Mama I'm comin' home !!

All right. Here I am, back home in Calcutta.

The last week of stay in Bangalore involved hectic activity. Things needed to be packed (this usually leaves me looking around the room helplessly), people needed to be informed that I was leaving, office work had to be delegated and most importantly, I had to meet all the friends in the city.

For the first time in my adult life, the packing wasn’t as big a nightmare as it usually is for me. I had enough suitcases to pack my stuff into, although Motee made her presence felt at the last minute and did a much better job than I could’ve ever done myself.

I had three different send-offs and each of them was very special.

The first was when I met up with Charul, Bipasha ‘Ben’, Jeet and Motee at Qwiky’s. The second one was much later in the week with the group that I’ve now started referring to as the ‘78 mm gang’… (B-I-G post on this gang coming up next). Of course, this gathering couldn’t have happened anywhere else but at ‘The Jukebox’.

The third one was an ‘office’ gathering since it involved a few of the office guys and their respective better halves. It was great to go out for dinner with them and to realise that even in a short span of time, I’d grown very fond of these folks.

By the end of the week, all the packing and unpacking had really caught up with me. Had it not been for Mistha who very sweetly decided to host me at her place for yet another night at her place, I would’ve been only more harassed. Oh what a fun night it was. Motee came over and we spent the night watching TV, eating pizzas, playing antakshari during the power failure and having some awesome coffee. (The ‘antakshari’ was my idea and trust me, I had absolutely no idea that Mistha and Motee would immediately agree to the plan. Played antakshari after AGES and it was good fun.)

The next morning was even more fun. Bulla came to receive me at the airport and we both were very excited about how my parents would react. I was giving them a surprise and they had no clue that I had packed up my bags and was headed home.

When I did finally stand before him, Dad was just v-e-r-y surprised to see me. I think for a couple of moments he just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I’d actually managed to pack all my belongings and come over from Bangalore to Calcutta without informing him and taking any sort of help from him. As for Mom…well, Moms are just awesome, aren’t they? Mom just kept smiling and hugging me. There was just too much joy to be expressed by words, I guess.

I have met up with almost all my friends since I’ve come back and it feels so great to catch up with Bulla, Lambu, Raj, Budhau, Konal and Horse.

Oh yes, that reminds me.

The dude that Horse is, he SMSes me last Friday at 1:30 in the morning to ask me if I’m awake. When I replied that I indeed was and when he didn’t reply for about 5 minutes, I very seriously thought that the dude was in trouble. Just when I was about to call him back, he calls and asks me if I had office the next day (Saturday). I said that I did. “Cool,” he says, “I don’t know what you do tomorrow; you take a half-day, call in sick and don’t go at all…I don’t care. Just make sure you’re at my place at three tomorrow.” And before I can go “Dude, wtf?”, he makes me drop my jaws by adding casually, “I’m getting engaged.”

Imagine my surprise!! I sat bolt upright in bed. Obviously, I was very excited for him. We chatted for about twenty minutes and then decided that this called for a celebration. True to our nature, we walked out of our respective houses at 2 in the morning and headed for…where else? Our favourite haunt, The Atrium !! Over a couple of beers, he told me how just earlier in the evening the girl and her family had come down from Nagpur and when both of them gave their assent, the families decided to have a small ceremony the very next day.

Well, my movie watching spree has definitely come to a halt, but I did manage to catch ‘The Dark Knight’ with Horse and Bulla. We went to the South City Mall and barely managed to get three seats in the second row from the front. This on a Monday night at ten o’ clock!! Wow !! Calcutta seems to be really catching up on the movie scene.

I haven’t managed to get a broadband connection for myself yet. I promise posts will get more regular once that happens. Let’s hope I can get a connection by the end of next week.