Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Moments of Happiness | Night out at Palolem

When: Some time in the Summer of 2004
Where: Palolem Beach, Goa

As i chanced upon an old photograph from our GIM days, it dawned upon me that our 2 years at GIM holds countless such memories of 'Moments of Happiness'. While the passage of years might make it difficult to remember all of those, but once when an incident is recalled at some time- somehow magically all the characters and events fall into place chronologically in the mind.

Today while i was scanning through the photos i recovered from the now defunct Orkut album (which was our first foray into social media i believe) and now stored for posterity on a Facebook album - somehow this grainy, pre-Digicam, pre-High Resolution Phone cams, in-all-probability-taken by-a-film-cam photograph instantly evoked that feeling of happiness i normally associate to a good aged Single Malt going down my throat spreading it's warmth throughout...

Tonight,
We are young;
So let's set the world on fire,
we can burn brighter,
Than the sun
what better a pub than palolem beach
Left-to-Right: Manshu, Nishit, Shaiwal, Me, Pavan, Mugdha, Sumit-Tak, Anthu, Abhinav
Posted in Facebook over here

As memory serves, this was one of those randomly planned trips that we used to have - announce it in the hostels via IP-Mssngrs and loud hollers, gather the bikes, make a pillion-rider distribution and head for the beach.

i am sure if i search my GIM archives i would get my hands on more fotos from this trip which would tell a lot more tales - of events before and after this moment captured above (along with photos of the rest of our batch-mates all lying around this frame somewhere along the length of the beach); but the one great thing about this snap is that everyone looks so damn happy...even ol' Booboo Behari in his sleep!

The alcohol had been drunk (the empty bottles strewn around being testimony to that fact), but there was still more to go around it seems (from the bottles held by Pavan and I...and yeah, that's not water that Pavaan is holding)...Proff (Nishit) indulgently cradling Chacha (Shaiwal) and Bhatija (Manshu) in his lap, Pavan holding a crab pose while trying to balance himself and the mixture bottle in his hand, Mugz in all probability trying to wrest the bottle from my hand and I resisting it (or could hve been the other way round too)...Tak saab managing to hold a pose for the shutter before returning to his pillow of sand/ Booboo's body - and Anthu (maybe the only non-drunk one around within a radius of 2 miles) lulls ol' Behari to sleep! 
Don't miss the palm fronds being used as mats...and then later to be used as mattresses too!

...And as it so happens, some of these outings would result in an Anthem of the trip...for this one it was the parody of 'Ek din beet jayega' introduced to us by Rajat Mishra and absolutely seared into the memory during this trip. Any song which is peppered with obscenities - voiced by 40 odd drunk people - at the top of their voices - all night long - while sitting on the beach - is bound to stay imprinted!

That and the wonder of waking up on Palolem Beach in the morning...it is a sight to behold!

while i write this, some of us are planning to be at our 10 yr reunion at GIM this October...i really hope a lot of us can make it....even though life happened to us after these moments and tunred us into work-riddled middle-aged people, we can still gain succour from the reliving of these memories with those who were a part of it...those magic years of GIM...


2 comments:

Mani Bhadra said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mani Bhadra said...

good to know the hidden writer in you :)