Birthday Bash:Part 2 + 2k3 hideout

Yep, we're back in business.

And I'm skipping the preview and heading straight to the point.

Last year, there was a birthday blast that concerned a houseboat and my own house. exactly 365 days later, we repeated the feat...sans the houseboat. nevertheless, we were strengthened by the presence of susan, who was unable to make it last year, and also the newest member of the family....ali. moreover, this time we were also gifted by the holy vessels of transportation....namely zubin's swift and my beat. yes, times have indeed changed.

after zubin had to survive the terrible ordeal of handling all the women by himself at our fav burger/pizza outlet Pik-A-Byte, the entire group of 12 assembled by night and headed out to my turf. the source of fun that night was nothing but the gang itself, which needless to say, sufficed. zubin and ali added a little something by singing away with rohin providing the stringwork.

however, the next day brought us the opportunity to hit marari beach in alleppy. echoes of our previous alleppy trip resonated as we rampaged through the sea and made sure that we didnt leave till we were sapped out of all energy. but with loudmouths like suthin and sreeja onboard, it seemed like we had limitless energy anyway... :)

But the real party was waiting for after nightfall...the big treat at Wyte Fort by the birthday people....namely irene, zubin, jency, jazim, susan and myself. dressed to kill, we couldnt have looked better that night. nor could we be louder in that huge buffet hall. our mouths and our behaviour just weren't matching our formal outfits...not that any of us cared in the first place :D

Joined shortly by dilu and jersen, we had a brilliant round of dinner before heading back home for one last night of fun that included some hilarious games of blindfold(no one were at the risk of drowning this time) and more late night chatting. Early morning brought the departure of the gang members...though only for some time. because we re-united 2 months later....this time, under the very roof of 2k3 itself. and this time, we brought in yet another new member...karthik 'tiger' madhavan.

Being in kochi, we made use of our usual spots....Pik-A-Byte, Wangs and Sand Dunes. and in the case of the christians among us....the church. If you want to know the rest....i'm sorry. you just had to be there :) but i can paint a small picture with the following fleeting images :

1- sreeja in her red nightgown that made her look like a mom

2- zubin singing his own versions of popular songs

3- rohin doing his work on the guitar for the above mentioned songs

4- merin being 'blown away by the wind' at the beach

5- jazim's treachery causing ali to be caught by rohin at blindfold

6- suthin slipping and falling down hard during the above mentioned game

7- susan smacking our tennis ball away and out of the boundary with the cricket bat, losing the ball in the process

8- calvin grabbing the camera off the top of the swift and running away with the lens pointed at him, the timer running and us chasing him trying to get into the frame

9- irene trying to work my beat out on the front yard

10- the number of dirty jokes we made and the scores we kept

11- susan top scoring for the above mentioned point

12- jency and that laugh of hers

13- need i mention sreeja's laugh?

14- ali showing the newbies exactly how to perform the art of taking sheesha

15- merin and her dress that looked like a tablecloth

16- irene and her injured toe that forced suthin and i to go all the way to kollencherry to pick her up

17- jency banging away on karthik as he refused to give up zubin

18- merin laughing her ass out and then whispering the joke in sreeja's ear causing obvious destruction(seriously, what the hell is all that about???)

19- rohin showing his expertise in a field other than music....lame jokes

20- and many many many more....

Where we are concerned, the industry of fun just can't be taken down.

