Ek kunwara phir gaya maara
Last month end we friends attended a wedding reception of an engineering classmate. He lives in UK currently. Many of the guys in our group are scattered due to job related postings so I had written a mail to the group just to cheer up people who had missed attending the event. Posting it here to keep this mail stored on a shared site so that anyone of us can visit it in future even if jobs and mail ids’ keep on changing.
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From: Sudeep
To: “Ajit”, “Anky”, “Darya”, “Dukkya”, “Bhopya”, “Amdya”, “JP”, “Shirish”, “Suraj”, “Babaji”
Date: Tue, Jun 2, 2009
Hey guys or should I say Hey COETians :p
Wassup? Most of you missed attending JP's wedding reception on the 31st so thought to write down a detailed mail of the entire event so that you can relive the moment, virtually. After much discussion among the group of 11, finally only 4 could make it to the venue and the 5th one being JP himself. I am sure that by the end of this mail you would be either happy not attending with us or repenting for the same reason :D.
As decided over mails we were to meet at Amdya's place at 6:45. Much to our surprise Amdya was the first one to reach his home and a greater surprise that he was watching Da Vinci Code on his computer. I am sure that the movie must be an adult version of the original because I can't imagine Amdya all alone at home and watching Robert Langdon and Sophie, running across the Grand Louvre, completely dressed. Shirish, as usual, was late by around half an hour. Ok fine.. mostly I am the one who is late but this time I was the first one (leaving Amdya aside) to reach. Later someone had initiated the topic that I have become punctual after marriage, but someone else (yes, yours truly) successfully changed the topic. Now that it was clear, after a few calls, that only Amdya, myself, Ajit and Shirish would be going to the reception we quickly discussed about the wedding gift for JP. Amdya was the first one to suggest - his personal hard drive with his complete pr0n collection (spelling altered so that office id's don’t block the mail). 'His complete' in the sense, which he has collected diligently over the past few years. We had a good laugh over this suggestion and then Shirish suggested that we (mainly Amdya) gift JP a pillow. For those who are wondering whether a pillow signifies something nasty or $exually explicit, please hold on to your vivid imaginations. Pillow was suggested after the (in)famous 'Pillowgate scandal' at JP's room after Amdya's highly intoxicated state and later JP being (almost) pushed to tears saying "Arre! Amdya ne mere pillow ki waat laga di" in his inimitable style. Ajit was of the opinion that we would be embarrassing JP by gifting him in front of other people since it was specifically mentioned in the invitation card not to bring bouquets/gifts. But the others were already wondering how embarrassed he might be seeing us among all the erudite people there, so that thought was scratched out immediately. Thanks Shirish for mentioning about my initiative for the gift in another mail thread but actually it was Bhopya who had instructed me on phone to get a gift since JP would be leaving abroad and we were not sure how soon he would be meeting us again. Amdya blurted out Planet M in between and we 4 headed towards the music store to see if we could get something for the music lover JP. As Amdya and I were skimming through movie titles under the Romantic genre, Shirish insisted that we get some C-grade Bollywood movies. He also pro-actively fished out a list from his pocket which featured movies like Chetana, Radha Ki Jawani, Shaadi Basanti Ki Honeymoon Gabbar Ka etc. Sensibility prevailed and we bought Notting Hill, If Only, Music & Lyrics, 'i-can't-remember-the-name' and The Pursuit of Happyness**.
Then we headed for the venue with Ajit driving the car, Amdya sitting beside him and Shirish and myself in the backseat. Talks went on from Darya's accident (a new version was created of the incident since Ajit was not aware, sorry Babaji you were not the originator of this version like the other 3 versions :p) to Andaz Apna Apna. Most of the funny lines were re-delivered from the movie. Aila Juhi Chawla to Yeh Teja Teja kya hai, yeh Teja Teja. It was decided that we should all gather at someone's place and watch the historic movie together. Maybe after the T20 WC final. During the dialog deliveries we lost the diversion near the venue and had to go a few kilometers extra for taking the next turn towards the venue. While heading for the next turn we spotted Sadanand Residency, a huge building glowing with lights. A voice in the car said "Is the venue Sadanand Resorts or Sadanand Residency?". He he he.. so we decided to check out both the places and halted near the Residency building first. The car parking gave an impression that very few people would be inside the building so it was decided that 2 of us would go in and ask for JP :D. No one voluntarily came forward, so we went to Sadanand Resorts, which fortunately was the correct location.
When we entered the reception hall on the 2nd floor a single known voice ARRREEE!!! boomed through the crowd in front of us. Guess what guys, it was Mehta. Not the Electronics professor, but Pratik Mehta. It was quite (initially pleasant) surprising to see him there as no one from us knew that he was back in India. This guy has moved from Sweden to Switzerland to Germany to USA and currently he is in Austria. Yeah we also initially thought that his 'exploits', which we had heard during the year after our graduation, were the reasons for the countries to expel him but he has been around the world for various reasons like internship, studies and jobs (the regular ones). This guy will give a very tough fight to our original loudspeaker K.D. We guys were seated in the hall and Mehta, looking towards the stage, asked (should be read as shouted at) JP, who was posing for the camera, "Oye JP, change your position. Kya raat ko hi positions badlega kya?". The initial thought of JP being embarrassed by us was instantly washed away :-). With Mehta as company, naturally the topics of discussion were how-Mehta-accurately-told-us-about-adult-movie-timings-during-engg and how we all had troubled all professors of our college. The conversations as usual involved professors JSK, Nagoshe, Chinni, Chirmule etc. We also recollected how JSK had cried during one lecture and how Ranga had confessed of throwing the chalk towards Modak (which actually had not hit him) :D.
The ambience of the entire venue was very nice. A good thing was that the crowd was limited so the bride and groom could talk to every person on the stage at a comfortable length of time. We were not aware that JP had invited A R Rehman to play in the background. Rehman was performing exactly in front of the venue and when we were having food on the terrace we could see the Balewadi stadium lit up brightly and dazzling fireworks along with Rehman's music. The food was wonderful, esp. the non-vegetarians found it finger-licking good :-). JP and Nilshia were looking beautiful in the traditional wear and were smiling throughout the entire ceremony. We all wish the couple to smile like this forever and have a nice married life.
We clicked a few weird (actually these should be called natural) photographs which I am mailing in a few minutes. While driving back to Pune, Amdya was either sleepy or scared in the front seat coz he mentioned a couple of times to Ajit "Kasla raanti chalavtoy gaadi". In the backseat Shirish and I were stuck on Paresh Rawal's line from Daud, "Imandar baap ka jaandaar beta, roz use karta hai Colgate".
Darya, Sudeep, Dukkya and JP are the names which have been scratched out from the Eligible Bachelors' List. Who will be the next one? By the way, if you are not aware one of our good friends outside our group, Tathya/Narya is getting engaged to a Mumbai girl. Going by the fact that I have troubled him a lot I am sure that he won't invite me to the wedding. Nor do I see Shirish and Babaji getting an invite. So who ever will be attending it please do mention what happened to Elsa ;-).
** My company had screened The Pursuit of Happyness for us. Before the screening, one of my colleagues came into my cubicle and asked us, "You guys are not coming to watch the prostitue of happiness?". Had I written the spelling of coming as cumming (like many spell it in text messages), it would have led to an entirely different connotation for the question, right?
P.S.: In case you are wondering how I have managed to write so much, well I possess a skill known as multi-tasking. I assign all tasks (including mine) to multiple junior resources. Multi-tasking is in ;-).
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Have a great weekend everyone!
Labels: Friends, Letters, Marriage
posted by Sudeep @ 8:09 PM
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