Monday, January 05, 2009

Random weekend plan - V

...that wasn't a plan, actually. Also, it's just an update now.

Usually, the weekend begins in the mind on Friday afternoon. When you're planning what fun things you want to do over the next 2 days when you're NOT supposed to go to the office. Mine began at 6:45 pm with the realization that I had spent all of my time at work NOT doing the two most important tasks planned for the day. Instead, I completed other tasks and proceeded to purge obsolete emails outta my work mailbox. The waste-of-time alert sounded a bit too late, but I'm not one the to not keep my word. So I stuck to my workstation till 10:30, and delivered what was promised.

I hadn't planned on getting hungry when I reached home, because I had snacks earlier that evening and thought they would keep my natural food processor occupied through the night. But the moment I saw the hubs' steaming hot Maggi noodles that smelt like heaven (for no understandable reason), I knew I wanted some. So I grabbed the bowl from hubby's hands, and pushed him off to cook some more. I downed the whole bowl along with some chips by the time hubs could rest his ass on the couch beside me. And then I grabbed his other bowl and downed some more noodles. Of course,
being the considerate wife that I amto silence my shrieking guilty conscience, I fed him a few bites in-between and also while he was (re)cooking. As always, we were glued to the telly after that, watching any damn thing being shown. This time Enchanted and Premonition happened to catch our attention. We dragged ourselves to bed after that, because there was another screen to be stared at the next morning.

Before the alarm rang on Saturday, a friend who was supposed to be flying down from Delhi called saying that she was about to take off. Thanks darling, what else could have made me realize that we had only 40 minutes left to look human-like and reach the 9:00 am show of Australia?! We did reach a couple of minutes late, as usual, honking at everyone in our path. The movie was good, but seemed to have had a bad screenplay, or a good screenplay that was edited badly. It stretched a bit longer than to make us happy, but Hugh Jackman made up for it by looking good to ogle at. Oh, and the child actor, Brandon Walters, was simply great. A little better direction / characterization could have helped though. I had expected Gudiya to reach Pune by 12:30, and hour and a half after the movie was over. In fact, all flights from Delhi had been postponed due to extreme fog that day. Not hers, though. So, poor-little-girl landed at our doorstep a few minutes before the movie got over, and we could let her in only an hour later!

The maid story referred here ran alongside, and then we headed out for Smokin' Joe's. We were all drowsy by the time we got back home, so we went straight to bed for a couple of hours. As I said, this wasn't the original plan. Originally, I was supposed to attend a friend's house-warming ceremony / lunch and visit my pregnant cousin in the evening to attend to her craving for a certain dish. The first event was overridden (to my relief) by Gudiya's arrival. The second one fizzled out (again to my relief) because the cousin in question was suddenly invited to dinner at her family friends' place. So basically, we had the whole day to us, not literally, though. Me and hubs went for a walk in the lovely evening breeze and came home to cook a quick khichadi for us and another cousin who was to come over for the night. Guidya was out with her friends. We dined while watching Holes, and it was 1 am by the time slept. The hubs warned me (very lovingly) that he was to be asked to wake up only once and to be left alone if he didn't spring upright immediately. Of course, I knew what that meant.

Sunday morning dawned at 4:00 am, a mere 3 hours after I hit the pillow and struggled to sleep (flashes of a horse-riding Hugh Jackman intervened, you see). I woke up my cousin who was the cause of all the pain and excitement today. He was to reach Palm Beach Road in Bombay at 7:00 am for a bicycling race. We began at 4:45 am and covered the 130-km journey (with a few are-we-sure-we're-heading-inthe-right-direction kilometers thrown in) by 6:30 am. Contrary to my expectation it was hot in the car. We kept the windows open all through the drive and felt moderately cool. Rock On saved us from the terrible numbers the radio was beleting out. Bombay was warm when we reached. Seriously, does it ever experience winter?