Yours truly

Vysh

207 to 2k7 to 2k3

yes, ladies and gentlemen....we've moved.

i know this post has come a little late, but given the various happenings and the lack of a suitable internet connection, i should be forgiven. and since it's been more almost 3 months since we abandoned 207, i am forced to make this brief.

the end of college for myself, zubin and jazim has marked the end of 207...and it wasn't a pretty end. we had found the ideal location to fill the role of our new home, but 207 gave us an ugly 2 days as the house was flooded thanks to the incessant rain. the packing and the cleaning couldn't have been more hectic. but eventually we were forced to turn our backs to that powerhouse of fun and hardship that we had endured together...truly, a chapter in our lives.

enter 2k7(yes, proof of fleeting perfection) with our new roomie mr. ali....the exact opposite of the previous house. posh, lavish, comfy and super clean. the apartment complex, star homes, may not be the best in town....but the flat was bloody awesome. with AC, fridge, tv, beds, leather sofa sets and a dining table....what more would u want? and we were just getting adjusted and having our fun when the following happened:

due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to move out of 2k7. thus came the moments of hardship yet again. lady luck gave the tiniest of smiles as we found a substitute in the form of 2k3, just 4 floors below. maybe it lacked the comfort of the present home, but we had no other choice. we spent the last nights at 2k7 with the best company possible : the 'weirdos'. it provided the perfect ending to that short stay in paradise.

enter 2k3. thanks to the world cup, we just had no time to even think about adjusting. but soon, it provided the satisfactory comfort plus extra space...we were left with nothing to complain about. and this is where the next chapter began.

we sincerely wish....and we KNOW, that 2k3 proves to be yet another powerhouse of fun. and i raise my glass to that.

vysh

Waaaaazzzzzaaaaaaaa's bday collaboration

207 has returned for the first get-together of the year....and the cause for the occasion couldn't be better....rohin "waaaazzzaaa" rajagopal's birthday. the dude turned 22 on march 27th, and since we hadn't given him a bash last year, a grand one had to be called for this time. and suthin and merin offered to chip in on account of their bdays as well, which occurred in february.

the members of "the weirdos" arrived at the destination at different times, but by evening the entire gang minus me had assembled in our choice of accommodation(i was absent on account of college business, and thus i cannot comment on the events that happened before i arrived, but it couldn't be much since i wasn't there, right?).

by the time i'd made my grand entry into cocoa tree, rohin and his special someone had been off to a special place(a surprise plan for rohin well engineered by the banshee, but spoiled foolishly and unexpectedly by a certain show-off).

the 10 of us finally reunited under one roof in our place of stay. the "serious" gift + the funny gift and the cake were already in place, and it was just the matter of waiting for the right time for the stuff to come out. the right time came and rohin was duly presented with the funny gift....which was a pair of slippers, to be worn inside the house. and by house, we mean 207. the days of waking up from bed to find one pair of OUR slippers missing are finally over.

the "serious" gift was also something that discreetly benefited the 207 members.....a pair of puma sandals. and thus, jazim can finally get his converse shoes back.

the cake was brought forward without further ado. then we resumed our usual business of fooling around...which i don't have to mention here explicitly.

fast forward to the morning after a comfortable night of sleep, and then it was time for the BIG TREAT! the venue was the steak hot-spot named "the attic". that afternoon brought us some good photography, a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, not-so-good food and a surprise incident. maybe the quality of the food didn't meet the requirements of the bill, but hey....we had a wonderful time. :)

the bday bash culminated in a return to the hotel and some finishing touches to our get-together, as we packed our bags to head back home.

never can i foresee how many more meetings are in store for us...not even now, when college life has drawn to a close for some of us. but that's the best thing about us...the sheer unpredictability of how something just somehow pops up and we end up together again. and i attribute all this to the following:

my fellow man utd fan: suthin

my born-enemy: jency

my rockstar roomie: jazim

my tiny little pixie: merin

my personal source of laughing gas: sreeja

my sleeping partner: zubin(woops...too much info?)

my flight partner: susan

my guitar-wielding mate: rohin and

my fan when i'm high: irene.

vysh.....signing out.

