Vijay Basrur

Pune & Back

We did a 2 day trip to Pune with a tight agenda.

I had to finish some office work, we had to meet my close friend Nandan & his family, stay at Snehal’s uncle’s place & attend Meenu (Snehal’s close friend)’s wedding.

Since we had quite a bit to cover, we decided to drive down and boy is it fun to drive on the expressway. Its probably one of the few drives where you can push your car to the maximum. The greenery all along makes the drive even more enjoyable. And of course not to be missed are the pit stops to down a hot cuppa chai with hot vada pavs.

We first stopped over at Nandan’s house and some amazing idlis with sambar & chutney and some lip smacking mutton curry with bread. Roopali was amazing with the food which she had cooked and given the conditions of their new house, it was nothing short of a miracle. I drove to finish my work while Snehal got her hair straightened. We met Nandan in the evening and after a few drinks & some amazing time with Roma we reached Aundh for the night.

We attended a pucca Maratha wedding and watched all the proceedings at close proximity. The bride was more shy & smiling from ear to ear all through. After a fantastic lunch, we started back for Mumbai wishing & hoping we could sleep for atleast an hour, a wish that remained unfulfilled but got us to Mumbai before sunset.

Music on the drive

I have been travelling quite a bit in the last few weeks, but for the few days that I was in Mumbai, I managed to listen to some albums I had not heard for a really long time. I had picked Is there anybody out there? The Wall LIVE, The Best of Barclay James Harvest & LIVE LIVE LIVE – Bryan Adams

Am not such a fan of BJH but they are a bunch of nice guys. The Bryan Adams CD brings back memories, especially the chorus for Kids Wanna Rock, at one of the Rock Machine (Indus Creed) gigs at Rang Bhavan, when we were in Engg College. Though the studio version of The Wall is of much superior quality, the live version is not that bad at all. But I loved the sleeve notes that came along. They have personal notes by Waters, Gilmour, Wright & Mason.

Infact sleeve notes are the one big thing that make me buy original CD’s. I read the sleeve notes for the above albums admist Mumbai traffic jams!

Bye Bye Goa

A huge breakfast & a long siesta pretty much ate away the first half of the day. My brother & his family left for the airport at @ 12 and we left an hour later.

We were 2 hours early for the flight thanks to the unavailability of the airport drop. We hung around in the Jet lounge, grabbed a bite and some 50 winks before we boarded the flight. Thankfully no glitches on the way back.

We reached home tired, sleepy with our minds still wandering on the beaches of Goa. We will heading back to Goa in Oct for 3 days but that will be a religious trip. But this holiday has ensured that we will take such holidays twice a year.

Goa Day 3

Day 3 was even more relaxed. I caught up on Harry Potter (not the 7th but the 5th) Shreyas headed to the pool and we joined them later. We played pool volleyball with a few folks. We also got a lovely massage, compliments of the resort, which heightened the holiday spirit. The beer, lunch & siesta routine followed.
Late evening we hit the beach again and hung around till it was dark. Cloudy skies welcomed us and it was very pleasant when we strolled in the water.

We ended the day with some decent dinner and amazing desserts. The thought of leaving back to Bombay the next day was quite a miserable one.

Goa Day 2

We were woken up at 9 in the morning by Shreyas’s wakeup calls. He loves standing outside the door & screaming “bappa” (Uncle in Konkani) on the top of his voice. We had a lovely breakfast and headed to the beach with Shreyas’s beach set & our frisbee in tow.

My brother & me had a ball with the frisbee. It was great fun playing with the frisbee after ages. Shreyas enjoyed himself but got a bit cranky since it was getting quite sunny. Back in our rooms we resumed the schedule of beer, lunch & siesta. We played a lovely game of Table Tennis in the evening and relaxed with a few drinks.

One of the highlights of this holiday was that we did nothing. No travel, no sightseeing, nothing. As they say only Khaana, Peena & Sona

Goa Ahoy!

So after all the confusion we reached The Beach at nearly 4:30 pm. We managed to pick up some booze enroute and had the sense to also take along a few chilled beers. A beer & some snacks later we hit the pool with Shreyas.

Shreyas is quite a water baby. He loves being in water. We were in the pool for a few hours. Had dinner & crashed into bed

Travelling with Infants

Inspite of having confirmed tickets & beating a huge traffic jam to make it in time to catch the Jetlite flight, we were bumped off the flight because the infant travelling with us was the 7th infant on board and the aircraft had only 6 infant jackets. Sounded ridiculous but the Jetlite staff was saved of our wrath since they were already bogged down with some 30 passengers breathing down their throats for a delayed flight to Delhi. We actually felt sorry for them.

So they moved us to SpiceJet flight which turned out be an infant special only since there were more than 20 infants on board. It was crazy with all the cachophany. Either SpiceJet has more than 20 life jackets for infants or they don’t give a damn.

We missed on the snacks on Jetlite, the lunch at the resort & had to make do with some sandwiches in the Jetlite lounge, which were pretty average. We reached Goa famished and were dying to get to the hotel.