Anyway, it got better from there for the next couple of hours. I badly wanted to piss, so I had to go find a hotel. Since there wasn't any, within the next couple of kilometers, I barged into a building that had an ATM center. Obviously it would have a toilet for the security gaurd? Turns out it had two: a toilet for men to take a leak and another for the whole world to shit it. Thankfully, the floor and the bowl had none of the shit on it, I dared my way in. As expected, the walls were covered with illustrations of the human reproductive organs and instances of "love me" which actually meant "fuck me." By now, I'm so callous about these that it hardly bothered me. I did my job and left. My cousin had, in the mean while met with his circle of acquaintances, and was as hungry as me. So we went away from the "gathering spot" again to hunt for food at 7:15 am. Fortunately, we found place that served us wada-paav (they even heated the paav) and cheese dosa. We returned, sated and ready to face whatever the day had in store for us. Which, for my cousin was the 4th position in his time trial, and for me was 3 hours of being baked in the car. It wasn't all that bad though. I was very happy to spend a Sunday with my stomach full, a cool seabreeze along with the morning sun, spread out in my car, reading a book. Things began to turn sour when the sun turned its power up, and things started to err... heat up. I got all sweaty and cranky after there was no hint of the race beginning even by 10:30. My cousin (thankfully) was away all the time socializing. He did a few practice laps, though. His time trial finally began after noon and was over within an hour. We had no time to waste, because the tickets for our 3:45 pm movie were already booked.

A couple of pictures from the trip...

The sunrise as seen from the roadside where I was initially comforted and then cooked

My cousin's 20-grand ride (aside from them 28-grand tyres)

We began the return jouney at 1:00 pm and were home by 2:35 pm, with a pit stop to pack food at a highway joint. There were quite a few climbs on the way back, but we beat them anyway by covering 130 kms in 95 mins. That included the pit stop and two almost-halts for toll payment, making it an average of 82.105 kmph. Woot! If it wasn't for the afternoon heat and the fear of tyre bursts on the highway, I would have gotten a high from all the wada-paav munching (again!) and Thums Up guzzling while steering at 120 kmph zigzagging past luxury cars and SUVs. I stayed sane and got us home safely in time for me to have a bath and feel better for the rest of the day's events.

My cousin left after a few minutes of rest, and Gudiya packed her luggage to leave for her guest house, while I washed the sweat and grime off me. We dropped Gudiya on our way and reached well in time for the movie. Outsourced turned out to be more hilarious that expected, and in a natuaral way, not the forced humor that's pushed into such cross-cultural movies these days (The Darjeeling Limited, for example). Soon after the movie, I felt a craving for Aaloo Tikki Chaat, so we hurtled off to Sagar Arcade on FC Road. It turned out to be a not-so-good experience after the couple of times in that last week that we gorged on Aaloo Tikki at home. It's a simple frozen pack we get home and heat up instantly with some oil, and have with chutney, but it tastes like heaven, and the extra chaat flavor/masala just put us off today. We headed home, but asked the hubs to switch to a different route so I could buy a box file holder like this from a particular stationery shop. The owner had promised to stock one for me, but didn't, and I was pissed because he normally keeps his word. I thought of getting at least one thing I wanted, so we went to a relative's place further on the way home, so I could get The Celestine Prophecy back. No luck there too. We spent 15 minutes chatting them up and listening to their usual bragging about their schedules, but in the end I couldn't get my book. It was inaccesible at the moment and I didn't want to pressure them. So we got home, cleaned up and bit and I went to bed.

Of course, hubby was told to cuddle me till I conked off. He was unsure that he wanted to sleep at the ungodly hour of 9:00 pm, but I convinced him it was a good idea, because otherwise he'd wake up late tomorrow as always. Not much in position to argue, he joined me, and we drifted off into deep slumber. I think. Because I woke up straight at 8:00 the next morning. 11 hours of blissful sleep. I was so relaxed.

PS: While being cooked in the Bombay heat inside my car, I almost finished EM's You Are Here.

No comments: