08/12/2009: Leaving for Kanpur
We were scheduled to leave for CST at 5:30 AM. I remembered reading 5:30 on the notices put up and got it confused with the reporting time. So, at 5:10 I was sitting peacefully in my room, all packed and ready, pretty pleased with myself for getting everything done well in time when Mittal called… and informed me that reporting time was 5 AM. (I also got an earful of why I was always late and why I always have all sorts of wrong information :P). So, I left hurriedly for SAC. On the way, Aashish joined me from H5. We walked all the way to SAC with the luggage (including all the tracksuits and team t-shirts, so it was a bit of a pain but I was too excited then to understand what was going on). We reached SAC and started loading our luggage. There were name tags for our luggage there with strings. And there was tea and biscuits. We were waiting for Chuunn to reach, when we found out that Mittal’s shoes were with him. When Chuunn came, Mittal asked for his shoes, but he didn’t have them. So they figured out that shoes will be in Chuunn’s car when Dude had come. So, Chuunn left for his home to get Mittal’s shoes while we got on into the bus. Chuunn couldn’t find the shoes even in the car and we were forced to leave without them. Our buses finally left SAC and we were off!! We stopped at H10 for the girls… Coach was there but in all the confusion of soo many people leaving we couldn’t meet her. She called on the bus and wished us luck. I don’t remember much of the journey except discussing for a while what Mittal will do now without his shoes and sleeping. We reached CST and it wasn’t the normal CST station that we saw. I think we were entering from the backside of the station or something. I couldn’t recognize the station. As soon as we got down from the buses, Chuunn made it clear to Sharada “I am sorry Sharada but main to sone wala hoon”. We got our seats from Mittal and proceeded to the platform. I was still marveling at how easy my new kit made my life. Carrying luggage around didn’t seem like a pain at all.
We had our train from platform 15(I think, not sure). All the baddy seats were scattered in 3 compartments. We were figuring out how to get all of our seats together. We didn’t want the last compartment of the bogie as there would be people coming constantly and the smell. We wanted the second compartment. There was this group of 4 people led by “Lungi” who was coming from a marriage. They had big big containers with them. Lungi was hesitant to move. He didn’t say outright that he didn’t want to move but kept making excuses for an hour, saying that he is waiting for his people to come and move the stuff. Meanwhile we got breakfast. Chuunn was verrry hungry and brought 6 non vegs and 5 veg breakfast for 4 non veg and 2 veg people! Veg had bread and cutlet… it was too dry. In the end I think 3 veg breakfast were wasted. When Lungi was still unconvinced after we’d finished our breakfasts, Aashish got impatient. Wo chhadh gaye Lungi pe (no idea how to frame that in English!) “kahaan hai aapke log? Kab aaenge? AAdhi ghate se aa hi rahe hain kya? Finally Lungi got fed up and agreed to move. And we had all the seats together! As expected, after all this eating, moving,re-settling Chuunn, Aashish and Mittal slept off.
Nidhi, Sharada and I were reading books. It was reminding me of the morning of the return journey from Madras. Nice relaxing morning, sitting by the window and reading a novel. After sometime, others started getting up, and we had biryani for lunch. But it was mostly evening before we started doing anything fun. I’d dozed off in the afternoon and I got up to the sounds of “Chuunn Hero hai!, Chuunn ne bacha liya!!” Turns out, Nidhi had endured a 2 hour session of “getting to know” the footer team :P when Chuunn stepped up. He went over to the footer team and told Nidhi “Nidhi, your dad is getting frantic, he’s trying to talk to you since the last hour and a half” and Chuunn the Savior had arrived!! He was infinitely pleased with himself!
The TT team came over and we played DumbC for a while. I saw some of the most entertaining and innovative acting in DumbC ever. Chuunn cracked GuftGu! His acting of GuftGu was simply unbelievable... specially the Gu part ... :P Mittal crackked Chandalika... (his expression to denote licking still remains etched on my memory! reminds me of Tom's expression in Tom and Jerry with his tougue out and saliva dripping :P) Probably the best was his idea for exorcist. Though we guessed it without that idea being put into use, it was truly brilliant. Mittal was going to show the XOR gate for the starting of the movie. He was most enthusiastic when it came to acting. I was tooo lazy to act (and more importantly after seeing such GOD acting, I was nt sure if I would be able to live up to the level!)
(I cant remember any more movies, please add in the comments)
We then had a great time playing MAFIA. Sharada got to be the MAFIA for like 5 times in a row. Each time the voting round started, first suspicions were always on Ayesha. The one time she became MAFIA, her expressions showed that she was scared to death! Aashish and Kunal were playing it for the first time. Every time Mittal became MAFIA, he would get all shrill and defensive and loud. Arunav was playing an awesome GOD until his voice went off completely and Pritish took over for a while. Ketan was made to sit out of one round of MAFIA as a punishment for spoiling the game 2-3 times. (He was near to tears while begging to be allowed to play :P) He was more interested in eating the food which someone was going to get in Bhopal. We had a photo session (which Ketan enjoyed a lot :P he didn’t get to be in any of the pics) and then dinner.
We restarted MAFIA but by then TT team was too tired to play and Mittal had to be on the phone. Later we found out that cricket and footer teams were sitting in groups and were “entertaining” the freshies while we were playing our little MAFIA game. Mittal was like “Dayaa bhe! Apan MAFIA khel rahe the and wahaan freshie ki le rahe the! Kya fart hai!” :P We had to get up early the next morning at 7 to get down at Kanpur. Kanpur was not the last station on the route... so there was a non-trivial anxiety about whether we would all manage to wake up and get down at Kanpur.
Thus ended our first day of the tour …
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