Sleeping for the next day's big gig is a PAIN. I lied down at 10, after an hour or so of packing and unpacking. Slept at 1.
November is awesome. Especially when you cuddle in inch-thick blankets with the windows open :) Woke up by 8. Bruv had just returned from one of his LONG pan-India Yatras. He returned from Chennai, I was going to Chennai. Irony,eh? Got ready by 9:15. Dropped at school by 9:30. Wandering inside the school without worrying about Exams or classes is a BLISS. Met PT sir. I was standing with a rucksack heavy with clothes and stuff and ogling stupidly at him sitting there with a TINY bag. What could possibly fit into that thing?
Had to wait for PR. Ass, he is. Told me to come by 9.30, came himself at 10.15. And also forgot his tiffen. Why, I ask."I'm a Hypochondriac", he says.We stupidly hoped for the Principal to drop us by his Innova. After all, *We* paid for it. Indirectly.
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The bus journey was long. It became warm, and I wondered why I wore my jacket. I still think that a bus-ride is the cheapest roller-coaster you could ride. You know, with the bumps and the rickety suspensions and all? Finally a few seats freed up before we reached the station. PR wanted to know why I love Harry Potter so much. "Convert me from a non-believer to a believer", He said. I love explaining complex Harry Potter plotlines. It was SO much fun.
At the station bus stop, Sir went to charge his phone, and then wandered off someplace. We called him asked him where he was. " I'm over here. Come." the Genius says, and cuts the line. But we found him and hence, went to Platform 3.
The woman who announces the train arrivals. I always imagined her to be some sorta middle-aged woman. Kinda sweet voice.
I love Tinkle. I still read it. It's right up there with The Deathly Hallows and The Bourne Supremacy. But we refrained from buying it at the stall. Good thing, as we were about to realise.
PT Sir is overreactive. The train stopped for a whole five minutes. But for unknown reasons, we were running like madmen to reach B1.
The train journey was long and quite uneventful, except perhaps when PR prank-called me. He got down at some station.I had just bought some vadas, and was eating them when his Cell rang:
"Dei Banthia, We've caught the wrong train."
Yeah right. I swear, we must have read the whole ticket atleast some 10 times.
"Oh right. Are you sure?"
"Yeah." I could hear the train moving behind him.
What should I do? Get down at the next station? Meh, I'll just finish my vadas.
Then came PR smiling like a prat, with PT Sir following suit.
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Chennai is fricking HOT . And Humid. It was raining cows and buffalos and yet I was sweating.
I so wanted to eat at Saravana's. So I dragged them to the upstairs restaurant. 3 Chappatis, 2 biryanis and a curd rice later, the bill came to 250 bucks. That's when I realised we were short on Money. Uh Oh. And to top it all, the Auto fellow charge a hundred bucks to get us to the hotel.
Palm Grove is a sucky hotel. It's atleast some 80 years old. I'm not talking heritage-style, ancient-design old, I mean OLD old. The room was tacky, to say the least. And bell-boys came every hour to ask for tips.
This time, it was easy to sleep. We were so damn tired.
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8 AM. Humid. What kind of a cruel joke is Chennai? But Devvarman kept us entertained. Yes, the room had a TV. Thankfully. We dragged ourselves to the in-hotel restaurant for the 'complimentary breakfast'. Now here I was, wearing a jersey and shorts, and in comes the Bangalore team uniform-dressed. With the fancy school blazer and all. I could almost see the scorn on their faces. Nevertheless, I wanted to keep it cordial, so I talked to them:
" We're the team from Bangalore. We were the national runners-up last year. We're gonna kick your asses over here."
Okay, they didnt actually say the last line, but they as well might have. Stupid tactics, as PR says.
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Finally went to the venue. 8 teams for the City finals (:O) and the competition was damn close. Some team with green shirts made it through. And the Regionals started.
I'm not going in detail about the fiasco at the quiz, as I can only remember the Bangalore team prancing in their seats to tell the answers. But from nowhere, the Vizag team won. Woah.
At first, yes, it was disappointing. But then, hey, Fourth place isn't so bad. We still have loads to look forward to.
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Returning home. Cash in pocket: 300 bucks. But we still went to the Cybercafe in the station, to do some *ahem* life-changing online work. But apparently, the cafe was hacked, and everytime we tried to log in, it redirected us to some other site asking for the password again. So we gave it up and just went to the TIME website to gleefully look up our names.
The train was a nightmare. COCKROACHES! Ohkay, I'm not much of a manly man, and I cant bear watching those creepy little nightmares crawl upto my food, or to my sleeping body. *shudder* But I miraculously went to sleep, somehow.
What else, woke up, went home.
An uneventful end to an eventful little trip, eh?
PS: Hope you get the title of the post. It's an inside joke.
