A day when everything went wrong….is what happened to Prithvi and me last evening. It was Suji’s wedding and reception day. It was a weekday and obviously it would have been difficult for both of us to have attended the wedding. So we decided on making it to the reception that was scheduled from 7-9 pm at Guru Narasimha hall, Bull Temple Road, Bangalore.
3:00 pm: Prithvi pings me on the gtalk to decide the itinerary. It was decided that Prithvi would start from his house at 6:30PM, pick me up from the office entrance, we would then go to the forum mall, buy a good gift for Suji and from then on would leave for the gathering. Sounded like a plan! I contemplated if 6:30 would have been late, but then felt even if the function time was 7 pm, such gatherings were always delayed for some good reason. :)
6:30 pm: Prithvi calls me to inform that he has started. It meant I leave as soon as possible because he would have taken lesser time and fuss to make it to the rendezvous.
Real excitement starts from here on! Fasten your seat belts!
6:32 pm: I start shutting down my system with no luck. This was nothing bizarre as I had installed an operating system on my machine that was produced by Microsoft Corporation and we all are aware of how Microsoft could help us while devastating us at the same time. :) First, I tried to fix the issue by going through all the tedious and weird error messages patiently, but it was already 6:40pm and I was getting late. The word endurance was thrown out of my dictionary and I decided to hit the help button by opting for a hard shutdown. Crude way of doing things, but they work! :) To hell with the laptop, I said, hoping that the machine could boot up the following day.
6:42 pm: I was at my office reception. Pressed the button of the lift for the ground floor. If you’re working in EGL Campus and Pine Valley building, you would very well know that the elevators here don’t follow any algorithms that they are supposedly designed for. :) I could hear 4-5 noises of elevator coming to 2nd floor but none actually did. Finally, one lift opened in front of me and it felt as if it was sent by some heavenly power because it came without making any announcement of it actually reaching the 2nd floor.
6:45 pm: I was out on the campus walking towards the road where I was supposed to meet Prithvi. What worse could have happened? Yes, it started raining. So typical of Bangalore! :) Instead of now walking briskly and enjoying the cool weather of namma(our) Bengaluru, I had actually started running. If that wasn’t enough, a call from the home made things clumsier and by the time I could finish talking to my parents, my mobile alerted me that Prithvi is calling me; it seemed he had already reach the meeting point.
Prithvi made me cognizant of our first real hurdle. There was a huge traffic jam on the intermediate ring road. Oh man!
7:15 pm: We were still stuck on the intermediate ring road. The worry of not reaching in time had started to just creep in to our thoughts; but we were content not to have thought about it as yet. Somewhere, on the back of our minds, we knew that once we reached Sony World junction of Kormangala, things wouldn’t be as gloomy. We had diverted our minds to other talks that related to work, life in Bangalore and as always on switching jobs and how to get a fatter pay. Typical software engineers! :)
7:35 pm: No more hiccups from the sony world junction ensured that we had reached forum mall. I took out my wallet to check my financial status only to find that I had one shining 5 rupee coin in my pocket. Shining, as if to tell me that your worth is not more than 5 rupees! I didn’t bother to think about it as saving time and taking out money from the ATM was the trade. I asked Prithvi to come to Nik-Nish shop where we were supposed to buy the gift for Suji, meanwhile, I thought of encashing my debit card. If everything would have gone well, I wouldn’t have thought of writing this blog! You must have guessed it by now, there was a long queue in front of HSBC ATM and Nik-Nish shop was closed. Damn! It took me around 20 minutes to withdraw the money. We then went to Landmark stores and started scouring for a nice gift. Gift? Thats really dificult to get, you know! Joke book? Nah! Cooking book? Nah! Child care? Forget it! :) Finally, god gave us some sense and we bought a lord Ganesha’s idol. Looked perfectly apt.
8:15 pm: It was getting really late now! We were on our way to the Bull Temple Road. Huge traffic near the Lalbaug made us wonder whether we would actually make it to the hall in time! Would any of our friends be there when we reach? we contemplated. Shwetha was our only hope. We called her to tell that we would be there at the gathering in the following 20 minutes or so and to tell her to wait near the gate and guide us through. On the contrary, she said she was on her way back and would have reached home pretty soon. :( Ggrrrrr! Traffic was really sickening us now.
8:45 pm: We finally reached the place, found Varsha, another friend of ours. She was a rel life saver. She guided us through out. We met Suji and Girish (Suji’s husband) at the stage, congratulated them, took the photograph as an evidence of our presence, gave the gift that we had purchased and had a nice delectable dinner. Who doesn't agree that we attend receptions for good food?! :)
Suji was really very happy; the smile on her face couldn’t stop a bit. Wishing her a happy married life!
If you are thinking this is the end, you are wrong, you are in store for some more.
9:45 pm: It was almost quarter to ten when we started our journey back. You must be thinking, what else could have happened now? It was the gas problem. Not that we had gas problem, but it was the auto that didn’t have gas to run on. We had to look out for some options of transportation and the journey thereafter was a smooth sail. :)
Phew! Quite an action packed journey it was. But we were really glad that we could attend the function, see the smile on Suji's face. It was worth it!
It was both, a bit of curiosity and interest; we turned to the studio. Coming so close, who would remain content with just a view? Few phone calls from my mother to the top officials made way to a guided tour of inside. Lucky we!! Slowly, almost all the sets, from the Jodha's palace, to the set where Akbar has a tussle with a mad elephant, to the Akbar's darbaar were captured in our cameras. 
We also got an opportunity to witness a Marathi serial being shot. It was based on Shivaji Maharaj and it was no surprise that they had chosen some sets of Jodha Akbar's to depict Auranzeb's abode in the serial. We could recognize some of the Marathi actors but were too shy to take their autographs; rather we didn’t want to disturb their work. As it was a guided tour, we were made aware of some of the technicalities of movie making from the directors themselves. We realized that movie making wasn't easy as it seemed. As I write this blog, radio mirchi is playing "Kehne ko jashne bahara hain...." a nice coincidence, isn't it?
It was very dark and raining very heavily now. Certainly we were among the clouds; all we witnessed were the dark clouds below and above us. A real visual treat, albeit it was really chilling and we were literally shivering. But it was such a heavenly experience!! An experience that would remain with us for a long time to come. Nimish, was the happiest person on Earth. Obviously his dream of visiting the clouds was fulfilled in some regards.