Diwali..

Hmmm.. so finally the day is over. And with it ends my first Diwali away from home. It was a day of firsts. My first Diwali away from my parents; my first Diwali outside Jaipur; my first Diwali in the hostel....

It was interesting to say the least. The day started like no other Diwali. Usually am woken up relatively early and have to take my bath and get ready and everything. This time round it was different. I was still sleeping when my parents gave me a call at 3 in the afternoon ;P

After watching the latest episode of Heroes and cursing over the non availability of those of PB and HIMYM, I decided that it was time that I went and had a bath. After all you can't afford not having a bath on the day of a major festival... ( ab itna gaya guzra bhi nahin hun main :P... vaise another secret.. the bath would have probably been delayed even more, had it not been for the fact ki hostels mein garam pani nahi hai... :X .. aur mujhe beemar hone ka koi shauk nahi )

Anyways, Sobu and I had decided that we would go to CCD... Server was asleep, and after contemplating for a while, both of us decided that it was best that he be allowed to rest, lest the Server become unstable and start querying everyone in sight ;P ( something worth mentioning here... yours truly had, the day before, observed signs of instability and heightened activity when Server started querying about Sobu in the bathroom... not the washroom.. but the lil cubicles with a shower and 2 taps in it :P )

Anyways.. coll se nikalte hue, the two of us saw a banner advertising the opening of The Chocolate Room at Infocity... u r tempted, isn't it.. well so were we... after gorging upon the delicacies at CCD, we decided to look for it... we went as far as CP... but our efforts were in vain... sala mil hi nahi raha tha... thinking that it was probably towards the offices, we decided to turn back.. (G ne beech mein phone aur sms pe Sobu ko garyana shuru kar diya tha.. :P) And lo.. there was the Chocolate Room, right beside CCD... Sobu had an interesting observation to make.. ' bekaar marketing and placement strategy... jab hum dhundne nikle the, tab nahi dikha, to logon ko vaise kaise dikhega...' hmmm.. i wonder....

By the time we returned, it was time to light the firecrackers... That was a lot of fun.. As expected not everyone got hold of the firecrackers.. and the admin got quite a bit of verbal stick for giving us sub standard crackers... a pleasant surprise was that like me, there were quite a few who voluntarily said No to crackers... yeye... We going Green.. :)

Now we come to the most interesting part of the day... After playing cards for a while, we decided that it was time to hit the roads and check out the Diwali decorations ( Infocity had already disappointed us by the lack of the same). I had bugged Sobu enough about the magnificent illumination back home... We managed to obtain a Kinetic and began our journey... Our initial plans of going to Ahmedabad were put to rest by the mileage of the vehicle... So we decided to hit the capital city itself... Considering that it houses quite a few govt. offices, there were enough reasons to expect it to be well decorated... but man.. we were in for a surprise... there was hardly any decoration and illumination! You had to see it to believe the lack of it... We hit one sector after another... 11, 16, 24, 21... but the result was the same... no decoration! Even the main market of Sector 21 was without any decoration. In fact the most decorated places were the petrol pumps!! The brilliantly decorated images of Joahri and Bapu Bazaar back home flash in my mind... It was such a shock that it has got me wondering if Diwali is indeed the Festival of Lights...


We still could afford to travel quite a few kilometers, so we decided to hit City Pulse... Bhains auntie had once told me that the City Pulse vala road ends in a broken bridge or something which is quite a spot... so well we decided to check that out.... we kept on going.. par no broken bridge was in sight... finally we came upon a semi haunted temple... ;P ... seemed like a palce worth checking out sometime... we had encountered an auto on our way and it had told us ki twas just a village ahead... maybe Bhains aunite had meant some other road... maybe Bridge ke upar road ban gayi ho.. who knows... but yeah... we discovered a new place... that semi haunted temple... and how can i forget... we also came across one of the few decorated buildings.. a radhaswamy ashram :)... did u know that a such a place existed in our vicinity? i didn't!

We decided to head back towards college... On our way back we came across the Swaminarayan temple and it too was decently decorated... We were planning to hit Shrey Ashram next when it happened... the kinetic wobbled a bit... i felt something was wrong with the front tyre... Sobu got down to examine... he decalred the tyre to be hit... but alas! everything can;t be so perfect.. something had to be wrong... and it was... I was right about something being wrong with the tyre.. the only thing was that it was the rear one... :S

Well the next phase of the journey involved Sobu and I taking turns to drag the Kinetic back to the college... Thankfully it happened just around a kilometer away from the campus.... And that brings an end to the tale of my first Diwali away from home... one of the more interesting ones to say the least... but yeah.. i missed the decorations...