Birthday Boy@Mahabalipuram

It was 4.30 am and the mobile alarm of Maniesh began to sound. In a few seconds he snoozed it. Swearing against him in the mind, I returned to sleep. He does that every day. If he wants to wake at 6.30, he needs to set alarm 2 hours prior and then snooze it every 10 minutes! I slowly drifted again into my dreams. After what seemed a very small time, in the dream, a girl in a nice voice began to sing. After a few seconds, I realized that it is not the dream girl, but my mobile phone alarm. 5.30 am. I looked around the hall in which I was sleeping. (FYI: I usually prefer to sleep in the hall. Not because I don’t like beds, but because I don’t like to suffer the kicks and punches of my bed mates, that too in the name of just a (few!!) inches of invasion of his territory of bed. Hey guys, how dare you call yourself Indians? Look how India reacts to border incursions of Pak and China. ) There was Anoop lying in the couch, still tightly clutching the tv remote control. Just then I noticed a veiled figure walking in the verandha. Thief?? No way. Any thief will leave their own cash for us if they see our financial condition, especially in the second half of the month. Then I realized that it was Jishnu, studying for the software testing exam. A soft voice, like a song was coming from the bedroom. There was another dear friend still with his Motorazr. I was going to ask him when he woke up. But then I noticed his eyes and understood that he is continuing the chat he started yesterday night.

I was very happy this day because it is my pirannal. (For non mallus, pirannal means the day I was born according to the kerala system of calendar.) To make things more interesting, today we are going for batch outing, to Mahabalipuram. I quickly had a bath and then went out to Marudeshwar temple. I was dressed pretty well I thought, but in the temple everyone was staring at me, even the priests. While praying I suddenly had an idea that I should act decently atleast this day. Today I will not say any bad things. But its difficult. If I open my mouth in the company of my friends, there is a 50-50 chance that something inappropriate will come out. Then I found a way out. I will avoid talking as far as possible. It seemed that should work. But I still have to keep my mind pure and that needed desperate measures. So I decided to stay away from girls. (Truly, it was a tough decision.) When I came out of temple, I searched a lot for my chappals but couldn’t find it. After 10 minutes, tired of searching, I found that I was wearing the chappal. Now I know why all were staring at me in the temple.

It was decided that we depart from Tidel Park at 8.30 in the bus we booked. Out of 25 of us in our batch, 7 have already stayed away from the outing. The reason of most of them was that their parents were coming in the weekend, and some of them were genuine. But in the early morning, some more parents decided to come and see their children (!) and that meant that more people skipped the tour. In the end we were 16 people. That too because Fatah and Ajith decided to take our friends Tilju and Jaseem along with. Then we started waiting for our bus. Then came the luxury bus. Bus cleaner suppamani looked around to find the crowd of guys and gals he expected. He stopped near us and asked whether we have seen a bunch of about 50 people waiting for bus. When we told that we are the group who booked the bus, admiration glowed in his face. 16 people traveling in a luxury bus meant for 50 people. He thought we will be very very rich guys. And that meant problem!! In Chennai you should never give such impressions. He suddenly started demanding an extra Rs 1500 for the bus. Then started a stalemate. The problem arose because the bus agency to whom we paid the advance outsourced the task to another agency and that agency moved the task to other agency and when that agency sent their bus, the driver was not well and they hired another driver from another agency. So when we called the manager to whom we paid the advance, he called the other agency, and that agency to the other agency… It was a confusing scenario. Finally it was all settled and we started our journey.

In the bus, Fatah found an expensive toffee pack (made in Switzerland) that someone discarded leaving behind a significant number of toffees. But we were not sure whether they were good or not. Fatah himself found the solution. He started distributing the toffees claiming that he brought them. We waited for about half an hour. No one vomited or asked to stop the bus. The quality of toffee was assured and we ate it. (Most people of Dotnet 32 still don’t know this secret behind Fatah’s toffee.) We danced for some time and then settled for Anthakshari. It was easy, because while all of us know most of the Tamil songs, only we, the mallus know the Malayalam songs. So we picked any line randomly from the songs and claimed that the song started like that. Sometimes we even made lyrics and music of our own!

We reached the shore temple at about 10. We had breakfast and then started walking towards shore temple. While walking some the girls in our batch were found missing. Search for them began. We started with the most obvious place. The shops which sold bangles, necklaces etc. But we didn’t find them. Then we searched in the textile shop. They weren’t found. We searched the restaurants. They weren’t there. At last we found them near a pond. They said they were admiring the beauty of that dirty local pond. (That too when there was a beautiful beach just a half kilometer away.) Why girls act so weird? Or is it that only we, the boys, feel that girls are weird??

In the shore temple, I was putting my plans in to action. I talked very less and stayed away from all. Lot of people asked me why I am acting so dull in my birthday. To boys, I told the truth. But to gals… tat was another matter. I still don’t know how fluently lies came from my mouth. When they asked what’s the problem with me, I gave different answers to each of them.

