After
a week of sleepless nights, mindless mugging-up, persistent headaches and moments
of “I should’ve just gotten married instead!” we got done with the end term of
Trim 3 and finally whooshed out of the last loop of the roller coaster that was
the first year of PGDM. And this incredible year ended with a bang with “THE
Last Night Out”
The
plan was to go to Colaba and spend the night at Marine Drive. Mano suddenly got
hell-bent on going to Bandra. She kept saying that since she had not seen
Bandra Fort in all these months she had to see it once before leaving. Plus Abhinaya
was also in Bandra. She had spent the whole evening shopping for her sister. So that left me and Sheel waiting downstairs
for the guys who, as usual, were taking their own sweet time to get ready!! We
waited for nearly an hour! It almost seemed like there would be no night out.
But eventually the gods (read backwards) descended from the heavens and decided
to join us after all!
We
went to Vijay Punjabi in chembur for dinner. It was the dream dinner: starter
after starter after starter … chicken reshmi, chicken kabab, chicken bhoona,
chicken this, chicken that. Oh and a super duper special paneer dish was ordered
for Prashant. Apparently this place was chosen because you could booze as well
as smoke here while having dinner! So basically heaven for Lambu and Rajan! The
peeakkads Sheel, Lambu and Rajan were
in full form maaro-ing drink after drink. Sheel of course turned out to be
quite the drink mixer! There was one dish in
particular which had a lasting impression on us all. It was a chicken starter
dish which was soooo chilli that it burnt our tongue! Rajan was in tears after
having it! Kung fu was mysteriously quiet through most of the dinner. He spent
most of the time messaging someone and the rest of the of it eating chakli
(which I donno why was called chakli bcoz it was not round!!) with shezwan
sauce.
The Flying Hand: Lambu started this new
annoying thing that day. He pretended his hand was an airplane and grazed it on
everyone’s head making an “eeeeeeeyyyyyy” sound. It was so weird that when he
started doing it people just concluded he was drunk. It is kind of become the
story of his life. Whatever he does people just conclude he’s drunk!
Mano Madrasi!: Mano came skip hopping
from Bandra and then we got into the whole discussion about how Mano is a
Madrasi. It is absolutely hilarious the way she reacts when she’s called a
Madrasi! It seems she hates Madrasi’s with a pure, unadulterated white hot
rage! She starts bobbing up and down, throwing her hands and legs in the air in
retaliation when she is called a Madrasi. And Rohit, who is ½ Madrasi is
completely unaware of it! Unfortunately, her children will be 1/4th
Madrasi!
After
an awesome dinner we left for Marine drive not quite knowing how exactly we
would spend the whole night. Kshits went back home as always. He said something
about his mom knowing he was out and that he cant go back to hostel or something..
which basically translated to “Sorry I don’t like having fun”. Megha and Shikha
were not coming either. Since they would be separated for two and a half
months, they wanted to spend the night together.
And
thus started the night out!!!!
Phata poster niklaa hero: Entry of Sujeet: We
picked up Sujeet from the hostel. He was very silent in the car… like life had
been sucked out of him. Well, we later heard that he had spent every bit of his
energy having an awesome time in the PG A last
day party!! Suddenly the song “Pyaar ki Pungi” started playing. It was hard to
ignore that there was an uncanny resemblance between that song and sujeet. As
soon as we told that to Sujeet, he started blushing and gave his “Mein nirdosh
hoon” look. He refused to see the clear connection! It was like if Sujeet got
frustrated and wrote a love song this is how it would sound! Plus, it had the
mention of the elusive “laila” that he is currently enticed about.
First stop: Marine Drive
All
the non-Mumbai people would agree with me when I say that all our bickering and
complaints about Mumbai disappear when we come to Marine drive. The place is at
its glorious best in the still of the night when you can hear nothing but the
crashing of the waves. The company of friends makes this experience all the better!
We were lying down, looking up at the sky, figuring shapes out of the clouds. The
guys were on the lookout for this old gay man who had once given them a rate card
for all the things that he could do for them! Sheel kept saying after every 5
mins that the police will come and bhagao
us. Everytime a car or jeep passed by she would say Police aa rahi hai! Everyone just went on overusing the word “Negotiate” …
a side effect of the super difficult and taxing exam we had that morning! Mano
was being called a Madrasi all over again! She then came up with the logic that
since Lambu was working in Chennai, he should be called a Madrasi instead. In
his reply, Lambu just gave her the flying hand.
Sheel
was sitting peacefully looking at a small boat at sea for a very very long
time. That is when Mano and Lambu decided to bring to rest the question whether
Sheel ko bhagwaan ne ladka banate banate
ladki bana diya. The theory goes this way: When a girl is sitting quietly,
there are 10001 thoughts going through her mind. When a guy is sitting quietly,
his mind is an utter and complete blank.
