The First Weekend of The Second Decade of The Third Millennium

The title will sound too convoluted but I liked the 1-2-3 combination so this title instead of ‘The First Weekend of 2011’ or something similar.

The weekend actually turned into a long one, unwillingly so. I’ll start with Friday, 31st December, 2010. The salary was a shock. I wouldn’t go into exact figures but the income tax deduction ran into five figures, which was totally unexpected and jeopardized all the plans, not just the evening, but the coming months as well. The plans anyway weren’t on track in the first place. I wanted to have a pizza party at my place with a night long movie marathon with friends. Most of the friends backed out and till 6, the time I left office, I didn’t have any plans for the night. To make things worse, I got a headache on my way home. Shri called up to fix up a place for dinner, I refused since I didn’t feel like going anywhere. Anyway, being great buddies, Shri convinced me to come and we decided to meet for dinner at Pizza Hut. I walked from my home to Kalyani Nagar, picked up Kirti and reached the venue. After a half an hour wait due to the new year rush, we got a table. Manas, Shri and Asmita showed up only after we had finished the starters and the Pizza had arrived. They ordered more stuff and we were eating and chatting till about 1 in the night. In the meantime there was wishing a happy new year, phone calls to family and close friends. I was back home at about 1:30 and was on the phone for a good part of the next two hours and finally slept off at 4 in the morning.

I got up at about 10 in the morning, drafted a new year mail to my friends, replied to the mails and messages I had received and after finishing the pasta from the night was on my way to Mumbai by about 1. The entire journey was spent mostly on the phone and little bit napping. I reached home by about 5:30 in the evening and the family decided to go out for dinner after freshening up. Dinner was at a new restaurant opposite Phoenix Mills compound, called Grass Roots. The food was nice but they need to shape up in the service quality. But I’ll not be too harsh on them since they are just 3 months old in the business. Dinner was followed by ice cream at Gelato which was available at Rs 9/- being the 1st of the month. The time between dinner and sleeping is usually marked with phone calls to friends. That night was no different.

2nd was the day when we were to go to see Asaram Bapu, our guruji. We got up a bit late and then went to seek his blessings after breakfast. The plan was to meet him, come back home and leave for Pune in the evening. He asked to come again in the evening and since you don’t go against the guru’s instructions we went again in the evening. The plans for Pune were cancelled and we decided to leave early morning next day. I slept around 11:30.

That brings us to the point for which this post was created. Everyone was asking me why I had to take an off on Monday, 3rd January, 2011. Well, me and my dad got up at about 3:30 in the morning and left at 4, after brushing. The plan was to get home by about 7-8, freshen up, get ready and leave for office. Destiny had other plans, it seems. The tires were making screeching noises which we thought probably was a minor problem. It turned out that the wheels had lost their alignment and this was putting excess load on the front right tire. We had just crossed the first toll on the expressway when a car overtook us and asked us to pull over. He told us that the front right tire of our car was about to burst. We examined it and were shocked to see that the treads had come off and the radials had started coming out. I replaced the damaged tire with the spare one and started driving slowly, stopping frequently to examine the tire.

A few kms later it also started getting damaged and we somehow reached the fuel station about 15 kms before the second toll. The guy gave us a used tire for 900 bucks and assured us that it will last us till Pune. It, however, started wearing out only a few kms later and we took the exit at Dehu road in order to reach civilization early. We couldn’t find a single shop dealing in tires and wheel alignment. Finally on the old Mumbai-Pune highway, a few kms before Dehu road the tire gave away and burst. The only option left with us now was to use the damaged tire which we had kept in spare. I put this one in the rear, deflated it a bit to reduce the pressure on the tube and put the good tire in the front.

On enquiring the locals told us that we’ll find the nearest shop in Chinchwad at Thermax Chowk. We couldn’t find any shops dealing in automobile tires but I spotted a place carrying out wheel alignment. We got the alignment corrected which had gone off by 3 degrees. Come to think of it, 3 degrees can cause so much trouble! Once the alignment was corrected, the only worry was now to find out a tire shop before the damaged wheel in the rear gave in. We found this shop, Maharashtra Traders, in Pimpri and bought two new tires. The new ones went in the front, the damaged ones got discarded and the front left one which had also worn off a bit due to the uneven loading became the spare one. By the time we were done with all this it was already past 11 in the morning and I informed my colleagues that I may not be coming in for the day.

We reached home, tired, hungry, dirty and sleep deprived past noon and by the time we freshened up and had our meal it was 2 in the afternoon. Seeing no point in going to office we slept off and I woke up only at quarter to 7 in the evening. After the evening prayers, it was time for dinner. I finished the blog post (the previous one), browsed through some old photographs and called it a day.

Thus, my first weekend of the second decade of the third millennium came to an end. :)

Cheers

Aalok

--Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered and no one was there.