Blessed with Bliss

Suppose you are craving to have a pizza since weeks and one fine evening to your surprise find yourself face to face confronted with a lip smacking large pizza. What do you do? Ofcourse you gorge it down in less than a minute. But it is not the same with all things in life. You crave for freedom and the moment you have it you have no idea what to do with it.

Mom is off to Vaishnao Devi leaving me behind for a week of Home Alone. You know you have an entire week ahead of you and nothing to do - just careless abandon. (You conveniently forget for the time being that XLRI's entrance test is barely a week away because studying would be a cardinal sin now) A fellow like me is especially pained at such occasions. One doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs etc. Alas, the chief mediums to celebrate freedom are beyond us! I immediately start messing around the house so that it better reflects my character. The newspapers are scattered about, books are to be found everywhere except the book shelves and dirty plates and utensils add aesthetic value to the sofa and bed as well as they can. Now that we have the place in some order we leave the confines of the house to explore the world beyond. First stop - Pratik's place. Fortunately Pratik is as "vella" (punjabi for people like yours truly who perpetually live in a state of careless abandon) as I am inspite of the fact that his GRE is only days away. We immediately decide to stick it out together like chewing gum and hair for the week – equal partners in everything we do. We return to my place and it’s around 11 pm. As true geeks we start of by installing Xandros Linux on my laptop. Till around mid night we tinker around with linux then and decide to go to sleep. We switch off the lights and purportedly go to sleep. But of course it was not to be so. Now Pratik like me is addicted to and is the foremost practitioner of senti-tp. It is a form of tp (time pass) in which a broad spectrum of issues like girls, love, career, iims, etc. - in fact everything under the sun about which couple of young guys can get sentimental about. At around 1:30 Pratik suggests that it would be a good idea to have a midnight snack and we settle for our favourite - maggi. With two packs of maggi in our stomachs and both of us hungry for some action the idea of sleeping is dismissed. We decide to see "Good Will Hunting" which continues till around 3:30. Both of us are so sleepy eyed that it seems prudent to finally call it a day.

Its around 11 am and my head funny and somewhat in the same condition in which people find theirs the day after a night of boozing around – aching and as heavy as a dumb bell. It leads me to conclude that hangovers are not caused by alcohol but by heavy overdoses of fun. We set out on my roaring Yamaha like two tigers on the prowl looking for breakfast. We start of with "bataka paua" but the fire is still burning inside. Cut to Anand dal-vada. With four hundred gms of hot steaming dal-vadas seeping with oil inside our bellies we are full but not out yet. Being the gourmands that we are we have cold-drinks and a packet of chips. Munching on chips and looking around at the crazy hordes of people scrambling around here and there, carrying the burdens of a dozen worries and I suddenly realize how kind life has been to us, those who live in a state of constant semi-hibernation.