :-).
We started from vizhupram after the delightful and supposedly vegetarian dinner. We were talking for sometime, then konda suddenly plunged into silence, realized that he was fast asleep, so put on my conspicuous piece of head phones and went to sleep. Next day morning we reach tutucorin bang on time 5:30 and took an auto to the choultry, confronted with many unfamiliar faces, it took us sometime to spot Ramaseshan who was sporting a "panchakacham" and was busy chanting some "mantras", he was at his expressive best the moment he saw us. He quickly sent out his cousin for our rescue. We were taken to a lodge nearby where other TeeSeeYes'ers were housed. Both of us got ready after a brief break; I slipped into some ethnic outfit (my favourite maroon colour rasi silk "Jibba").
We were treated with some mouth watering breakfast, the menu was a bit too extravagant; 3 types of dosas, indly, vadai, pongal, 2 kinds of sweet and If I recall 3 to 4 types of side dishes. Came back to the lodge to see what the other TeeSeeYes'ers were up to. The 6 boys belonged to the 3G ES team and had reached tutucorin the day before, they managed to checkout kutrallam and other places nearby the previous day. While konda crashed straight into the bed for yet another deep slumber, I joined the guys for a game of cards, they taught me how to play the game "pick2/uno" and we kept playing until lunch. Lunch was pretty good we also managed to meet ramaseshan’s mother, father, sister,bil etc. Once again the other TeeSeeYes'ers and myself decided to continue with our game, while konda once again opted to sleep, touch wood; one should be really blessed to get that kind of sound sleep.
The evening slipped by and we were back in the choultry for "nalangu", this is the most interesting phase of a typical south Indian Brahmin marriage where both the bride and bridegroom show off their sporting abilities. There are variety of games like "papad" breaking, ball snatching, garlanding, buy/sell rice/daal J and many more. Ramaseshan did fairly well and we maintained the lead from the bridegroom’s side. After the games it was time to showcase the singing abilities from both sides. Lanvanya started it off with "azhagiya asura" and immediately everyone wanted a befitting reply in the form of another oxymoron filled song. But, to our surprise Ramseshan sang "ennavale", followed by some mimicry from both sides. Ramseshan’s bil’s rendition of the song "kaliyuga varadhan" (brindaavana saaranga, I guess) was impressive. I got my chance too, I sang "Meevalla guna dosha" (kapi), after humbly accepting the accolades saw my watch and it was 6:00pm, it was time to bid adieu. Ramseshan was kind enough to arrange for a car to drop us at the bus stop. We decided to grab some bananas for dinner after having to eat the insect garnished chapattis the previous night.
A shocking news awaited us at the booking office, we had the last seats in the bus, I moaned in disbelief, so much for 350 Rs.! the seats were "discomfort" personified. Particularly, the back of my seat had come off the part to which it was welded to and was rocking! It was a roller coaster ride all the way back to Chennai, reached home at 8:00 am in the morning. I now understand the meaning of "Air Bus" for most of the time we were in the air :-). Two hours after touch down(didn't I say I was airbone :-)), I was at office and life was as boring as ever.
After frantically clicking and typing through irctc.co.in (indian railways online ticket booking) for about three hours earlier in the week only to find obscene waiting list figures, I finally decided to hit tutocorin(also, thuthukudy in tamil; I am not sure which one came into existence first) by road to attend my friend Ramaseshan's wedding. Poor ramaseshan, the moment I told him that the chances of me making it to his marriage were bleak, he took on the responsibility of getting me tickets. So, next day evening there he was pushing an panting in front of tidel; collected the tickets for me 'n konda from him, did my regular ranting about the job and quickly we parted. Sunday evening gave konda a buzz, agreed to meet at his place and leave from there. Walked up to adyar depot bus stop, I was dressed easy in my nike t-shirt, light blue jean, a pair of brand new reebok floaters and the trade mark sun glasses :-). We reached the bus stop, bumped into couple of TeeSeeUs girls, I don't know why but one of them with a snicker said "ohh.. you are the guy that sits next to the fancy Machintosh machine" I mean I felt that way :-). We boarded the ECR express that took us to koyambedu market and a 10 minute walk across the road took us to "vivegam travels" bus station.
We quickly checked out the bus that proudly displayed in bold letters "Luxury semi sleeper", found it pretty good over all. We reached the bus station nearly an hour ahead of time, so had to kill time somehow, we started talking,big time talk ! ranging from current affairs to personal life, religion, geography..etc. It was really embarrassing when one gentleman sought our help to change the SIM card on his mobile phone; bloody hell it was a nokia 8311 and we could barely open the battery cover, after seeing us struggle for about 10 minutes the guy decided to relieve us of the responsibility.
