Life In Technicolo(u)r

What do you first think of when you think beaches and the sea-side?

Sun and sand. √

Water. √

Girls in swimsuits. √

Which naturally leads to Baywatch. √

Birthdays.

Huh?

Well, that would have been my reaction if you’d slapped me across the face when I was watching Chelsea lose to Stoke City. Same goes here. Birthdays and beaches on a hot weekend afternoon just don’t go together. Nor do balloons, cotton candy and bubble-blowers qualify as gifts 😛 But that is exactly what we got Trisha for her birthday treat. An eclectic collection of the trademark “beach-stuff”. (She enjoyed the cotton candy though. Whether that is out of love for the “stuff clouds seem to be made of” or pure hunger is still questionable. The clean candy-stick at the end, however, was hard proof :P)

So, at 3.30 on Saturday, the 31st, we were all gathered on the most popular destination for tourists in Mumbai, the Juhu Beach. Choked up to the neck with hawkers and other commercial “ventures”, it is absolutely worthless as a serious place of entertainment. However, if you want to enjoy a birthday and rustle up some Quentin Tarantino-style fun, this is the place for it. From people “reverse-kissing”, to people actually enjoying in the nauseatingly dirty water, the beach drags up all sorts of characters. Cue us. Merwans Cake in hand, we arrived at our destination, after a bit of trouble over which cake we would like. I opted for my usual White Forest, but Praj wanted Choco Crackle, and Shreya and Samik were merely ready to eat anything. Anything, mind you. Especially, stay away from Shreya when she’s hungry. I will breach this subject later. Just to quell some violent thoughts that might be crossing our readers’ (read Shreya’s) mind(s) at this point. Which might interrupt the flow of words from my fingers.

To borrow another phrase from “Luck By Chance”, which I happened to watch today(more on that later), we horsed around for a bit after that. Shadow dancing, blowing bubbles, playing with the beetles(?) and digging into the cake(and I mean literally), we did everything that could be done. At the end of all of it, the cake was a sand-cake, and that was what poor Munnu got when she came late from her class. Before that, me and Shreya were assigned the job of collecting(or was it begging for) spoons at the local restaurant-thingys. Well, we hatched a devious plan which ended in Shreya using all her charm to extort a couple of spoons from each R-T. While I stood about, looking around. Well, just looking around then. 😛 (I hatched the plan!)

As goes the current trend, we also clicked a lot of photos, shot a few videos on Leena’s webcam, which made noises like a chainsaw driven by a banshee, both going about their usual jobs. I finally managed to work out how the damn thing worked, and we had some fun interrupting Leena’s amateurish attempts at shooting videos. Also caught on tape, attempts by Mayur and me at leaving our indelible(?) marks on Juhu beach walls.

The next part was Kaaju’s brainchild, in which she didn’t participate :P. In which I was beaten by 3 girls. Damn. We had a Pani-Puri-eating competition, of all things. The contestants: Leena, Me, Shreya, Trish and Samik. Final Count(kept by Mayur) read as follows:

Leena – 12

Shridhar – 17

Samik – 18

Trish – 20

Shreya – 22

And the prizes were an extra bout of stomach-ache for the person with the most number of Puris eaten 😉

By this time, it was nearly 18.30 or so. We were just about able to watch the sunset, while clicking even more photos. After which we bought balloons. Imagine. Balloons shaped like monkeys and hearts. The monkeys were carefully made, upto the last detail. And I’ll leave it at that. No knowing who’s reading this. Right? Right.

That was when Munnu arrived. And probably that was when we left. We caught a #203 to Patkar College. The journey was long, yet enjoyable. What journey isn’t when you’re watching South Park – Fellowship Of The Ring? @ Munnu – 😉

Just to point fingers at our CS prof in college, a Vote Of Thanks to all the people who made this nice break in routine possible and enjoyable –

Trisha “Deshdrohi” Moro

Prajakta “Kaaju” Panchal

Shreya “The Incredible Sulk” Ballal

Samiksha Balgi

Mayur “Popo” Jain

Mrunmayi “Mrunmayee” Churi

and not to forget,

Reverse-Kissing Couple, Bubble-Maker Guy, Pay-and-Use Toilet, Balloon-Monkey Guy and Merwans.

P.S : Photos will be added later, as and when “MM” manages to give me the photos. You can’t steal them off Trisha’s album!

P.P.S: What do you call a girl living in Juhu?

Ans: Juhu Bitch. 😉

Electric Ladyland

Now, even though I am an anti-social being, I do occasion to have a few friends. “Few” is an understatement. I have a humongous number of friends. Of course, my teensy-weensy little brain doesn’t have much cache, so I do the most sensible thing anyone can do to remember birth-dates. Store them in my cell phone. One little beep for man, one giant leap for human-kind. 😀

Now, the season of retreating monsoons has been a kind of mini-birth-year for most of my friends. Turn around the corner, and there you have a birthday being celebrated, Now, surprise parties are the in-thing for my group of friends. Having been inspired by a certain recent Bollywood rom-com, a surprise birthday treat is the call of the day. Enter, the whispered phone calls, the secrecy in buying cakes, the elaborate hoaxes to get the victim out of his/her house.

Of course, the festive season (and birth season) continues, and today is no different. The modus operandi of today was to get the victim out of the house by asking his mom to tell him to get a loaf of bread. And having played football, victim refused point-blank to move out of the house. Cue for us to curse his laziness. So, we gambled on just rushing to his house and catching him off-guard.

Having done that, we gave him a pleasant (hopefully) surprise. Of course, the cake was added incentive for him to invite us in. 😛 Completing the formality of singing a ear-splitting, and out-of-tune version of “Happy Birthday”, we plonked on previously-mentioned victim’s terrace.

Then ensued usual party fare, though the Samosa Chaat was something to talk about, being one of the best I’ve eaten recently. Cake-cutting was not without the cream-smearing, which ultimately ended in all of us smelling like a dairy factory. I was at my witty best, *applause* and most of us were meeting each other after a long time.

We played our favourite party game, Dumb Charade, and invented some extremely stupid Bhojpuri movies. The standard “Nadee-mein-behti-laash” stuff notwithstanding, the game was bearable. After a couple of hours, satisfied and less hungry, we left victim’s house. Having woken up all neighbours and brought the building down, we proceeded home. Dawdled long enough to make me feel sleepy. Of course, I’m just hurrying up with the blog now due to a similarly-sleepy friend’s request. Now, off to relieve myself.

Till then, remain safe and sound!