It is a long, long, damn long and fulfilling weekend!

Friday I am in love

Hey what’s up people. I hope everyone is having a good time, one way or another. For me, it was absolutely a blast and fantastic weekend. So many great things has taken place, just like my first three months in India had happened and I was glad to be part of everything.

As I am writing this blog now, I really couldn’t believe that my days in India are number and it is really counting. Fourteen days more and I will fly away across the North region of India, all the way to the Tibetan government in-exile, Dharamshala. I guess one year living in the paradise of India had makes time travel faster than light, deeper than the ocean and higher than the mountain. And to let go all this moments and experience is truly uninvited but unavoidable. As melancholy as it may sound and as truly as I wanna hold on, but there is nothing I can do but to see life goes on. So every little hours of my remaining time does really count and I try to live life to the fullest as the final moment is ushering in. That’s why right now, I am compromising my tight budget, for more enjoyable time at the very last minute especially after few month of self-restraining on money-related events.

Anyway, back to the subject of the damn long and fulfilling weekend, which almost satisfying to the core of my heart. While others weekend started on Saturday or some even on Sunday, I started mine one day earlier, which is on Friday.

It was a lazy, chilly Friday morning and my dream was intruded by the sound of my alarm. I was almost glued to the bed, most probably still feeling stone from yesterday’ excessive smoking session with the president of smoking club, The Polish Peter. Anyway, the dream I had must have been sweet and hopeful that I was having trouble to get out of the bed. Then, the evil thought jump onto my mind, urging and tempting me to stay on to what I was doing, neglecting of my responsibility to go to work on that day. I was very tempted but the little will I had in me was moving me hard to move but only hard enough to get me out of the bed to the living room, but not out of the house. The lump of devil’s thought already eating up my head- so I decided to start my weekend on Friday. So I fabricated bedtime story to justify my deed.

I started my happy Friday morning with one thing on my head, to copy all the cool music from Polish Peter’s laptop which I always wanted to do but defeated by a lame excuse such as no time and such. It is a new genre that I am now into, which is mostly chill-out, dance, trance & psychedelic music. I spent about two hours listening to all samples of the songs which is about hundreds of them, if not thousand and ended up with 400 songs.

Following that, I continue to read Gregory’s “Shantaram”, which took my mind and wild imagination to the life of Gregory, sensitivities and his philosophical of him and his bands of friends, enemies and fellow slum dwellers alike. I followed through his life with sometime comedic laugh, his beauty of story telling, the tragic and poignant moments, melancholy love drama through his turbulence life in the Bombay underworld. As I am typing now I am at 450 pages and half more to go. The story is about to begin. If any of you are into reading, I would really like to recommend this book to you. This book contains sublime descriptive passages of life, love, philosophy, less-than-ordinary people of Bombay but yet richer in characteristic and intellectual knowledge. It is full of beauty and charm and honestly, merely words aren’t enough to justify the worthiness of the book. I hope you read it before Johnny Depp takes it to silver screen.

Then decided not to go on with the book, as I was reluctant to finish it. It was too suspense, adrenaline rushing, too dramatic to go on. So I decided to watch few episodes of “That 70’s show”.

Without realizing much, much of the afternoon gone. The darkness was ushering in and the light and sunshine of the day was faded and subsiding. One by one of my flat-mates coming home.

That evening, Jana, the German trainee had a farewell party in about to close trainee apartment, C1. We had a party and it was great. Lots of people were there, trainees and non-trainees, including some of our Indian friends. Salvador, the new Spanish cooked for the farewell. Some of the delightful meals were Pasta, macaroni, Spaghetti, fried rice, chips, beers, vodka and rum and other alcoholic drinks. Xabi, the Spanish guy, brought along his Shisha and was preparing one when the party was at its peak. First it was Strawberry favor, than other fruity favor, and lastly, we mix the tobacco with weed and begin our trip to odyssey.

After a few round of traditional speech, by the drunk Japanese Yoshi and another drunk Norwegian girl, Trude, we proceeded the party to another level. Polish Peter and I decided to leave, and not without a bag of chips, which later at night, our snack for “That 70’s show” session.