Mano/Avishek:
Cheeel, what are you looking at?
Sheel:
Nothing
Mano/Avishek:
But where are you looking at in that direction?
Sheel:
Im looking at that boat.
Mano/Avishek:
What are you thinking?
Sheel:
Nothing
Mano/Avishek:
But you must be thinking of something!
Sheel:
No….. I’m thinking of nothing.
Well,
Ankur Arora would’ve been very happy with the findings of that experiment!
After
a while, the Police finally came and shooed us away from there. They started
beating their sticks on the ground like we were homeless people spending the
night at Marine Drive and went on saying jaldi jaao jaldi jao expecting that we
would get scared and run away from there! But everyone just got mad at Sheel.
She was remembering the police so much that they finally had to come!
Next up: Gateway
After
being shooed away from Marine Drive we went to Gateway. We all had tea and
coffee there and chatted for a while. There was this creepy looking guy who was
dressed from head to toe in white. He looked like a South Indian villain ka
right hand man. We had only started getting cozy there when a police van showed
up around the corner and a cop stared beating his stick on the ground and
shooing off all the people there. We kept standing there thinking we would move
only when the van reached us. They even woke up people sleeping inside the
parked cars and told them to go elsewhere. When he reached us he started
yelling ghar jao ghar jao and then we
started reluctantly dragging our feet back to the car.
Jaaye
toh jaaye kahan?
Now
the question on everyone’s mind was where the hell we would go next! We had to
go to a place where the police wouldn’t come and shoo us off again. So Carter
Road it was! We found a strategic place for ourselves behind a row of trees so
that even if there were Policemen paroling around the place, they would not be
able to see us. Prashant and Kung fu made themselves comfortable on a lone
bench. Everyone was finally at rest because there was no one to move us off
from here. Everyone was having a fun time. On public demand, Sujeet was dancing
to the song Kolaveri.
Just
then this old man came from behind the trees and asked us who we were and what
we were doing there. We didn’t really pay any heed to him. Half of us looked at
him and then looked away. He asked again but it had the same result. Then a man
wearing a Police uniform compete with a gun and everything came and stood
behind him and started blasting us. We all fatafat
went and stood in front him in one straight line. He asked us what we were
doing there. So we said that we were college students, we got late so we had to
stay out till 6 am. He looked at Mano and asked her where the college was. At
first she was dumbstruck but then said in a full accent “Vidyaviharrr”. He
started screaming and shouting about how we were very irresponsible to be hanging
around in a dangerous place like Carter road so late at night. We thought he
would yell at us a bit and then let us go but he then told us to get into his
van! That is when we started getting tensed. We went saying that we’ll go away
and all but he was in a mood to bully us. He asked us where all we had come
from. Lambu’s first reaction was Chennai! (Guess who was super happy she had
company!) The cop said- look all these people come from outside and think they
can do anything in Mumbai, roam around in the middle of the night in a
dangerous place like Carter Road. Do you people even know how dangerous this
place is? Charsi log kaatke paani mein
dal denge! Chillaoge toh koi nahi ayega! Kitni dangerous jagah hai yeh! Tum log
bahar se aye ho jante bhai nahi. He looked at me and said kya tumhare parents ko pata hai tum yaha ho?
I really didn’t know what to say so I just gave an
Im-so-ashamed-of-myself-look. Then Kung fu did what he always does when we get
into a sticky situation. He started talking to the cop in Marathi. But this
time it back fired. The cop came to know he’s from Mumbai and started shouting
at him. Tum toh jante ho ki yaha charsi
ghoomte hein fir bhi apne dosto ko laye ho. Kaise dost ho tum! Charsi logo se
marvana chahte ho in logo ko.. Poor Kung fu kintna gaali pada usko! While the cop went on talking about the charsi people and mar dalenge kaat dalenge two old aunties on their morning walk
coolly crossed us. He asked if we were MBA students and then asked our
specialization. Rajan suddenly started bonding with the cop “We are in 1st
yr and haven’t chosen our specialization yet. I’m thinking of taking Finance.
My friend is taking Marketing….” Once their dil ka connection was broken there
was another round of charsi people mar
dalenge kat dalenge and finally the cop let us go. We quickly crossed the
road and got into the car but could see from far away that he was still pakao-ing Lambu, Prashant and Rajan.
When we reached college it was still 5 am and we couldn’t get in till 6. We
stood outside the gate and went on laughing and laughing about our last police
encounter.
The
last night out was quite an experience. We got shooed away by the police from
one place to another, almost had to get into a Police van, ran around the city
like homeless people and had loads and loads of fun in between. And it would
have been even more fun if everyone was there!
