Weekend Whine

After sending off my family friend at the Pune Airport after his interview, I planned to surprise my friend who works in Pune. So, I sent some so called cryptic messages, in the form of prediction for the day and other crappy stuff. But they were easily decoded, with my overeagerness giving it away, a bit too easily.

So, I called to confirm the so called surprise visit. But, quoting Palahniuk, the weather was partially cloudy and was getting hazier. So, we decided to check mutual availability at around 5:30, so that we could catch the Indrayani.

However, call it fate or will, the expected non-availability was confirmed. The energy levels went for a toss and the eager quick walk was transformed to a slow heavy trudge.

It seems, this depressive virus shifted from me to my rickshaw driver as well. As a result, he took exactly thirteen years and four months to reach Pune Station. Drawing full energy from my frail frame, I dashed off to the tickets counter and found myself in Tirupati-sized queues. After being fined 250 bucks for loitering in the station without a ticket just the previous day, I did not want to take another shot at my nervous-face-in-front-of-ticket-checker. So had to bite my teeth and stand in the queue for a gruelling seventeen minutes and buy the tickets.


Indrayani was on platform 2. So, I ran, and ran, and ran. But, she slowly, but surely, was getting away from me.

As I was getting down from the last steps, I could see the huge 'X' mark on the last bogie. A million hands bade me good bye.

Since, there were no trains for about a couple of hours, there was no choice but to go by bus.

In between, my mind was split between whether to call my friend and inform about the train miss and suggest going in bus together or otherwise. Going by the apparent discomfort in the previous conversation, I chose the latter, not knowing what my twisted fate had in store for me.

After waiting for about half an hour, I caught a volvo bus towards Dadar, deciding to get down at Panvel. The fast moving images at the window, brought back some old memories of my previous visit to Pune. As I was getting lost in my own world, I was brought back to the real world by my neighbor, who puked on me. The idiot forgot to use the packet provided for the same and conveniently decided to use my t-shirt as a toilet sink. I was almost getting a vomit bath. Eww!

Now stop making faces, and understand the situation, you idiots!

The only good thing was that the bus had almost reached Kalamboli where I was to get down and catch a town bus to my place. There was just a small problem. I was already Mr. Stinksalot, and the stop was in the middle of the highway and it was getting very late, thus reducing the already low probability of finding the town.

After a 15 minute wait, at the godforsaken bus stop, I caught a town bus to my place. As soon as I entered the bus, everyone gave me nasty look, with their cringed noses. I am sure they thought I was drunk and had puked on myself! Haha!

My stink had a benefit. No one was ready to sit beside me and I got to use an entire two-seat and sit comfortably. But then, a comfortable life puts forward uncomfortable existential questions. I replayed the entire day in my mind and could not stop smiling. Probably, now the co-passengers were quite sure about me being drunk!

Somebody was singing somewhere,

I hope you had the time of your life.