Dinner, HTC and Volley of words

When dinner gets planned on the fly, things often end up in a messed up situation. In our group of friends, Nimit is known to be the person who should not be messed with. He gets really mad when things don’t happen in a proper way. Dont get me wrong, he is not a spoilt sport and does enjoy the occasional jest, however, whenever he has given a commitment, he will even blast his friends if he has to in order to keep his word. So the evening began when the 6 of us decided to skip the Hostel mess food, most Saturdays you would want to do that. We all ended up planning to get back to the hostel to our ton of assignments/ jobs/studies and other commitments. I happened to be the only one who had to get back to my movie and I had put on pause before leaving. We had plans of eating at a restaurant called Pop Tates, however, due to some confusion, the 6 of us left separately in 2 different autorickshaws. We had plans of being in communicado to confirm exact details over the phone, enroute to the restaurant. When Nimit, Ganesh and I were in the autorickshaw, almost half way towards the restaurant we had planned to go, we got a message from the trio in the other autorickshaw that there was a change in the venue for the dinner. The new destination was an additional 15 minutes away. After that Ganesh and I became the metaphorical punching bags. At one point of time when there was a massive confusion at a three way crossing. The auto driver was slightly scooped and ready to step on the accelerator, but the only thing holding him back was our decision. He kept on reminding us, “Sirji, Jaldi bolo, signal pe khade hain hum”. The poor fellow’s requests fell on the deaf ears of the momentarily turned barbaric Nimit.

Unfortunately we were the only ones blocking the traffic and the scuffle between Ganesh and Nimit on the direction we had to take was taking a toll on the nervous little fellow the autodriver. The argument didn’t really interest me much, since I was more or less indifferent to the destination. In the middle of all the confusion, I happened to see the headlights of the new XUV500 with its headlights on. Being the over emotional person when it comes to automobiles, I asked Ganesh if the SUV had LED headlights. That moment somehow got both of them to shut up about the whole argument and take a step back. I’m not sure if either both of them were shocked at the absurd comment or were truly admiring the SUV, but I would hope that it’s the latter one. Soon when the destination and hence the direction was conveyed to the autodriver, he put the auto on full throttle and we were pushed back into the tiny autorickshaw seats with a sense of irritation at the rickety bone racking structure of Indian roads. For some reason unknown to mankind, Nimit’s volley of nudging was not to end at the three way junction. He continued to curse the other three members of the group who Nimit thought had taken it upon themselves to intentionally get the plans derailed. Words like “Irresponsible”, “scoundrel”, and “careless” were actually so frequently used that the autorickshaw driver also thanked Nimit for helping him mug up new words. Once we reached the rendezvous point, the war of vocals between Nimti and Anshul was up and we were cheering them to actually take a swing at each other. It would have been interesting if we witnessed Fight Club. Then and there I started imagining how the movie I had paused to before leaving would have panned out with Anshul and Nimit in the lead roles in front of the restaurant. I was zapped back into reality when another friend Tushar suddenly violently grabbed the collar of Ganesh’s shirt. It seems Tushar had dropped his High end HTC touch screen phone while playing Angry Birds and panicked that the phone was damaged. His mind was racing fearing the worst outcome for the phone even before he had picked it back up to check for any scratches. Only when Ganesh reminded him, “Dude, have a look at your phone and check if it’s ok”. As Tushar leapt at the phone on the ground, everyone in the group had their eyes on Tushar’s phone. Had there been a scratch, the rest of the evening would have meant holding the uncontrollable raging Tushar. It obviously meant that we would have to skip our dinner anyway. However once the phone turned out to be fine, the other people were more relieved than Tushar himself.

Finally the argument came to a closing when we all learnt that the restaurant had a waiting time for another 45 minutes. A situation that Anshul was sheepishly hoping to avoid and it also meant that Nimit would hold this over Anshul’s head for the rest of the evening. After a quick poll and we all decided to head towards Hiranandani. A place with a decent variety of restaurants and fast food joints that could satisfy the taste buds of all the crazy people in the group. However our dear friend Ganesh quickly suggested a new restaurant that he had heard of from someone. He made a few quick phone calls and we all landed at a small tiny restaurant where the setting was quite unconventional. The restaurant was split in two parts with a partition hanging from the wall making it look like a weird whole thing. It seemed shadier than the new range of dark aviator sunglasses. I wonder how Ganesh gets all his weird information. However, our deadline set by Nimit was scarier than the crooked waiter who was waiting for the order to be placed. Needless to say, we decided to order something and leave quickly. Anyway let me leave the details of all that part for another day.