Outside the Singer's Studio / Birthday

Contd. from previous post...

And it came. We were standing under a bus shelter and the rain was now properly lashing. The breeze was too cold, but we just stood there. Suddenly Natarajan shouted, "Happy Birthday Johny". I actually almost forgot. I checked my watch, 00:01. "It's my birthday and I am on the road, standing in an unknown bus shelter, watching the rain." It all felt weird. An old man was curiously watching the commotion. I answered a couple of SMSes and now waited for the rain to ebb.

We got back into the car and I realised I left my bike parked somewhere on the other side of the road. There were small streams flowing where I parked and I found it difficult to get it out, but somehow managed to do it. In minutes, we reached home and my house people were surprised to find Natarajan standing at the door. They realised it was past Twelve and wished me. Soon we were on my computer try to match up the vocals and the music. The sampling rate proved to be a huge problem and we had to manually edit the BPM of every track that we loaded. It was nearing One and Natarajan left, and I finally went to sleep. I had only about 7 hours to sleep which was a good 2 hours less than my usual.

The calls started flowing in the morning and I patiently attended them all. Along with a few friends, I planned to go out somewhere and have fun. Natarajan suggested Alex's Kitchen as 'he was told', it was very good. We got there and found out it was a Chinese Restaurant. While I enjoyed the 'smoked' food, the others only pushed their plates away from them. Was a slight disappointment everyone didn't enjoy it and I also felt weird that I couldn't suggest a place myself, being so blatantly unaware of eating places in Hyderabad. Even Srikar who came here only a few years back knows more about the city than I do.

For dessert we had to move out. 'Move out' because it was closing time and we were the last ones to leave the restaurant! We went to Havmor for some Ice Cream and had a better time there. We had a few refreshing moments when Natarajan boldly ordered a 'Love Potion' and it ended up coming with 2 Straws for couples! He attempted drinking from one leaving the other free, but nothing happened. He then closed the mouth of one straw and drank from the other and the moment he let go, all the 'Love Potion' came flowing out onto him and the floor. He finally ended up uncomfortably drinking from both straws together. Oddly enough, our so-called Dessert cost us more than the complete lunch.

We were suddenly missing some of our other friends and made desperate attempts to call them. Sudershan responded and came over to meet us at Eat Street. Apparently everybody was full with dessert and there was no mood to eat and we sat ironically in Eat Street. Looking across the lake, I could see the other side of the city and wondered how a NYC-like skyline would look here. The moment the image came into my mind, it got crumpled after thinking about the Government that would need the vision to do it.



I was playing around with the exposure settings in Raj Kiran's PowerShot after I conveniently forgot mine at home inspite of charging the batteries for the occasion. After long and crazy discussions, we finally decided it was time to get back home. It started to get dark and the roads were mad. A flyover was closed for repair works and the road under it turned into a sea of vehicles. After 2 hours of struggling through various degrees of traffic, I managed to get home and retired for the day.

Tiring, but oddly fulfilling...