Scrambled: Vai and Chan - Part 2

proper south indian amma

they dont need their husbands

bhandardara trip: gettin cozy

bhandardara trip: all four of us

bhandardara trip: the morning after
this was after a heavy night of booze, teen patti,
singing & dancing by the bonfire

Chan / Chana / Kameeni / Archana is Y's better half.  Yes i did say "better half" chan!  Believe it!   I'm a nice person.  :-)))

Ever since Vai committed his biggest folly of pataaoing her in his first (gasp!) year of college, she's been the untiring shackle around his neck.  And thus she has managed to successfully domesticate (atleast partially) a hitherto un-tamable wildass.  And she had that one thing every man desperately looks for in a mate...a 2400 watt voicebox.  Vai lost 40% of his hearing capacity just in the first 3 months of their being together.

cuddling up in public places...
...but even in private it rarely goes beyond this, right chana???
hahaha

When Y used to get her to my place to meet all of us, we had made up our minds that she was a complete stuck-up bi*ch!  Even after a couple of years of knowing her over 20-25 meetings, she just wouldn't speak to us.  She used to sit amongst us, staring straight ahead, with absolutely no emotion on her face, discouraging all attempts of conversation with her.  And Vai used to tell us that she was an absolute chatterbox when with him!

But slowly she started mixing a bit.  I think her hostel stint really helped her to open out.  And hidden inside that erstwhile unwelcoming exterior was this fabulous person.  Once we hit it off there was no lookin back.  And like any good friends, over the years we've rubbed off our corners against each other, and also become more and more like each other (i.e., she's become cool like us! hehe).

dubai sand-bashing
here Vai was really enjoying us feeling him up

ganapatipule trip

She swears like a guy and drinks like a fish.  The four of us have a glorious alcoholic history together.  My wife and she are almost les** partners (they say "love you" to each other much more than to their husbands).  I can talk about absolutely anything with her.  I can get angry with her and call her names...and come back the next day with a grin and a "hey bitch" to get a "you dog!" and a punch in return.  She's great.

looouuuuu you.....

She's been with Y for umpteen years now.  My bro always says she's perfect to keep Y grounded.  If he'd got a demure shy kinda wife, he would've become a playboy or a smuggler or hell something like that!  (actually Vai, that sounds really fun, you should have got out!!!!)  But its too late for that.  They have spent around 15 years together....50% of their lives.  Thats something.  I think the only regret she has is that he is much fairer than her!  hahahahaha

chana's attempts at getting fairer

whatta smile chan!

She's the friend i'm most in touch with.  Ever since i've been working, i've been exchanging daily emails with her during office hours.  Sometimes these have run into trails of 30-40 mails.  We've been doing this almost daily, right chan?  Many years now.

And so often when i'm having a really bad day at work, tired and frustrated, she's been around...to make it worse!  She works in advertising, and leaves no opportunity to throw in my face titbits like going on official beer lunches, going to work in shorts and t-shirts, having belly dancers perform in office (yes, its true; all my banker friends, you can jump off your office buildings now), etc etc.  But she's a sport and sends across close-up photos of those belly dancers, and its all good again.

ppl who want the complete set of these photos
can write to me or chan...  :-)

chan, sorry for inserting these pics here
but after so many of your photos
i wanted to end with something nice!  :-)

I miss having her around as well.  Well, our ear-drums are really happy due to her absence, but they'll get used to her again if she's back.  So many people live by airports and railway lines, and somehow get numb to all those shrill whistles and noises.

Chan you bitch, you know rashmi and i love you like crazy.  Now stop smiling and remember to get me a Bowmore and a Laphroaig when you come down here.

Scrambled: Vai and Chan - Part 1

quasi and chana look so drunk!
this is outside Royal Challenge in goregaon...

Y - before he gets started

Y - after a few hours, can shove his head up ur crotch

we were drinking the night before his wedding!
chan kept on calling and bugging him...
symbolic of the years to come...hehehe

wedding day

he's least interested whether she's able to eat it or not

Y / Vai / Vaibhav, is my oldest friend.  We have been together since 2nd standard....thats around....24 years!!  So 80% of our lives we've been friends.  There seems to be no justice upstairs!  So in Wonder Years, Kevin got Winnie, while i got Vai...shit shit shit.

My oldest memories of Y are those of an extremely naughty, wild, hyper-energetic, cool kid.  He was always so pumped up (parents of such kids in the US get them checked for crack or party drugs).  

Jumpin around, playing pranks, getting into trouble, using colorful language that i took years to catch up to, continuously flirting with our (pathetic) female classroom population, playing every sport possible, staying out from morn till night every single day, trading kicks, punches and nail scratches with his elder sister, and generally contributing hugely to his parents stress levels....that was Y.

he looks as mischievous as my two year old... 

A perennial last-bencher, he used every trick in the book to copy during exams.  Not that he needed to; he's absolutely bright, but expecting him to study would be like expecting Indy Jones to walk through cleanly swept, well lit, non-insect/snake/boobytrap infested hallways for his pursuits!  It just wouldn't be right.  Yet the fkr scored more than me in his boards.  Bas@#$%!

