Bangalore | Vishvesh's Blog

Some times things are not meant to be easy. It is 8:30 PM (Very late by Bangalore standard!) and I have a wedding reception to attend and I am standing with my friend in a ‘everything under the sun store‘ with no idea whatsoever about what gift to give to my former colleague! I agree, I have been attending quite a few weddings for last few months but most of those people I have known for few years. Tricky part here is that I didn’t know this colleague that well. So now with no ideas, I decided to call up some of my other friends who were also attending the wedding reception.

Me: Can I talk to Meenal?
Vivek: Kyun kya hua?
Me: Please pass on the phone. I can do with some advice from a lady.
Vivek passes the phone
Meenal: Tell me.
Me: Is it okay to gift plastic flower bouquet for weddings
Meenal: Laughs…… NO. You can’t get plastic flowers. Nobody gives plastic flowers for wedding. If you can’t get flowers get some other gifts
Vishvesh: Thanks… do you have any suggestions
Meenal: No
I cut the line.
Me: Shall we take the flower-pot
Amit: You could have taken Meenal’s expert advise
Me: Come on man
Amit: We can still gift wrap those plastic flowers.
Me: Yeah right, symbol of eternal love. We can say ‘These plastic flowers will never fade hopefully like their love!‘
Amit: What do we do? It’s already 8:30, we left office at 6:30. Others are going to reach there soon?
Me: It’s so hard to select a gift when you don’t know the person very well.
Amith: Lets go without a gift.
Me: Sounds bad but we can’t attend the wedding at 10. I am with you.

The whole slog didn’t start at 8:30 PM it started much before that. Two days before the wedding we (Amith, me, Vivek and Vibhanshu) had decided to attend the wedding reception and on the day of the wedding Meenal joined us. We convinced few others but they dropped out due to some unexpected works. So there it was, five of us attending our former colleague’s wedding reception on a Friday evening. We had permission from our lead to attend the wedding reception and leave office very early by our usual standard at 6:30 pm!

As usual on the day of the wedding we hit a snag. A task which was expected to be small and easy started to look like mounting Mt. Everest without gloves and jackets! I pulled out and so did couple of my friends and then the drama began, Vibhanshu who had worked with Elham (Colleague whose wedding reception we planned to attend) got all emotional and started a tirade against me.

Vibhanshu: I heard you are not coming
Me: I am sorry man, I’ve got lots of work.
Vibhanshu: I can understand you never worked with her.
Me: What has it got to do with this?
Vibhanshu: I have worked with her and I have to go. It doesn’t matter to you but it matters to me!
That line did hit me hard!
Vivek: I am having a headache. I can’t join in
Vibhanshu: We just have to go congratulate her and come back. It won’t take too long.
Me: Guys, it’s raining outside.
Vivek: I am dropping out.
Vibhanshu: It will stop. I am going irrespective of whether you guys are coming or not.
Vivek: So you want to go. I will join you. But no more changes in the plan.
Vibhanshu: What about you Vishvesh?
Me: I am still out. With very low chance of joining you.
Vibahnshu: She would be very happy if we all attended her wedding. She was in our team! Think about it.

He gave one of those sad tragic looks like my betrayal was responsible for the death of thousands of people. I could understand Vibhanhsu’s feeling. He was decked up from head to toe like it was his wedding reception! Properly shaved, nice formal clothes and all.

Great Spock!

I remembered Spock’s saying “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one” and decided to strike a deal with my boss which had me working on a Saturday for more than 8 hours! We decided to gift her a bouquet of flowers. Not knowing were I might get one, I called up my friend Bharat and found out that I could find one at Cunningham Road. Since Cunningham Road is one-way, we dropped the plan to go there.

We set off at 6:30 PM and heroically managed to avoid one of the notoriously famous traffic pile up at Old Airport Road to reach MG Road by 7:30 PM.

Our Kobayashi Maru

Kobayashi Maru is a Starfleet training exercise designed to test the character of cadets.

We had reached MG Road on time and started searching for bouquet. Since we found no other place, we went to Central Mall inquired about flower bouquet.

Amith: Are there any stalls for bouquet here?
Attendant: No
Amith: Any idea where we can get one?
Attendant: Garuda Mall….

We set of to Garuda Mall, the problem with MG Road is that most roads in and around it are one-ways. We were disappointed when we reached Garuda Mall, there were no stalls there either. This time we decided to ask the people around and were misguided couple of times.

Auto Rickshaw

Finally we met this Auto Rickshaw driver who could speak only in Bangalore Urdu (Sad state of our state!).

