Bindas @ Brigade

Today is my last day in Bangalore. A last day before travel unlike any other. No Mad Rush, No Panic, not Eleventh Hour changes. Mentally picturing the two packed bags in my room, I chuckled to myself reclining in the office chair. Even the minor details were raked out, written and executed in a timely fashion with chilling precision. As a testimony, my pocket diary contains 4 pages of crossed out entries under the heading “Pune Transfer”.

Crossing out the last entry, I suddenly realised, “Now I have the freedom to decide. Freedom from this stupid diary. Freedom to plan something to celebrate and savour my last few moments (20 mins to be precise) in this DC. Freedom to make…. Well, last minute decisions”. Well, paradoxically, the whole planning thing was beginning to defeat its own purpose. So I sent a frantic mail, inviting some of my Blore buddies to join me at Food court. Well , only Anmol and Archie turned up at the health food joint, but then the decision proved to be very “fruit"ful. We hatched a plan to meet at Brigade Road for dinner.

Of all places, why Brigade you might ask? Well, apparently it is one place which I can reach even while sleep-walking. Me and Anmol have come down to this narrow lane (and short one too, perhaps 150 meters or so) on a zillion Saturdays and Sundays. Being jolly teetotalers we brisk to and fro down the stretch, as aimlessly as the rest of the beer-loving, high spending, raucous and dandily dressed crowd. After a long walk or equally long movies, we would customarily end up in Barristas before we part to our own ways. Incidentally as a side effect, though I never drink coffee, I have developed a slight taste for cappuccino.

The real reason was, I had to free myself from my loathsome cellular service provider, Hutch. By the time I reached there, the shutters were down and I had to cook up a really good excuse to squeeze in. The usual diatribe of customer complaints were as usual fun to over hear. A sample “I’m telling you, you are new here. She(pointing at another employee) knows me better. I’ve come here a minimum of 100 times last month….” ad nauseum. After the ordeal I felt relived and gratified. I’d been wanting to do this for a long time.

The dinner at Rice Bowl was unforgettable. We laughed in splits (at me, most of the time) till we started developing early wrinkles near the corner of our eyes. There we met another group who had come down for shopping– Shuchi, Swapnil and Abeer. Finally, we bade good bye to Archie and moved on for culminating our age old custom. There is a quirky rule that never gets broken whenever we sit in Barristas – Inevitably, Anmol will be facing a lady who smokes and from where I would sit, none of the ladies would be venturing such an act. This irritates Anmol by no ends and never fails to amuse me as well. Before we parted almost suddenly Anmol remembered that it was Raksha Bandhan and all six of his rakhis are still in his bag. We managed to tie all of them exactly at 11:59 am, setting some record of being the last “brother” to be so. Catching a final glimpse of the speed crazy bikers grunting loudly down M.G., I caught an auto back to my guest house.

The Bangalore stay would be incomplete without a formal mention of the folks at my guest house: the coy and talkative Manoj, the always greedy Venkatesh (I mistakenly used to mention him as Bintage, thanks to the Oriya accents), the ever serious Guddu who did some weight lifting as well, the boy Santhosh, the handy cook Joy. I must say that the one and a half month stay there was truly unforgettable.