The End is Nigh

like my grandfather once told me, there is a reason why we swam across the sea from our home to this place. to get ourselves educated and placed on the right track in life. school was one phase, college the next. and the latter one is drawing to a close....at least from the perspective of the engineers in the group.

tomorrow might be the last class of my university life. and the atmosphere is a little moody, with premeditated farewells and autograph books being thrown into the air at random. myself, i was never a fan of those, but it was always a pleasure for me to fill somebody else's book.

and oh boy, only once you open your heart out and let the pen fly across the paper, do you realize just how far you've come in the matter of 4 years. we've achieved milestones, constructed new friendships, enjoyed new experiences, crossed many boundaries, suffered countless burdens....and most important of all, we've survived. so no matter where we are, even if we aint truly happy, these 4 years gotta count for something.

so i actually cannot recognize my feelings at present...whether it's the happy end of the spectrum or the sad end. but one thing can't be denied as i begin to exit this section of life : it was one hell of a ride down the road. and now we've reached a junction and our next move is to make the right(no pun intended) turn and move on. and keep moving till we find whatever it is that we ultimately desire.

this is vysh....signing out.

First of the new decade

yes indeed.....the blog is back after the commencement of the new year and decade.

so...where do i begin? it's been long since the 207s and the rest of the gang had their usual get-togethers as they go on a rampage in the city of kochi or on a quest of conquering a leech-infested jungle. although one meet-up that is noteworthy is the one that took place in UAE.....the first time members of "the weirdos"(as sreeja puts it with that accent of hers) got together in the country since the birth of 207.

usually everyone's idea is that the place doesn't matter for friends to get together, just as long as they're having a good time. but this time there was obviously a difference and i couldn't help but think that every person that i'd met that day(zubin,calvin,susan,irene,sreeja) were people that i knew since the good old school days but never enough to be termed as good friends. in the case of the ladies, i just knew that they existed, period. then after school, came a period of 3-4 years in india and voila! here i am taking the newly introduced metro with people who were almost strangers to me the last time we were in UAE together. things change, don't they?

anyyyywaayys.....that day,accompanied by newbie minauthi, we rode the metro and took pleasure in strolling through some of the hot spots of dubai that included the dubai mall as well as a photoshoot that was quite difficult since we tried to capture the burj khalifa with ourselves in it. with calvin as our chauffeur, there was no problem in transportation for the shj-dxb round trip. a jolly day, all-in-all.

the next day however, we stood our ground solely in one hot-spot......Dubai International Bowling Centre. definitely in my top 5 favourite locations of the nation. with tessy and ben added to the pack, the fun was never-ending as we bowled our way through with a lot of foozball and air hockey in between. the day was made to be an unforgettable one as our plan to introduce these 3 games to sreeja resulted in utter mayhem!

Come new year, exit UAE. last week, we made the ultimate plan for the ultimate trip.....pondicherry! but thanks to SOMEONE being hell busy with the management of the technical fest in our college, we decided to postpone the pondi dream to yet another day. but that didn't stop the rest of us from doing something this weekend. so....we headed to suthin's newly built home(post cocoa tree). we being myself, suthin, zubin, rohin, sreeja, monisha and calvin. merin made her cameo appearances each time on saturday and sunday from dawn till dusk. it was a tiring trip for the bikers and bus-riders alike, but we were rewarded with a warm reception and an unusual but comfortingly cool weather as we relaxed to the max. a lot of games of poker and 28, nice homely food, considerable amount of fat jokes on monisha, the girls' attack on a sleepy zubin and merin's tantrums were the highlights of the stay.

a new year has dawned, but our ways still remain the same as these trips prove testament to our desire to stick together no matter what. let's keep 'em coming!

-vysh

The Dare

Note: What i've written here is not fictitious; it's an actual incident that had happened to rohin. what happens in the end will not be revealed, you can ask rohin yourself.

The exact date is unknown, but the location is a private hostel where rohin stays near his university. Time is past midnight.

Another unknown fact is the precise layout of this particular hostel. But it is known that during that time, the building was undergoing some sort of renovation, and that the students were pushed to one half of the hostel as the other half was kept unoccupied owing to the re-construction work.

