Rangeen Parinde, featuring Johnny Ibrahim, Boxer Bhai and Brothers - episode I

I still remember the day i walked out of LnT, just walked out.  Left office around lunch, caught a bus, went to CCD, spent the entire day reading one of the most amazing books ever written, decided there's more to life than this and never went back. But that story is for an another time.

I guess we all were fed up and wanted a break, so were thinking of a road trip, to reconnect i guess, and a lot of things were happening in everyone's lives, a lot of things needed to be discussed. Lots of places came in contention, then a week before my leaving lnt, roochay mails us about this wonderful place called Tarkarli, in Malvan district, about 540 odd kilometres from Mumbai. The pics looked enticing, wiki and blogs assured us we would not be disappointed. Bags were packed, tickets were booked.

The base was decided as Pune. I left Mysore, early morning on 1st April, with my full boriya bistar, since i planned never to return, had had a real tough time packing. Finally had managed to stuff everything in 4 bags, with about 20-25 books apart from cat material (some of which i had to leave behind), the clothes were stuffed in whatever space that could be found between the books.

With 4 bags, (two on one shoulder, one on the other and one bag suffering the ignominy of being dragged around, i think i actually slowed the traffic down... people nudging each other and pointing at me, must've been my new shoes), caught a bus for Bangalore. That is something i loved there, 24 hour bus service, Volvo, for Mysore-Bangalore, amazingly comfortable, just push back the seat and fall asleep (I have actually been woken up by a conductor once, on one of my weekend sojourns, he said something along the lines of  "Aap yahin soyenge ya ghar jaayenge?").

Roochay was late, as usual, and i had to wait for him at Majestic, as the bus stand of Bangalore is known. It is unbelievably huge, a person can easily get lost here, but a good mix of signs and people will usually set you in the right place for the right bus. The intercity bus stand,the part where the buses come from other cities, for some reason, always seemed to me like a graveyard for buses. Not that the buses are old or dilapidated, on the other hand they are among the best in the country, but maybe that image of hundreds of buses at night, lying indiscriminately, gave a feeling of being among prisoners at some concentration camp... (That image was probably captured some late Sunday night, in a dazed state, after the usual heady weekends). 

Well Roochay finally turned up, and it turned out that the bus for Pune was waiting for us only. So we were off for Pune at around 1 in afternoon. It was an 17 odd hour journey and to compensate for that we were treated to amazing movies like the Shawshank Redemption, Blood Diamond and Pursuit of Happyness in the bus. Okay okay... they were Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, 3 idiots and, erm, Chance Pe Dance.

Around evening, Mihir and Arpit left from Surat, Nakul from Baroda. Constant locations updates were being relayed by the troops. As is natural for guys our age, naturally we wanted to drive to Tarkarli by ourselves, without a hired driver, we wanted a road trip, but for some reasons we couldnt get our own cars. But as they say - where there's a Will, there's a Way - and so we met these two brothers, named Will and Way... but then this is not a story about them, maybe some other time... so out came the laptop, reliance netconnect+ and google to the rescue!! Turned out there are only 4 companies in india which provide self driven cars, guess it has not caught on much here, and they were all fully booked! Well, there were a couple of Rolls Royces left... Ahem... But we looked at some other car rentals in Pune and Roochay, as only Roochay can, convinced one car rental fellow to rent out a car to us without a driver. He wanted an outrageous amount as deposit but ultimately Roochay convinced him to settle on a passport as collateral.
But as it turned out we did not have our passports with us, and Nakul, Mihir and Arpit had already left... well we thought we'll figure that out after we reach Pune.

"Books are like people, when you meet a few amazing ones, the rest of them dont seem worth it... "