The bus started promptly at 5:30 from koyambedu, 30 minutes into the journey, they played this tamil movie "Villain", terrific ! the movie started with a song, the song quite literally tore the speakers apart; interestingly a close look at the speakers and it read "Sumsang" :-). A well-orchestrated masala movie filled with songs, gyrating dances and superhuman fight sequences at regular intervals. The highlight of the movie was kiran's cleavage I managed to count the number of times kiran's cleavage was shown; it was a whooping 12 times ! One of most memorable scene in the movie was in the climax, kiran is tied to a cot and the villain is attempting to rape her, ajith's second act as a handicap is filled with trepidation and is unable to help kiran; eventually he collects himself and manages to throw a knife at the villain who dodges the knife much like in the "Matrix" and guess what, it misses the villain but manages to cut the rope that restrained kiran to the cot. I never thought K.S.Ravikumar would produce such an inane stuff, I regarded him among the top 5 directors in tamil, but this one was a total let down.
The bus stopped at vizhupuram for dinner. We got off and went into this hotel(hotel classic) like thing and were escorted to a table; a long banana leaf to start the proceedings was neatly laid down, I quickly checked the menu and was completely taken aback when the waiter said that they had dosas, briyani, etc. but only "kada"(goat,or is it lamb ?), "era" (is a kind of fish I guess) as side dish. Phew ! Konda was perplexed for he did not understand the "situation" in hand, I told konda that I’d prefer eating in a vegetarian hotel; just next to this hotel we found a veg. hotel, which had some thing edible, everything was fine but I would have rescued atleast three four species of insects from drowning in my sambar. I didn’t have a count on how many I swallowed, though :-).
We started from vizhupram after the delightful and supposedly vegetarian dinner. We were talking for sometime, then konda suddenly plunged into silence, realized that he was fast asleep, so put on my conspicuous piece of head phones and went to sleep. Next day morning we reach tutucorin bang on time 5:30 and took an auto to the choultry, confronted with many unfamiliar faces, it took us sometime to spot Ramaseshan who was sporting a "panchakacham" and was busy chanting some "mantras", he was at his expressive best the moment he saw us. He quickly sent out his cousin for our rescue. We were taken to a lodge nearby where other TeeSeeYes'ers were housed. Both of us got ready after a brief break; I slipped into some ethnic outfit (my favourite maroon colour rasi silk "Jibba").
We were treated with some mouth watering breakfast, the menu was a bit too extravagant; 3 types of dosas, indly, vadai, pongal, 2 kinds of sweet and If I recall 3 to 4 types of side dishes. Came back to the lodge to see what the other TeeSeeYes'ers were up to. The 6 boys belonged to the 3G ES team and had reached tutucorin the day before, they managed to checkout kutrallam and other places nearby the previous day. While konda crashed straight into the bed for yet another deep slumber, I joined the guys for a game of cards, they taught me how to play the game "pick2/uno" and we kept playing until lunch. Lunch was pretty good we also managed to meet ramaseshan’s mother, father, sister,bil etc. Once again the other TeeSeeYes'ers and myself decided to continue with our game, while konda once again opted to sleep, touch wood; one should be really blessed to get that kind of sound sleep.
The evening slipped by and we were back in the choultry for "nalangu", this is the most interesting phase of a typical south Indian Brahmin marriage where both the bride and bridegroom show off their sporting abilities. There are variety of games like "papad" breaking, ball snatching, garlanding, buy/sell rice/daal J and many more. Ramaseshan did fairly well and we maintained the lead from the bridegroom’s side. After the games it was time to showcase the singing abilities from both sides. Lanvanya started it off with "azhagiya asura" and immediately everyone wanted a befitting reply in the form of another oxymoron filled song. But, to our surprise Ramseshan sang "ennavale", followed by some mimicry from both sides. Ramseshan’s bil’s rendition of the song "kaliyuga varadhan" (brindaavana saaranga, I guess) was impressive. I got my chance too, I sang "Meevalla guna dosha" (kapi), after humbly accepting the accolades saw my watch and it was 6:00pm, it was time to bid adieu. Ramseshan was kind enough to arrange for a car to drop us at the bus stop. We decided to grab some bananas for dinner after having to eat the insect garnished chapattis the previous night.
A shocking news awaited us at the booking office, we had the last seats in the bus, I moaned in disbelief, so much for 350 Rs.! the seats were "discomfort" personified. Particularly, the back of my seat had come off the part to which it was welded to and was rocking! It was a roller coaster ride all the way back to Chennai, reached home at 8:00 am in the morning. I now understand the meaning of "Air Bus" for most of the time we were in the air :-). Two hours after touch down(didn't I say I was airbone :-)), I was at office and life was as boring as ever.
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