17/12/2008

For the first time in soo many days, I woke up on my own without an alarm at 6 o clock!!! Inter IIT was leaving its marks. Never during the camp or the matches (When I actually should have got up at 6) did this happen. Went to make Anish up and he bluntly told me that he is not going to get up. So I got his laptop out and did some timepass. Coach Sharada and Sukhada had finished their breakfast and reached Godavri around 8:30. They were sitting in the lawns in front of the Godavari Hostel. Sharada was cribbing all the time that she wanted to go out somewhere, mainly to the beach. We all were trying to figure out what to do while Stud and Chuunn slept peacefully. Meanwhile, we were also having a mini-sleepy photo-session there. We also got out souvenir T-shirts and bags. All the while, the sun was playing tricks. It would get cloudy for sometime, and Sharada would get all excited saying its perfect weather to go to the beach and then there would be full sunshine. Sukhada was indifferent all the while and Coach didn’t seem too interested in going to the beach but was getting bored. I knew nothing was going to happen unless Anish and Kunal got up. Finally at around 10 o clock, they got ready and came down. Meanwhile, it had been decided that we would be going to the nearby beach. Sharada and I went to the canteen to get some refreshments. After sometime, Kunal, Anish and others joined us and they had decided that “Beach to NAHI ja rahe hain“. And we were back to SQUARE ONE. We sat down trying to decide what to do, while Chuunn was busy in filling up his stomach. Finally, I’d had enough of the useless talking and we just got into one of the buses that would get us to the main gate. On the way, I called up Swpanil and he said we could go quite easily to the City Centre by taking the train. So after getting down at the main gate, we walked to the station which was just 2 blocks away. We got the tickets to the Lighthouse station and went up. The station looked really nice and clean and the best part of it was that it was not crowded at all. The trains were quite similar to the locals, though much less crowded. After reaching the stop, we went to the City Centre. City Centre was awesome, first we went into one of the bookshops there and Sharada, Coach, Sukhada and me promptly picked up a book each and started reading. Just when I had started enjoying there, Anish and Kunal said that they were bored and we had to get going. I got a book for myself and a Rubik’s cube for Kuku(which in the end turned out to be useless as he already had one). Then we went to INOX and hung around for sometime but couldn’t decide on any particular movie. Anyways, we had to get back to the insti by 4 for the presentation ceremony and we certainly were not going to miss that! So we went to the food court and I finally got to eat Idlies there :). I also had garlic bread there which was simply AWESOME. We decided to leave from City Centre. As we walked out, we heard that there was some beach nearby and so we started walking towards the direction we assumed the beach was. And when we reached there, it turned out that we had actually reached MARINA BEACH!!!! It was sooo amazing!!! We had just started out with no particular aim or directions and yet had managed to reach City Centre and Marina Beach!!! I was feeling sooo triumphant that I actually called up Papa to tell him about this! Marina Beach was really calm when we reached…no crowd, just the 6 of us and sea in front of us, waves crashing and everything. We sat in the sand for like an hour, clicked photos, got up from time to time to get a feel of the water. I felt like getting completely wet but none of the others seemed interested. Kunal had gone off the sleep and Anish was obviously too lazy to get up JUST to get wet. Coach, Sharada and Sukhada complained that if they got wet, going back would be a pain. Anyways, I got wet and Sharada and Sukhada also joined in to some extent. I tried to get Anish into water but was unsuccessful. Kunal got up then. Chuunn was clicking a pic of all of us when suddenly a wave came from behind at the same time Chuunn clicked the pic. That was THE BEST PIC EVER! Everyone’s expressions came soo naturally that it was too good to be true. Me and Sharada tried to drag Coach into water but she seemed to start getting irritated and senti about it. So we ditched. Finally, it was 3:15 and it was time for us to move on. We took train back reached Himalaya complex at around 4:15. The presentation ceremony started then and it suddenly started sinking into me that this was it. The last day of the Inter IIT. And I would have to wait one whole year for this time to come again. The last day of Inter IIT 2008 was drawing to the close. Meanwhile IITB’s DOSA had come and was saying something…Our name was called out soon enough and I got too busy enjoying the photo session that followed to worry too much about “The Last Day”. As usual, my certificate had some typo, I tried to get it corrected but it spoiled the certificate further. All too soon it was 7 o clock and Anish was going to leave. Felt really sad then…With Anish gone it had started happening….the beginning of the end. He had managed to get the videos of our games from the Kanpur team before leaving. After he left, I went and bade goodbye to Rohan. He was leaving for Nagpur by Tamil Nadu Express ( and I myself might have, had I not decided to attend MI). Then, TT team and all of us decided to go back to the City Centre to watch a movie. But Coach wasn’t very enthu for it. We managed to force her to come along but on the way to the main gate, we found that all the tickets had been sold. (basky team had already reached there). So we decided to go to Rainforest (Another of Coach’s Masterstroke!! ), a theme restaurant near the Adyar terminal. We walked all the way there. While we were sitting in the waiting area, we found that one of the TT freshies, Pritish, knew some palm reading. When he read my palm, the first thing he said was “Ohh Shit!!” and told me that I MIGHT BE GAY! I was Shocked.! He then proceeded on to tell me other grim things of my life. All in all a forgetful experience which I am surely not going to forget very soon. The ambience inside was very nice, and so was the food. Pritish also told someone ( dun remember exactly, mostly Coach) that she would have 2 marriages!! So the dinner passed with everyone making jokes about each others’ futures as predicted by Pritish. On the way back, Pritish was trying to console me which was really funny because I was acting as if I was really concerned about what he said. He told me lines “Lines change ho jaati hain with tie and some other crap… “ When we reached back at the Main Gate it was already 11 PM and the last bus for the hostels left at 10 PM. Sabka GIVEUP ho gaya. There was still a 3 km walk ahead of us and we were dead tired. We started trudging along, when a couple of tucks passed us. Vrinda arbitly flagged a truck for a lift and the truck actually STOPPED!! All of us got in the truck and once again the triumphant feeling returned. We for a life from a TRUCK!!!! It was unbelievable!! The driver dropped us off at Gajendra Circle and we decided to meet up around 1 AM at the Himalaya Complex. But when I reached the room, I was tooo tried. Sleepily I msgd Coach tht I wont be coming at 1 and slept and didn’t wake up till 3:30AM. We were scheduled to leave from Himalaya Complex by 5.

That was the last official day at IIT MADRAS campus of Inter IIT 2008. It was AMAZING!!