Of Extremes, Munnar trip, Genesis of Gandh and others...

As she used to say, I am capable of only two extremes...either being the life of the party or being as aloof from it as humanly possible. I never believed her then and in fact, it was one of the things we fought the most about. After the Munnar trip, however, I think that she was actually right. The trip started off really well for me, with songs and dance aplenty, making life difficult for light sleepers like Mustu and all the more exciting for people like me. Having already explored the mountains of Munnar on my bike trip, the only reason I agreed to go along this time was that I wanted to have some fun. With 25 people coming for the trip in a mini bus arranged for the trip by the Women in Charge, the trip was certainly going to be fun.

And fun it was, till I decided to take myself out of the fun. We were all having a great time, singing songs, playing Antakshari and Dumb Charades, cracking some really pathetic jokes, building and popularising liaisons :-)...I don't know exactly what happened but by the time we were done with our late lunch, I had been turned off by something...it may have been some thing some one said, it may have been the food (if it can be called that), it may have been the memories of Kodaikanal and her, it may have been the lack of sleep for the past three days in a row...whatever it was, from there on, it reduced my role in the trip to that of a spectator who watched, smiled, and even laughed but did not speak...a loser, as the people on the adjoining dinner table would have defined the term.

Despite what happened to my role in the proceedings, life continued to rock and roll for all others. The genesis of Gandh group was complete, with a full court sitting on the matter of the three caps (pink, white and blue) and the Bond. With a detailed analysis by the special correspondent and some candid confessions by the witnesses, all came out in the open as the audience cheered and jeered at the revelation of who was after whom, whether the red cap was accessible, if it was, then for whom...or was it the pink (another one) who was sought after by the Bond...many questions and even more answers...

The next  morning was a little better for me and as the day just broke, I was into another of my extremes (yet again), but this once, the extreme seemed to have been forced (by me???) and did not last for long. Before I knew, I was back in the Yes Sir, Yes Ma'am mood and it was thus that we eneterd into Calicut. The last couple of hours were well spent, with some more concept laying for the Gandh group, Reddy actually making an OB-style relationship map of all the liaisons that we were able to establish on the trip (by hook or by crook :-)), and the many photographs that we had as proofs of the real intentions (cruel???) of the femme fatales...

Myself apart, I found a few more people on the trip who were not really having a great time, or so it seemed. For some reason, the initiator and organizer of the trip, Pavithra was in one of her worse moods...though Karfa joined the party at times, he was a little away at times, too...or perhaps, I had been thinking a lot, especially since I was reduced to one of my reflective moods. Even the people whom I do not know well enough (haven't observed them enough) and who may normally belong to the quiet version (Kundan, Rahul, Qaynat...) were suspects when it came to finding like minded souls :-)

On the whole, it was a nice trip (I was in my full of life extreme for a majority of 21 out of the 40 hour trip) that made me realize that there is a lot that is possibly wrong with me, that there is more than a substance of truth when people describe me as idiosyncratic, that there are things about me that make me appear inaccessible and not-worth-it...that I waste a lot of my time thinking and cribbing about things that may or may not have any relation with reality...