Continuing from my previous post My Deepavali vacation 2023 – Part 1. After Diwali we relaxed for a day and finished the Bhaiya Dooj festival. On Wednesday, we met up with Tarini and Varun at their place for dinner and drinks. I am not a cricket fan but if you are in India (or anywhere where there are Indians) it is impossible to escape the craziness of the World Cup.
Since India was playing in the Semi-finals we ended up going to a nearby sports bar to have a few drinks and watch the match. Watching any sport with a crowd is an interesting experience as it is almost impossible not to get caught up in the excitement when everyone is on their feet cheering and screaming their heads off. After a few drinks we headed back to Tarini’s place for dinner and finished watching the match over there. India won the match even though it looked it they might not earlier in the game so that was good.
We would have loved to stay back longer but folks had to go to office the next day (not everyone was on a holiday like me) so we headed back home to Noida. When I got home we found that the parents had forgotten to leave the outer door unlocked (I had the key for the inner doors). As I didn’t want to wake anyone up, I ended up jumping over the wall, unlocking the inner door to get the keys to unlock the main gate to let Jani inside.
The remaining week went by with us just chilling at home. On Saturday, I had friends from college visiting for the weekend. Amit, Vinit, Pranav and his Wife Jigna came over and stayed with us in Noida. I was meeting Amit after almost a decade so it was fantastic to catch up after such a long time. I have known these folks for 24+ years now. Saturday afternoon we went out to Lunch at Burma Burma where the food was so good… we ended up overeating to the point were we barely had room for dinner a few hours later. (We started lunch at 3 and ate till around 5:15 or so).
Lunch at Burma Burma
After lunch we were almost in a food coma so we hung out at home while Jigna caught up on her sleep and Amit visited his uncle. Jani had meetings so once she got back we drove over to Ravi’s place who is another friend from NJIT for dinner and drinks. Since the last time we had met, Ravi had learnt how to make amazing cocktails so we had drinks and just caught up with each others lives and were up almost till 3am just chatting and then drove home.
You don’t often make friends with whom you stay in touch and remain great friends even decades later and it is a privilege to have such friends. Or as Yeats said “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends And say my glory was I had such friends.”
Group Pic at Ravi’s place
For Sunday we had planned to go out somewhere where we could watch the match and spend the day there. But as always the laziness quotient was high and dad moved the TV to the drawing room from the living room to give us more space where we could laze around and watch the match. The setup was a complete jugaad with my Dressing table being used as a stand for the TV and cables being run all over the place.
Watching the Indian Cricket Team’s pathetic performance at the 2023 World Cup Finals
Unfortunately for us the Indian teams performance was not worth the effort that we spent setting up everything. It got to the point where some of us actually dozed off in the middle of the first innings. The second inning was a little bit more interesting but the Indian fielding was pathetic so we stopped watching the match when it was clear that India is not going to win and went out for Dinner.
Diner was at this lovely place called Theos Cafe & Patisserie. The food there was quite good and pretty much everything we ordered was good. Once we finished dinner we just hung out at the cafe till it became obvious that they were waiting for us to leave so that they could close up so we headed home and spent the next few hours looking at old photos from our College days.
Dinner at Theos Cafe & Patisserie
The next day everyone except me and Vinit left to go back and since I was working on Monday I spent the day catching up to emails and things that had piled up during my vacation. My return flight to BLR was supposed to be at 9pm but Spicejet delayed it till 11pm (we actually flew out around 11:30pm). Thankfully they did send an email/sms/call about this early enough that I could plan accordingly and not end up sitting at the airport from 6:30pm… The Delhi airport Terminal 1 is undergoing renovation so not much to do there except sit at the lounge. I ended up working for a bit before catching up with my reading.
Thanks to the delays I reached Bangalore around 2:30am and home around 3:30am. That concluded a very restful and fun vacation and I am already looking forward to my next trip.
– Suramya