Saturday hanging on the rooftop.

I couldn’t remember much of Saturday except for more reading, that 70’s show, smoking joint all-day round, eating and all that jazz.

But in the evening, Ina came to our place and cooked us very fine dinners. Then we were invited to Julian, the new German trainee, whom opted to stay alone, to his own welcoming party in his rooftop. We were impress by the cozy and greenery style of his rooftop ambience and surrounding.

We just hung around, basically did nothing but grooving to the dance beat, of various genre, drinking, smoking, chatting until the late hours, which around 2 in the morning. From Julian rooftop, we went back to our apartment, Lucky 7- to continue to smoke Shisha, weed, and forgotten conservation until around 4-5 in the morning.

Sunday Morning and rocking hard evening!

Despite the inadequate sleep I had, I woke up around 9.30 in the morning. Prior to that morning- I was inspired by Julian rooftop- so I invited the same people to my rooftop for a morning breakfast, which is much higher, broader, windy and more spacious. Ina and I went for a morning shopping and I brought milks, juices, and dozens of eggs, cheese, cookies and all those breakfast jazz. I started to cook and rock the kitchen while everyone still deep in their sleep. I made a very tasty and crunchy butter-garlic toast breads, 5 big plates of Peter’s special omelets- with butter garlic, black pepper, salt, thin- soya sauce and onions. At the end of my cooking, most of the pigs already awaken from their one-night-dead. The last was the stoniest smoker- The Peter Polish a.k.a. Leo.

On top of our rooftop, it was very windy, cozy and the weather was gray and blue. It was again, very serene and romantic scenario that will drive anyone into deep contemplation. All of my apartment mates were there namely Julius (Germany), Polish Peter (Poland), Barbara (Austrian), Benny (Germany), Martin (Germany), and I. Others were Barbara (Germany), new non-trainee who spent a night in our apartment, Trude (Norway) and Ina (Germany).

After chewing and swallowing the tasty omelets, and wetting our throat with juices and milks- we went up to the further up. The views of the rivers across our apartment, onto other side of town, other apartment and its rooftop were nothing but serenity. We started to roll a morning present and passing around the joint. It was great and utmost satisfying.

In the evening, my housemates and I, Sabi (Spain), Ina, Martin (another German) attended a rock concert. The even was being named “Freedom Rocks” 05 and the line up was some of the finest battle of the bands of India namely “Unbound”, “Va-yu” and “Strange muse”. It was so much better than the last one which I attended in EY. The night was a blast and was a truly rock festival. Even the Europeans gave a thumb up to those bands despite the fact that they had seen many rock festival like Green Day, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Foo Fighter etc.



The stage was not so big, enough for a 5-piece band. It was equipped with all the standard light, smoke machine and a simple backdrop. We came late and we missed the first band which the vocalist had a voice of Axl Rose. In facts they did sang two song from Guns n’ Roses; “Civil war” and “Don’t cry”.

The highlight of the night was the second band. The name was vayu. It was a four-piece band with one guitarist, bassist and drummer. The front man has the stage performance of Steven Tyler. With long hair and flowery loose surfing shirt, he and the guitarist and the drummer rock the stage, work the audience, drove out our love for rock music to yet another level. The band started with a song from Pink Floyd, followed by a hit song from Jimi Hendrix. The third was The Doors’ “Break on Through” which is the best song of the night. The rendition of the song was very powerful and full of angst. Then again, a song from Pink Floyd, Steve Morse, Deep Purple before the vocalist sighed in exhaustion. And he said tiredly to the crowd- “Ok, thanks for being here, so the next song I am going to sing is a love song from Bryan Adams…” and immediately being boo-ed by the crowds and thumbs down united-ly by the audiences. It was a joke and provocation. He then continued with a firm shout-“Ok, this is Pearl Jam for you!!” and the crowd again was drown and bathed in their own sweat and swing their arms in the air as they sang Pearl Jam’s “Alive”. From time to time, he raised an Indian national flag, as a sign of celebration of Indian independent day, which is day after. He went on to sing songs from Sting, Megadeath etc.

