A long weekend

A very eventful weekend this one has turned out to be. Starting with clearing up the flat and ending with a completely tired and worn out dinner at the restaurant down the road, the weekend was anything but dull. I may not be correct in saying that I enjoyed everything that happened over the last two days but I certainly will not be off the mark if I say that I am exhausted this Monday morning after two days of 'engagements'.

I had to get up early on Saturday morning to go to the Cancer research Institute regarding Abhijeet's mother. The doctor there was very helpful and the long wait in the queue proved its worth when I actually got to speak with the doctor. He sounded very practical and did not give out any false hopes. At the same time, he did mention about cases where chemotherapy has actually helped increase the longevity of the patient. I hope it does so in this case.

When I came back from the CRI, I had this very severe headache and I had almost given up on my plans to go for the freshers' party in the evening. In fact, I was down in the dumps with my face buried in the pillow, trying to escape this Sinus-infected unbearable pain when Yogi came in. I guess that he was annoyed to see me this way and when I wouldn't even get up to talk to him, he must have got pissed off. I couldn't have done anything else at that point of time as I could hardly hear his words, the pain was so acute. During my long pain-induced siesta, the TV got sold off finally and Puneet had to do some packing and moving along with the guy who had come for the TV all the way from some remote location in Chennai.

Luckily for me, the pain vanished in the afternoon and we were able to have a good lunch before getting the LPG connection cancelled and returning the Set Top Box to the cable operator. By the time we reached home, the movers and packers (I think that it is the other way round, that is, packers and movers, isn't it?) people were already there. Another half an hour of frenzied packing saw them off with a payment of Rs.3500 (huge amount for moving three cartons to Bhilai) and a promise of safe transit of goods (hopefully, they will keep it).

It was time already for the freshers' meet, which I was looking forward to for a long time. As per the ambiguous (or manager-like, as Prithesh said) dress code, I decided to make it simple with my typical white shirt and blue jeans combination. I reached the place about fifteen minutes late and as I was parking my bike, I saw this lady turn up with her scooty. As is my habit, I gave her a look down and thought that she seemed quite nice looking with an elegant dress (another of the casual, bordering on formal stuff). I even thought for a moment that she might be one of the people in today's party but then I gave one 'naaah' to my self and went up the floors to reach Saagari, the place for the meet.

Since I have already been to this hotel quite a number of times for project parties, I knew the way around and the kind of food, drinks, etc to expect. The thing that I was not prepared for, however, was the warm welcome that I received. The seniors were all there, waiting (as it turned out later, desperately) for the freshers to arrive. I was asked to put up a sticker announcing my name and batch so that the others could identify me by name. I had hardly settled down and started talking to some of the alumni gathered there when I saw the same lady I had met in the parking lot coming in. Pavithra, as I found her name to be, will be joining IIMK in our batch (I can listen to a few catcalls already :-)). She has had a work experience of 7 years (three in HDFC where she is working right now and 4 years prior to that in ANZ Grindlays) and as one of the alumni also pointed out, I really admired her perseverance when she told us all in the intro that it was her 5th attempt at CAT that has got her to IIMK.

The gathering was pretty small (some eighteen people in total) and though the ice did not really break in the entire session (the alumni and some seniors had a lot to catch up with, themselves), it was nevertheless quite informative and warm. The formal introductions were just that, formal. Despite few valiant attempts by Ravi from the alumni and Karan from the senior batch to lighten the mood, the drinks didn't really get spilled over on to the floor (as in a manner of speaking). As I mentioned to Pavithra, I was hoping for some sort of a ragging session when it came to the freshers' introduction but unfortunately, even that did not happen and it was all pretty decent and peaceful despite some different questions (again from Ravi from the alumni and Karan from the senior batch).

The session was immediately followed by the food and some general talk with the alumni about their experiences and some Gyaan by the seniors on academic rigor at IIMK. The party broke with Archana (from the senior batch) singing two songs before she left. The songs were exceedingly good, judging from the reaction of the crowd. Even though I could not understand the language, the melody did appeal to me, too. Soon after, Pavithra and Niranjan, the only others from my batch, had to leave. The alumni made a move, too and by 11:30, I was left with nine seniors, few of them drunk, few trying to get drunk and all of them enjoying the party.

Sunday was spent lazing around before I got a call from Raghunath Sir at TIME coaching to come for their seminar. Had it been some office staff who had called, I would have surely refused. Since it was Raghunath Sir, Puneet and I had to go to T Nagar and I even had to go up to stage to answer a few questions specifically addressed to the work-ex people. The front row people were those who were selected by some IIM or the other and they all had really taken CAT seriously. In fact, sitting in the middle rows, trying to avoid the eyes of Raghunath Sir (so that he would not call us up on stage), I was discussing this with Puneet and we concurred on the fact that we were one lazy bunch of guys who should have done much more (???) than what we did for CAT preparations. I met Lax of the 2003 IIMK batch there and he really sounded sorry for having missed the party at Chola. Abhay was also present and we went to Cafe Coffee Day for some time out before I dragged Puneet to T Nagar to get an Idli Cooker for my Mausi.

T Nagar's market is as popular as it is crowded. As usual, by the time we returned from that place, I was totally exhausted and had completely frayed my nerves, driving through the teeming (!!!) multitudes. My bike sounded tired and worn out, too when I tried giving it some accelerator treatment after coming out of the human swamp of T Nagar.