The mostly repeated Qn: ‘Arun, why r u so dull and inactive today? Anything wrong?’
Answer to Arya and Aparna: ‘Because you people don’t mind me these days’
To Sharanya and Vegela: ‘Because I was thinking that I turned 22 today and still I haven’t got a girl friend’
To Vinita: ‘Because my sweet heart didn’t call me today’
To Akshaya: ‘Because I am so tired after studying C# for the whole night!’
…

There were some foreigners lying in the garden to have their skins tanned. One of my friends went there to talk and mingle with them. The next thing we saw was that all the foreigners dressed and packed up and escaped from the place. (Don’t ask me the name of that friend plss..)

From there we moved on to the caves. There, in a low lying tree branch, I saw a bunch of monkeys sitting there. They were busy discussing :

Monkey 1: What a boring day. No excitement. No fun.
Monkey 2: Yeah, these people aren’t even looking at us.
Monkey 1: Lets do something to grab their attention.
Monkey 2: Yes, yes.. lets have some fun. What should we do?
Monkey 1: Ey, did u see that girl in the umbrella. Even in this scoarching heat, she isn’t sharing it with anyone.

In the next instant, the two monkeys started to pull the umbrella of the girl. (I know her. But for the sake of my own health, let’s call her Umbrella girl.) The monkeys and the umbrella girl were having a struggle and the girl was in no mood to relent. She threw away the monkeys with her own hand, retrieved her umbrella and shouted

‘U dirty monkeys, u can have my necklace or anything else. But my umbrella, that too in this scorching heat.. neeeeeever. I have to take care of my complexion na.’

The monkeys felt that their pride was hurt and they have to retrieve it at any cost. And the next victim they choose was the poor me who is taking their pictures with mobile phone. It was over in an instant and the monkeys were back at the branch, now with a Nokia 6233 in their hand. They smiled at me. I was furious. But still I managed to give back a smile. There was no use in being hawkish. I have to negotiate with them. I thought of taking Ajith’s mobile phone in my hand and dropping it. Seeing that, monkeys should also drop the mobile phone, at least theoretically. (U remember the old story na?) But then I remembered a recent email which depicts a similar situation in which, in the final scene the monkey asked, ‘U fool! Did u think only you have grand father!’ Even monkeys have grown smarter.

Me: Jai Hanuman
Monkey 1: Hanuman! Who is that?
Me: Didn’t you ever hear about HANUMAN??? One of your great great grand fathers. The one who even saved the life of Lord Ram. You know what, even during those days, monkeys and humans were close friends and Hanuman never took Ram’s mobile phone away.
Monkey 2: Ohh, that Hanuman. Yeah, we have heard of our friends in forests so far from here talking about them. But don’t you know that our chief minister don’t like these guys – Hanuman, Ram… So we usually don’t talk about these people.
Me: What should I do to get my mobile?
Monkey 1: Can you give us the umbrella of that girl?
Me: No way. She will kill me.
Monkey 2: Lets cut a deal. Give me the black goggle worn by that guy and the mobile will be yours.
Me: Ok done.

Fatah never got the time to respond. I suddenly took his googles and handed it over to the monkeys. They kept their part of the deal and returned my mobile. If you happen to go to Mahabalipuram, you can see one of these monkeys climbing and running around, wearing Fatah’s goggles. (For those of you who want to know how I know the language of Monkeys: ‘If you are that much insistent on perfection, truth… you have reached the blog of the wrong person yaar.’)

We returned from the caves and moved over to the beach. Since I had sworn that I will be a good boy today, I didn’t go with my friends to watch the north Indians playing in the water. Instead I settled in the sand itself. A lady who claimed to be well versed in palmistry offered us her service for just Rs. 10, and one of us readily agreed. She predicted, ‘Two wives, benz car…’ He was delighted. Then one of the girls showed her hand, ‘Raasathi… Will go abroad with husband, he will be a very nice man…’ She showered praises on anyone who showed their palms. At last I decided to take a chance and showed my palms. She looked at it for some time and said:

‘Cheating, lying, stealing.. all are evident in your palm. You will fall in deep love with someone, but she will ditch you. The lady whom you will marry will be actually cheating you. You look so humble and decent in the outside, but inside, you are a selfish and uncompromising man…’

The lady was going on and all my limits of patience ran out and some sweet f*** words flew out of my lips before even I knew. The birthday resolution was broken. Since its broken once, there is no point in continuing with it. No need for acting decent. Time to revert to the ‘Normal Arun Mode.’ In to the beach, in search of beautiful faces…

[Ok, I admit, not much of fun in the story na. I too felt that. But I’ll be back shortly. With the birthday celeberation photos. It will be a proof that one photo is worth a thousand words.]