At the particular hour when the incident had occurred, one half of the hostel was flooded with lights that always remain turned on despite the time...typical in a boy's hostel. The other half was filled with darkness. Pitch black it might not be, but it was dark enough to make it look sinister. The light from the occupied rooms never really reached this section....it seemed as if there was something holding it back...something that was very stubborn to let go of the darkness. The presence of this lightless section in their hostel is what ultimately led to the dare...which resulted in the incident that happened to rohin.

During the usual gathering of friends, the idea of a dare was brought. The voluntary victim will have to walk into the other half of the hostel and enter a particularly intriguing room at the very end of the corridor. The voluntary victim was rohin, and there was a reason to the nature of this challenge. Unknown how many years ago, a student used to stay in this very building. His name, place or any other detail is irrelevant. But the only fact that's significant is that he had committed suicide. The reason might be pressure of exams or some personal reason...we may never know. He had ended his life....and he had done it in the very room rohin had dared to enter.

Rohin left the occupied rooms behind and started venturing out into the darkness. The moment the halfway point was crossed, he felt a stir in the air...something was very different here. But no feeling of dread settled in him, and he walked on.

Eventually, he noticed that the corridor seemed to be much longer than he had ever imagined. He kept his eyes straight ahead though, never faltering, although a small urge to turn back tried to take over him. The darkness seemed to press around as the light from the other half of the building seemed evanescent. He turned back to look at the rooms he had just left. They seemed so far away that he was shocked by the distance he had walked. So friendly and inviting, it looked like a small window into heaven. He shuddered at the metaphor, and walked on till he finally reached the door. A feeling of dread tried to overwhelm him...nevertheless he turned the door knob of the unlocked door.

His eyes already adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the inside of the room, helped by some light coming through the window from outside. It couldn't look more ordinary, with the ancient looking cot and the shelf. The thick air started to suffocate him, he wanted to get out as soon as possible. Rohin half-expected a shadow to move across the empty room but having done the dare, he found no more reason to stay. He turned back, this time a feeling of triumph almost started settling in.

Just as he stepped out of the room, something tugged at his sleeve.

-Vysakh

yes, long time no see indeed...

mind you, perhaps our blogging has been inactive for the past many weeks, but 207 had been having its usual round of "reunions" and the 4 core members had been occupied with our everyday routines...which were more busy than boring...and thus the reason why this page was left to rot for a while.

to relate out in detail the 2 get-togethers we had since the bday bash would be close to impossible...owing to the fact that ive got an exam this wednesday and also coz i'm being harassed by body pain at the moment :( but noteworthy points have to be....well...noted. the first trip was the one to telicherry(the 2nd one for the 207 members), but this was different coz this time, we had our beloved sreeja, susan, irene, rohin and jency with us. camping at rohin's flat for the night and the deliciously mouth-watering lunch AND dinner prepared by zubin's family were the highlights of the trip. plus, the refrigerator made its debut at 207 the day we reached home ;) ;) that being jazim's contribution.

the 2nd one occured more recently....and this was even sweeter coz we were accompanied by the one who was missing the telicherry trip.....our very own midget merin ;) believe me, that hotel at fortkochi aint ever getting louder than that night! a tiny tour of fortkochi the next day and a hangout at bay pride mall were the events that ended that get-together.

and of course, these 2 happenings sandwiched another event. the following were the chief features of that journey:

destination: CHENNAI!

mission: surprise the heck out of the annachis calvin and jamie!

travellers: restricted to 207 members only!

positives: highly entertaining weekend, invading the classy spots of chennai and making the best use of the restaurants!

negatives: HEAT HEAT HEAT HEAT HEAT!!!!

mission status: successful, but many places in chennai still left to be explored. a sequel to be made!

well there you go......this is whats "hot and happening" at 207 recently.....now its that time of the year again where zubin, jazim and i sink our heads into our text books again and suthin....well....its gonna be torture for him as well, for what fun can he have when the 3 of us are busy fixing dates with the demons that represent the exams ;)

this is vysh signing out...