The third band was more hard core and more heavy metal. It was a 5-piece band, with keyboard. They sang songs like Maroon’s 5 “Harder to breath”, Steve Morse, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd’s “Another brick in the world” and other great band. When he reluctantly sing Linkin Park’s “In the end”, the crowd in the front low loose control and went nut and pushing and jumping on each other like a barbarian, bottles of beers were crashing everywhere on the floor. The empty space were spare for those barbarians which reminds me of my own acts in those gigs I attended some 9 or 10 years ago. Anyway, Martin and I were in the circle of barbarians, and it was quite violent, just like a riot but luckily nothing ugly happen. We were doing this in the spirit of rock, I suppose. The band ends their performance with Van Halen’s “Jump” and the encore was Iron Maiden’s hit song which I didn’t know.


After that, we went to a nice restaurant nearby, Ola. Polish Peter already had a joint ready and we were secretly passing among us under the table. After the dinner, we proceed what we were doing to our own apartment. Again, Sabi prepared for us a round of Shisha and we were playing trivial pursuit. At around, I was quite stone and sleepy so I went to bed just to awaken by a phone call from Tanya, around 9.30 am- to inform me that another trainee has arrived and she would like to send her to my house.

I was awoken again, from the same person, this time by a doorbell. Through the fish eye, I saw the new trainee and she was gorgeous, sexy and blonde despite the fact that I was still half-asleep.


Monday the Independent Day!!

I was semi-naked when I open that door and I was still half at sleep when I usher her to the house. The new sexy blonde name is Susan, and she is from Germany. As everybody was still asleep, I wash up and brought her and show her around, kind of orientation on Koregeon Park, Pune, India, people etc.

The whole field trip was about 2-3 hours. I was very happy to see a fresh eye and fresh reaction to many amazing things of India. She was fascinated, and occasionally grasped in disbelieve when she came across cows, stray dogs, slump, beggars, crazy traffic, key makers, camel and elephant on the street and so forth. We stopped by for her first Indian food and we ordered a set lunch of Thali and many round of Chai. The lunch was my treat, as a token of welcoming.



I found it pleasurable and kind of happy when doing orientation of the city, country and its people to newcomers. I was equally exciting as they were. It was satisfying and paid off when I see those first reaction, excitement, disbelieve, laugh through them. The last time I did this was to another German, Nills the big guy.

We walked from Lane E, along the busy and chaotic with amusement of itself North main road, passing through Lane 5, Lane 6, Pizza Hut, I-way and we stopped for lunch at Thali place, near the chips store and wine shop. From there, we walked pass through Lane 7, up to the bridge and we turned left to Kriyaginagar. Again, we walked through the 100 meters strong bridge of Kriyaginagar, and we turn left for another hour walk until German bakery. She almost see everything as I showed her the unknown places where one will truly see and experience the authentic life of Indian. We even came across the street show by some Indian self-trained professional circus freaks. It was entertaining and I rewarded them with a generous appreciation of ten rupees.

Along the North main road, we met Sabi and Barbara and Sabi on the scooter, Black Martin and Magda and Julius.

Later, we went on the scooter, to Inox to book tickets for Madagascar. It was a very funny movie. Sabi, Susan and I were on the same scooter while Julius, Benny and Julian on the other one. The ride was cool, fast and furious.

Prior to the movie, I brought to one of the best coffeehouse, Barista, which just located opposite Osho commune international. This time it was her treat.

Monday night completed with a very simple yet exquisite dinner invitation by Johan, Swedish guy, who live in my company guesthouse, beside my apartment. He cooked us very fine Swedish pasta, salads and toasted cheese bread, round of beers and Scotch on the rock. It was a great evening. Few more episodes of “That 70’s show” and 3 chapters of Shantaram completed my night.

All in all, it was a good time and the weekend was long. I was happy and fulfilled. 14 days more and still counting. Soon my days here will be over and I will come back knocking on employment, begging for jobs. Real life begins at the end of traineeship and I can already smells that it is stink and I don’t like it. Whatever it is, I had live it through the moments and I had seized it, for that I will feel bless forever without an ounce of regret, whatsoever.

Regards,

Peter