Happy Diwali ...

I love the festival of lights ... Mostly because of fireworks ... Long time back when
Fireworks weren’t considered to be evil proponents of pollution and Child labor, Diwali was so much more fun ...As strange as it sounds, I just love the smell of burnt sulpher, the loud bangs in the middle of the night , and most of all rockets …specially when they are made to travel horizontally ... Of course now people hardly buy fireworks claiming that they don’t support child labor ... Personally I believe they are just being cheap... coz these exact same set of people don’t mind making children work in their homes or wash their cars ... But then again , practicing what we preach becomes so much easier when there’s scope of saving some money in the process ...

I remember the diwali when I almost burnt my dad’s car down... I was showing off by lighting fuses and then throwing bombs in air ...Fortunately, the only audience of my daredevilry was my kid sister and like all things I do to impress her, she thought it was quite stupid ... As confident as I was of my quick reflexes in the face of exploding bombs; I panicked when one of the fuses burnt faster than expected. In an attempt to get the damn thing as away from me and my sis as possible, I threw it in a direction where my dad happened to park his beloved Fiat... The bomb crept under the car and exploded ... Fortunately the petrol tank didn’t ignite else it would have been my last albeit spectacular diwali ... I looked at my sis, she looked at me, shook her head and that was the last we ever talked about it ... I don’t think I ever thanked her for not ratting out on me, but I guess you don’t ever thank your siblings ... Its against the rules..

This Diwali, I was literally bouncing off the walls all the day long ... Luckily my flat mate
, like me, didn’t go home for diwali and even more luckily it was his B'day ... But first, lemme introduce him to you guys

My Flat mate
Now this dude is ISB alum from the class of 2005. He was the placement coordinator (The most powerful and prestigious post in the student body) of his batch. He is extremely smart, hard working, diligent and is the epitome of discipline. The dude actually wakes up and goes to gym at 6 in the morning!!! In short, he is the anti me ... In fact I think I shall name him DROF ... yes... that’s what we'll call him - Drof...

So it was Drofs B'day on Diwali eve ... Sadly none of either one of our friends was in town which left just the two of us left to celebrate the festival of lights and usher in a new year in Drof's life ...Went out to a place called Barbeque Nation. After a few rounds Martinis, me and Drof decided to lure chics at an all chics table with the B'day cake... just to realize that the Buffet had a great Dessert spread which also included the same cake the restaurant gave us with a candle on it ... Time for a quick retreat we decided... A few more drinks and a couple of places later , we found ourselves standing out side a club waiting for the valet to get our car when I noticed Drof smiling ear to ear and staring at a hot chic in front of us ... I thought may be he isn’t too unlike me after all ;-) ... After the hot chic got into her car and drove away, he turned to me and said... did you see that??... I most certainly saw that ... and those... and definitely them...

The reason Drof was so excited was because the Hot chic happened to be Urmila Matondkar...Or so he says... I didn’t get a chance to see her face during all that looking ... Drof then went ahead and told me how smart ,good looking and highly talented an actress Miss Matondkar is ... and that getting a glimpse of her makes it a B'day worth remembering ... He also went ahead and told me how he loves Ram Gopal Verma and some how the monologue ended on the note that 'Don' was remade in Tamil as 'Billa'... "Fascinating" is all I could say ... Fascinating...

So that’s what my diwali was like ...I had a good time... although I did miss my moms awsome Gujiyas and rangolis and sweets ... but most of all I missed those horizontally fired rockets ... Man they’re wicked ..