Monday, December 28, 2009

Carpe-Diem------ Seize d Day

The morning of 28th December can't get gloomier than this. It's 8.30 in the morning and the sun has hidden her face inside a thick quilt of cloud and fog. There's no sign that she might wake up any time soon. Blame it on my post "Breaking Dawn" effect but I've a queer feeling that lots of vampires will be, ARE roaming  around Bangalore to take the full advantage of such a day. On any other day they'd have succeeded to suck all the happiness out of me (wait a second , that's the job of dementors , r8? NOT vampires , but then who can say for sure that there aint a mixed breed ?!) but today my happiness is overflowing like the water of India. No soul or soulless being in heaven or earth Horatio would dare attack me. Why? Well  lemme give u a brief story of the past few days starting from 24th. 


24th in college we arranged the game of secret santa and I was elated to find out that I am the secret santa of a girl i really  adore and bought some gift worth Rs 200!!! Way too unexpected from  a person as parsimonious as me. Then I'd to stay back at college till 5.30 from that blatted  German internship interview thingy which i messed up in my own sweet style and let ritesh do all the talking. My mind was anywhere but in the projecter telecasting the VC, i wanted to get out of college and njoy christmas eve. And then when i actually got the chance to escape i was not walking, i was floating. Even the dull red volvo seemed to be a sleigh and the ordinary human driver- red nosed Rudolf. I even paid the fare of Ritesh , can u swallow that? 
Worse? After getting back to hostel , the sight of my extra 6 kilos (ok ok 7.5, i m not gonna lie here) didn't quite dissuade me from wearing one of my favorite dresses and we (me , rash, shine and manisha; who joined from near Forum) headed towards St patrick's church. When we finally went there I couldn't but compare it with St Paul's Cathedral and was a bit disappointed. We were told that the crowd wont come before 10 so we decided to have our dinner and I guiltily admit that we went to Pizza hut and i shew no restrain in my dietary habit. But I must do something to reduce these bulges even if that means starving myself to unconsciousness . I paid Rs928 bill and of course others returned their share to me ( come on, I can't be THAT generous ) . Brigade road was looking like  a dreamland. I thought i would be the only person to buy  santa cap but it turned out to be that many people were as insane as me. Thank sweet Jesus for that. W/o insanities like these there will be no  point of our existence. After having the food we did some window shopping only to feel more depressed about my weight and then finally reached St patrick's . The main Church gate wasn't open so we did some photo shoot in the premises and finally entered the church. seating  and live videostreatimg  arrangements were made in the premises as well but we were lucky enough to find a seat inside the church. Rashi and Manisha started tp criticize the unsophisticated  rustic rituals of their religions and I, being the atheist of the group and having the same share of aversion towards all religions kept mumb. Now, u might ask why , being an atheist , I went to attend the mass? Well, i went to behold the people ,  witness the culture and I swear my experience was enriching . When the carols finally started, i and manisha started singing along with them w/o having heard most of the songs before. But there was a distinct pattern which applied to all of them.  The crowd represented the spirit of India. There were ultra sophisticated high society ladies and lords as  well people from the upper part of the bottom of pyramid. A few Caucasian as well as black (no offence intended, just can't find a substitute ) foreigners were also there and I couldn't decipher from which part of the world were they from. While the carol part was really interesting the speach of the priest ( some1 who came to the church just for that day) was so  boring that i was having deja vu of classroom all over again. But the final speach by the indigenous priest was interesting and thankfully short. I wonder why non Catholics are not allowed to take communion .. Must do some R&D about it. When only Shine went forward and take it a lady actually asked me- "u are not catholic?" .. well I am . I thought . One of the biggest catholics in my tastes, thought process and action !! It was good to see people hugging each other and saying merry christmas post midnight mass . We did our own share of hugging and then took an auto to woodstock by paying 200 bucks. Due to the unavailability of any open store , my brilliant plans of  having ice cream had to be cancelled . THANKFULLY!! or else i dont know how many more cellulite would i have accumulated. 




Next day 25th, we were supposed to wake up at 7.30 . I did and found out that the  myth that Bengalies have problems with punctuality doesn't apply here .. My friends woke up at around 10.30 and then till 1 pm we'd bizarre and funny discussions  about having a post christmas short escape to the lap of nature. After considering Mysore and Mangalore , we narrowed  it down to hoganikkal and exhausted with that  superhuman activity of our grey cells , we decided to refill ourself with food and went to M G road in search of it. There i had the worst lunch of my short life by wasting Rs 120( blame it on Hotel empire and I Warn u if u ever go to church st, avoid that restaurant like plague) . Actually it was supposed to be  a buffet and it turned out to be a thali. I felt really bad about it throughout the day and taking dinner was out of question when u had a terrible lunch at 4pm. Then we went to a food mall and bought some groceries to make reth churel (sandwich , silly!) . I came back and was engrossed once again in Stephanie Meyer. Then while checking my mail , i was transfixed to find my sister's mail there and I guess the surprised exhausted me and I went asleep with the lapie still switched on and woke up at 4.30 am to find out that I had 13 missed calls from mom. 


The Hoganikkal trip deserves  a detailed separate discussion so I'd bid adeu to u guys now.

1 comment:

bo said...

nice read... maybe a little more detail regarding the decorations and the mood of the people outside the church ... and perhaps a comparison with what u've seen at Calcutta would have been gr8!!!

BTW the start was good ...