How insane do you think it is to carry bread, chutney and cheese 50 KMs, eat it and come back? And all this with the same set of people you work with all week in your office. You say it’s picnic or team building or any such crap? What would you say if i said, you had to start at 6 AM on a Saturday morning. Do you realize its absolutely insane? I can’t believe still that AM brainwashed a few of us to think it is the most adventurous and insanely greatest thing to do on a Saturday morning. All this “morning” thing just because she is AM and is an AM person unlike the rest of us who knew how to enjoy a good sleep until late afternoon in the weekends.
So some of us complete idiots would wake up at 5 in the morning, start packing up all the junk, bread and chutney and start riding our bikes at about 6 AM. Some of us would start from AM’s place and some people were even more stupid to promise that they will join us at a particular meeting point. At 6:30 AM, from the designated meeting spot, there will be frantic phone calls to the 2 people who would not have reached at 6:30 AM. The perpetual idiots included me, AM, SM, KG, SG and some temporary idiots who AM manages to brainwash during the week.
We would ride our bikes all the way up to a damn…no i mean a Dam which was about 50 KMs away, i think. On the way we would go and admire a big banyan tree which as old as my great, great and greatest grandfather and about 20 dozen monkeys. The monkey’s would stare at us as if asking “Are you guys out of your mind to come and look at this stupid banyan tree on a Saturday morning?” My guess is that their look had a worse meaning which we did not understand or care to understand.
While admiring the tree for a never ending 20 minutes, we would have tea at the tea stall. The tea stall owner was one of the few people who should have thanked god for creating idiots like us. How should he know he is giving too much credit to God while AM deserved almost all of it. We would talk all the nonsense that have no relevance to our lives with all the seriousness and then continue our ride. Our destination was a small Dam, the name of which i can’t recollect. The place would be absolutely deserted.Some of them would realize the their stupidity and start stone throwing practice. I am not sure if they spared AM out of respect and threw the stones into the water or if they were not sure if AM was actually the person to blame. AM does one thing very well, brainwashing. Mostly, it saved her.
In a few minutes, after realizing that there is nothing more to do, we would process our breakfast. It was like an assembly line. One person would open the bread, pass it to the person who has the chutney. The chutney person will spread the chutney and pass the bread to the cheese man. The cheese man would then spread the cheese and send it back to the bread man. The bread man will add another slice on top to complete the sandwiching process and serve it. Well, “serve it” is probably the right way to say it. The one who grabs it first gets it. Remember, we had just admired 20 dozen monkeys. What kind of people are we if we don’t learn something from the monkeys?
The best part of this insanity is an absolutely intense and insane conversation between AM and KG. KG, as his name suggests, has a the heart of the kid. But he reads too much for that kid’s heart. So whatever he reads goes into his heart (yes, he takes his reading to the heart :) ) in a very unpredictable way. So he would make a statement in his inimitable style which AM would straight away disagree with. That would kick start an interesting and hilarious argument between KG and AM. SM, the Bangali Babu, obviously cannot keep quiet. It would be a shame on entire West Bengal and some parts of Kerala (the communist connection, you see) if he did not add value.So, he would add value (fuel) to the argument which would have turned to fire spitting levels now. The rest of us would have a hearty laugh irrespective of whether we understood anything in the conversation or not. Thing is, we were unsure if we should react in any other way so it was easy to just imitate the monkeys. This great conversation and the awesome chutney cheese sandwich would make all the insanity really worth it. Those days were so much fun.
Some days the destination changed to a pond before the Bannerughatta wild life sanctuary but the rest of story remained same irrespective of the destination.
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