Driving in the Tamil Nadu Monsoon enroute Chidambaram I seem to be making some gesture to Madhanagopal, Aanand, Ananthavenkat. Probably complaining about the mosquitos. Aanand making a point on the bad quality of water in the hotel that we stayed. Sakthi staring and wondering after he tied the knot! "Was it three or 4 knots that I tied in the melee and the noise"?
Its been quite a while since I shared my experiences on my blog. I've been travelling too much in the last 3 weeks and for the better part of the 3 weeks I had been without access to an internet connection. each of the weekends I was in Chennai. Oct 9-10th weekend was a marriage of a close friend from Sulekha.com(Jairaj), Oct 18-19 was the marriage of an engineering friend, classmate from Vel Tech-Sakthikumar. His marriage was in Chidambaram. Last week for about 5 days I was in Chennai, came back yesterday morning by Dadar express. I have totally burned about 15000 Rs in my 6 trips( 3up, 3 down)(3 flights, 3 trains) and am going to curtail travel for a while. 'Rainy days' are actually here, and its time to save some money. I shall compose a long post with pictures sometime tonight on how the last 3 weeks went.
In those three weeks, My Mumbai house has been neglected a lot. Have some clothes to wash, iron and segregate. House is in a complete mess. This weekend too, I will be occupied, but thankfully within Mumbai, but no let ups, time to make the house a home. Right now filling in drinking water in the tank, which has been thirsty for three weeks. Need to bathe and catch the 8 47 am Churchgate Local. Quite a task!
While I was driving from Chidambaram to Chennai along the ECR, I came across the new Great Lakes Campus that is being built near Mahabalipuram. The 09-10 batch would move to the new campus, which is slated to be partially open for our Grand Alumni bash in January 2009. If you want to have a brief peek, play the video below
A few minutes back, I went outside after I heard a few 'light' bombs go off near my house. I had to go out for grabbing whatever morsel of food was available, given that there was an informal curfew after Raj Thackeray was arrested. I saw a Banana seller, and was asking him, whether the bombs were coming from MNS workers or whether people were celebrating India's victory(too late in the day for a reason like that). He saw me, gazed at me and smiled and said " Diwali hain na". Damn! Never have I felt so out of place and sync with this festival, but this year, living away from Chennai, and living a mechanical Mumbaikar life, I totally forgot about the Diwali weekend. Raj Thackeray! You've just changed the way, I start to think about a bomb! Thankfully its Diwali and its just one of those crackers! Time for festivities and lights. Let the show begin.
This looks like the marriages season and quite a lot of my friends are getting married around the same time. One of my friends got married last week in Velachery, another getting married this week in Chidambaram. So that means a quick dashing visit to Chennai on Friday evening and back to bustling Bombay on Sunday night, after the marriage on Sunday. Come November and December, there are marriages in Nandanbar(Somewere in Maharashtra), Ujjain(MP), Chennai and Jaipur. Thats quite a lot of travelling that week (Dec 2-9 week). Suddenly matrimony seems to be a little interesting from a perspective of trying to see if any value can be provided to reduce the headache assosiated with the operations aspect. Trying to crunch some numbers and meet a few people in Chennai this weekend to see if math, irrationality,oppurtunity and money tend to meet at a junction!