Amith: Do you know where we can get a bouquet?
Driver: What is it?
Me: Guldasta (Bouquet of Flowers in Hindi)
Driver: What did you say?
Amith: Hoovu (Flowers in Kannada)
Driver: aha! You should have said that in the beginning. There is this place opposite to Garuda Mall. They have it. I have seen it.

We said our thanks to him and went to the place. What we saw there made us laugh! There were flower pots all over the place! We got the right answer for a wrong question. We checked out the place, there were plants of all types and lots of flower bouquet made out of plastic (Plastics are ruining this planet!). Out of desperation we decided to call up someone who might know a thing or two about wedding gifts! That was the reason for the call.

Grand Reception
We finally arrived at the reception hall at 8:45 PM without any gifts and our friends didn’t like it. We got big lecturer on gifts and reception.

Just can’t describe the feeling of being universally hated!

Meenal: What did you guys get?
Me: Nothing
Vibhanshu: Nothing?
Vivek: Joking?
Meenal: I will ask Amith. It’s in your bag isn’t it? What did you get Amith?
Amith: Nothing
Meenal: How can you attend a wedding reception without a gift.
Amith: We couldn’t find any bouquet.
Meenal: You could have brought anything else.
Me: Plastic bouquet weren’t bad
Meenal: Nobody gives plastic flower for wedding. I told you once. We need to get something. Do you know any place nearby where we can buy something.
Then it flashed to me. Bharat is a true rock star.
Me: I think I know a place. We will get something in few minutes.

Redemption
So we took out the bike and decided to trust Bharat’s advice and visited Sigma Mall at Cunningham Road. The bouquet shop there was almost closed and we managed to convince them to sell a bouquet.

Flower Bouquet

So finally at 9 PM we managed to come back to reception hall with a bouquet. Two and half hour to find a bouquet. Bangalore has indeed changed!

Moral of the story? I didn’t learn anything other than deciding not to attend receptions at last minutes and I feel it would make good business sense to open up bouquet shops near reception/marriage halls.

This December has been a tough month. Lots of travelling and I got to visit places I didn’t think I would visit. One such place was Ranebennur. I had been there about twenty years ago and the only thing I remembered about the place were pigs. Yes Pigs!

I was travelling to attend a friend’s wedding this time. As it normally happens with me, we travel in small group of 7-8 friends. From my experiences, I feel it is good to travel in a group rather than travel alone. I normally travel by bus but this time against our friend’s advice we took a train (Mysore – Ajmer express) to Ranebennur. The train started at 9:40 PM and as usual we had our regular fight for upper and lower berths and I was lucky enough to get Upper berth this time. I don’t know why we fight for upper and lower berths! Since every one does it I don’t want to be left out. As with most Indian trains, the fan wasn’t working with no windows for the Upper berths it was pretty warm and I as much as dug my own grave!

Lower, Upper and Middle Berths

The train was supposed to reach Ranebennur at 4 AM that meant we had to wake up early. Problem with getting out of train that early in the morning, is that there is nobody else whom you could ask about the stop. So it was decided that one of us would keep an alarm. With nobody volunteering I wasn’t sure who would set the alarm in their phone. Most of us fell asleep as soon as we settled into our berth. As tired as I was, I dozed off thinking if I didn’t wake at Ranebennur railway station I would get down at any place the train stop by 7 AM and take the first train back to Bangalore.

I slept for couple of hours (For some reason I don’t sleep well while travelling). Then at 3:30 AM a mobile started ringing. Initially I ignored it thinking it was somebody else’s mobile. But after a while my friends in middle, lower and upper berth started staring at me and I thought may be it was my phone which was ringing! By the time I could take my phone out, the ringing stopped. I put my phone into silent mode and people went back to sleep. Cursing me most probably!

Few minutes later it started again, this time I check my phone on time and my mobile did not display anything. My phone wasn’t responsible for the alarm. But there were people staring at me (Half of passengers surrounding me were actually staring at me.)! Under peer pressure without thinking I took out the battery my phone and yet the alarm continued to blare. There was a bust of laughter from the surrounding berths.

Sound propagation on a moving train is something that needs to investigated. It turned out that one of my friend had kept an alarm for 3:30 AM (I agree it was an unearthly hour!) and slept blissfully through the ringing sound of the alarm while half of our bogie had woken up!

Unfortunately the train reached Ranebennur at 4 AM. So we didn’t get to sleep much. The trip was well worth it! Thanks to my friend Charan we were able to get some snaps of the pigs too!

Click on the images to enlarge them.