But because he was a terror for his parents and teachers, he was one of the coolest kids in school.  Everybody liked him and wanted to be with/like him.  And he used that very well with the ladies.  During free periods they would be all over him, offering their home-work, tiffin, and God knows what else.    :-)    I was nearer to the other end of the spectrum; defi not a studious good-boy, but i dont remember having done anything wild in those years.  And i was even further weighed down by Ninad, who used to punch me every time i said Fuck or Chutiya.  Fuck!  And here Y was frolicking around throwing MC-BC's in every sentence.

We were very thick, Ninad, Vai and I.  Best buds.  Then we went to different colleges and got separated.  We did make time for each other intermittently, but not much.  Then he moved to Aurangabad and then to Bangalore for a few years.  Even i got busy with my life.  It was amazing whenever he used to come back to Bombay.  I used to be so happy.  He is one of the best daaru partners i've ever had.  We can sit for hours and hours having a great time.  Some of the best conversations possible...

er...not much of a conversation here...

Once he got back for his MBA we again spent a few years very much together....vai, chan, rashmi and i.  He's a banker now, well dressed, soft spoken, mouthing investment strategies...difficult to reconcile this with the school image.  Add the fact that beneath all that carefully cultivated devil-may-care and i-give-a-fuck attitude is a softie who: ONLY uses dove soap as it keeps him pretty, regularly uses apricot scrub for his face, drinks pink pink strawberry milk, and is a compulsive cuddler.  Pretty disturbing right?  Vai tune ye kya haal bana rakha hai?  :)

i'm sooooo happy to have her....sniff sniff !

And just when everything was dandy, he moved off to Dubai....bh&*$%^d....sure wish he'd be back here...to meet up on any random day for a much required guy-to-guy chat over some much required booze.

the day they left for dubai   :-(

goofing around during the dubai trip

he cant stay away from her even for a few moments
something very suspicious about his pants!

Vai and i have had our share of fights.  But i've never worried about any of them.  I've always known they wont affect us.  School friendships are the most innocent...uncorrupted by politics or positioning.  Seldom works out like that in college, and defi not at work.  

Vai you fucker, get your arse down here ASAP.  To use one of the cheesiest lines ever: khoob milega rang, jab mil baithenge teen yaar: aap, mai, aur bagpiper club soda....er....waiter, make that kingfisher please!

:-)

Scrambled: Quasi

These are the various moods of Abhijit Rao aka Quasi aka Q aka Gadget Boy aka DaRao aka SPM Singh (only his school friends will get the last one)....

Q is a software dude of the highest order, a brilliant photographer, an absolute geek and probably the laziest, slobbiest, arse i've ever seen (not that i've actually seen his arse, mind you).

At the age of 12 he wrote his first porn story, built a flashing LED display on his bulky spectacles (through which he peered from below neatly oiled and combed good-boy hair), and fell in love (along with most of his friends) with the prettiest girl on campus.

He has a tendency to spend long hours in the loo (perplexing, since his regular twice-a-day "fun feature" usually lasts all of 30 seconds - self admittedly), longer hours in front of the computer and any remaining time stretched out flat on his back, snoring his nose-hair off.

Atleast that was the case till the end of his college years. For the last 4 or 5 years you could find him at all odd hours at the Ruia naka, mingling with guys and chicks half his age (and managing to cross a few bases with some of them! - both sexes). He also developed a major travel bug, and has burned rubber extensively, earlier in my Maruti 800 and his Maruti Esteem, and more recently in my Honda City and his Mahindra 4x4 open Jeep. His writings and photos, including those from his travels, can be seen on his blog and his flickr account. Quite a lot of it is really good stuff.

His geekiness has matured considerably from blowing nose bubbles during school, to accumulating a collection of gadgets that most commerce ch*ts like myself can barely even operate. His stash includes.....

-- many cameras, camera bags, lenses, filters, tripods, related arbit attachments and gizmos

-- more than a dozen torches of various sizes, shapes, twists, makes and strengths (all expensive, mind you),

-- more than a couple of dozen knives of various sizes and attachments

-- a walking stick complete with sliding rods, buttons, special pressure surfaces and grips (somehow serves the same purpose as my grandpa's simple wooden stick)

-- titanium spoon and fork

-- donald duck pen that actually quacks

-- fisher space pen (the kind thats actually used in space; note: Paul C Fisher developed the pressurized refill for NASA in 1965. The combination of tungsten carbide ball point & thixotropic ink in a hermetically sealed cartridge pressurized at nearly 35 pounds per sq. inch allows it to write in freezing cold, boiling heat, underwater and at any angle - even upside down!; reminds me of the age old "american jet propelled pen v/s russian pencil" joke)

-- mustard coloured floaters (brilliant thing about these is they totally fool you; you'd guess they cost around 400 bucks while they actually cost 4000!)

-- water bottle with built-in infra-red gadged to kill germs

....and many many more, believe me!

He has 2 major regrets in life: one is that for the last 4 years he has had a male wife (who is most probably going "sheee, flop!!" while reading this (sorry percy!)). The other is his phone voice; his carefully cultivated ranti looks are ofttimes jeopardised when he answers the phone and friends ask, "aunty, is abhijit there?" :-D

Most would agree that he can be quite a pain sometimes (quasi in an argumentative mood and a charging rhino are equally dangerous), but somewhere below the layers of body hair and grime, he's a really great guy! He has helped me get out of some pretty bad spots and has generally been there whenever i've really needed him. Quasi - my elder brother and one of my best-est friends. :-)