another new year...

it's the new years... i can not imagine why anyone would want to celebrate this particular day... it's not really special by any scientific explanation... not the perihelion or aphelion... nobody really important was born this day... and we Indians should especially not be celebrating it coz we've been stalking this planet for longer than this calendar!!!

ok, all the righteous ranting done, i'm just sore coz i didnt get to go to a decent new year's party... on the last day, things fell apart coz my usually crystal clear calendar was just too stuffed to permit my travelling to blore, where the the few people i still call friends are...

so, i sat down to watch 'the top 50 music videos' on zee-cafe... my brother, who'd been out all day(snooker addict) came back and laughed his guts out in my face that i'd not be going anywhere to party... i sulked in silence and watched all the k-serials for retort... 'she who has the remote, decides the show'...

it was 11pm, and the parents were fast asleep... we were still watching tv...
"CCD??", i asked...
"ok..." he agreed

we set about quietly like a pair of synchronized burglars... with absolutely no noise, we got our jackets, the bike keys, locked the door behind us, turned off the lights everywhere except in Vin's room(so they'd think we were still there) and crept out... the gate unlocked, the bike taken out and pushed a 100 yards so they wouldn't hear it start...  and then we rode all of 17km to the nearest CCD.... there's one on the NH-4, open 24X7... that usually uninhabited place was crawling with people...

we found a decent place to sit... it was a good night for new year's... there was a full moon, warm and cloudy and coz the newspapers had said there'd be a lunar eclipse, i imagined i saw one...

we sat and talked... it's hard to recollect what... a million little things non-stop that you can't recollect as late as the next morning... after about an hour, when the place got crowded enough for it to be unsafe to be seen without the food trays in front of us, i went in and got our traditional 'usual'... a mocha, a slice of chocolate fantasy  with chocolate ice-cream... i trapeze through the crowd with the tray balanced in one hand... the other pushing people off my way... well, trying to, anyway...

we take a break from talking nonsense for a while...and concentrate our energies on the chocolate abundance in our middle... but soon i have too much chocolate in my system and i sit back... i try to explain the lunar eclipse to Vin who can not be bothered... to make things clear, i draw on the plates... my lines go through the cake and the ice-cream... Vin drags the plate away...

"fine, your loss" i declare and sip the mocha... scald my tongue... again!... that luke-warm froth is so deceptive...

"do you want to hear about my accident??" Vin insists...
i've told him a gazillion times i don't want to hear of how he missed being killed... again... by a hair's breadth...
"oh, come on! you're in as good a mood as you're gonna be...and i didnt even get hurt this time" he grins...
"alright...alright"... i submit...

he goes on to tell the story of how on a bike trip, his friend who couldn't keep his eyes on the road missed a right turn, fell over, broke his crown(head, like in the jack n jill rhyme)... a passing truck came to a screeching halt to see/help them... the speeding bus behind rammed into the truck grazing the whole of left side...and setting off the truck down the slope... an ambulance was called, and while they waited, a crowd had materialized from nowhere... looking for some action too... lots of raised voices... everybody yelling, nobody listening... and when the guys tried to take off, they were chased by the onlookers who looked sore they hadn't gotten anybody to beat up... if that is hard to believe, my compatriots beat up people, burn bikes/cars and demolish buildings when seventy year old actors die of natural causes!!!

and then more nonsense... finally we decide it's been long enough and set out home wards... not much there... except when we chased down a lorry coz it's license plate said 'GB 7564' and i was adamant on learning which state was GB... when we did catch up, we realized it had an 'RJ 05' above it...

we switch off the bike at the end of our main road and the whole 'quiet thing' is repeated again... and we're back in the house, parents still as asleep as we'd left them...

so, that was new year's for me... not what i'd planned for... but not too bad, i suppose...

P.S :
1. "108" is the emergency number for calling an ambulance. arrives in two minutes.
2. the roadside 'emergency phones' on NHs do not work in emergencies.