IT meet May-06

Hi all,

I am sure many of you are gonna read this.

The idea of reunion started with some casual scrapping on Cheenu's orkut profile. It was long pending and we wanted to make it grand. So there were mails, IMs and phone calls carrying the message of this event. I still remember that we (with habib and cheenu) had an hour long yahoo conference to decide MOnday as the auspicious day. Let me not bore you with organizational details ... and get on to the interesting stuff.

It was decided to meet on Monday, 1st May 2006 at 5:15pm at Matunga station. People started gathering since 5:05 and till 5:30, we were already 6 ... Nisha, Habib, Cheenu, Swapnil, Ambokar and me. Most people looked as they were 2 years before with a few exceptions like Sumit and Swapnil. It was as if Swap had done load shedding on Sumit. We all then strolled down to Ruia college chatting about all the things in the world. In no time I had kept my promise by revealing all the interesting surprises that I had in my box.

In mid-conversations, there were mentions of different people and where they were and what they were doing and when are they getting married and ..... so on. Everyone was so enthused to know how their colleagues are doing. Then there was substantial addition to the mob with blessings from Kate, Shumit and Aniruddha. 9 of us then decided to move on to Cafe Coffee Day and have a grab. We walked through 5 gardens and lanes across VJTI having a lot of fun together.

At CCD, we made a ruckus with ferocious laughters and jokes from our college days. Then there was the usual photo session with gals giving their best looks. To tell you the truth Nisha and Cheenu were looking gorgeous ;). Soon I realized that only 9 people had gathered from our original lot of 50. Thanks to a birthday celebration by a group of teenaged girls who were much noisier than our mob. The birthday girl was looking like an angel, I am cursing myself for not taking a pic. We did our best to make them feel our presence by passing expensive comments and imitating them whenever we can.

The earlier realization gave me an idea to commemorate the whole lot. So we started jotting down the names of everyone and that too roll-number wise. Eventually we barely managed to recollect all the names. We were sure we could do this because all the memories came alive whenever you thought of someone. The most difficult names were easily recollected but the obvious ones like Shravan, who was going to come for the meet, was in the last few to surface on the list. By the way, we must have tried to call Shravan atleast 500 times that day. But god knows where he had been. Probing further we found out that he was on a date with some cool gal at Thane. At this juncture, we missed Chantoch very badly ... for obvious reasons.


As soon as we finished with the list, the guest of honour joined us. It was none other than Ms. Khyati Mehta soon to be Mrs. Khyati Doshi. Everybody was awestruck to see Khyati in a transformed look. I even saw Sumit talking seriously with someone --- U guessed it? he was taking fitness tips from Khyati. She also brought the photograph of Mr. Pritul Doshi. Ya, not to forget to mention the important personality who had accompanied her: Mittal. It had been a week since I saw her :(.

Soon we checked out from CCD and the early-sleepers started saying farewell to all of us. Nisha, Shumit, Khyati and Mittal departed from the flock. The remaining people were already hungry and started looking for a good place to eat. We had to select between classic and garnish. Since both of them were crowded, we selected one thru FCFS. At Garnish, people started their selection by discussing about varied eating habits across india. Then there were some good cool fundaes about stock markets by our Finance Director, Cheenu. Some people were planning to order sabji-roti. But the infectious Pav Bhaji ruled. Sumit has ordered a plain pav bhaji but soon gave in to the temptation and ordered a cheese pav bhaji. In all between 7 people we ordered, 5 cheese pavbhajis and 1 plain pavbhaji.

After the PavBhajis we decided to hogg ice-creams. Since we all were feeling nostalgic for the lack of presence of Santosh, we went to Dimple ice-creams. The AC wasnt working so we came out of the parlour before everybody cud get in. On the way to naturals sumit revealed two stories. I remember that one of those was about Santosh's bookay to Dimple by his friend. We all enjoyed ice-cream at naturals, followed by a pan. Then we all departed, with pleasant memories of the well-spent evening.

In the local train, I was with Swapnil and Kate, where I did chance-pe-dance and distributed general life fundaes to the mortals. This was all about the happenings of the meet ... the feeling part of this occasion is yet to come ... signing out for time being.

Love,
Virag

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