17th of August 2010 went on as normal and as monotonous as any other day at office; me droning on about viruses and worms and trojans and other unpleasant stuff that could happen to your computer (just part of my job, am not really a pessimist) and how you could protect yourself against other people from hacking into your computer or prevent your computer from becoming a generous give-awayer (I know that's not a word, thanks) of worms; and as always, 28 faces looking back at me with a longing as to when I would utter the three magic words "Take a Break". When I had finally decided I had doled out enough 'gyan' for the day, I realised that how much ever my brain tried to remind, my stomach did not seem to remember the 3 rotis, a mango ice-cream and a cup of buttermilk I had eaten in record time (because I was hungry). A normal person with normal friends who are hungry at the same time would just walk to the cafetria and hog together. Though I would never lay claim to being a normal person, I can swear on God that not all my friends are normal by any stretch of imagination. The friend who was as hungry as I was, never gets any ideas that you could call normal.
Who would suggest going to from Velachery to Egmore at 1 in the night to eat when you are ravenous? At this point of time, my manager was done with his work too and was getting ready to go home and had given his bike away and wanted a lift. He had this idea of the three of us going in the bike, drop him off an the two of us carry on. Even though his house was just a couple of kilometres away, people who have seen me would understand why exactly this is difficult in practice.
So, we did it, triples, on an apache, riding in the narrowest lane I have ever set my eyes on. Since this friend and I, happen to be the luckiest people on the planet, (if this was a voice blog, you would have caught the sarcastic tone, since its not, I have to mention it) it started to drizzle. We drop off my manager and come to the main road, the heavens opened up; I like rain, I love getting drenched; but I like it when I am walking; its not very enjoyable when you are travelling on the bike. This was a wild pour, so we decided to shelter; when in the shelter, we found out that we were as wet as wet can be, but still waited for it to ease up a bit, and three minutes or so later, it did. So, we started again, travelled about 5 seconds when it started pouring heavier than it ever did. We were now wetter than wet can be, decided against shelter and moved on. Lady Luck decided to be extra nice with us today; while I was busy appreciating the wonderful art forms being created on my trousers by the rain, the bike started wobbling a bit while riding down one of the gazillion fly overs; we were rewarded with a flat. We got down, pushed the bike a bit and to our surprise and amazement, something did go against our rotten luck; there was a petrol bunk just 10 feet away from where we realised we had a flat. I did forget to mention that my friend had, by this time decided to go to his house in Ramapuram first, take his car and proceed to egmore. (yes, we were quite determined on getting there even after all this) So, we filled in air in the flat tyre, he thought it would be enough to take us home. You guessed it, it wasn't.We had to walk a couple of kilometres, pushing the bike, though a graveyard at 12:30 in the night. To add to the spookiness, an old man was walking behind us for atleast 800 metres, he looked old enough to belong to the place we were walking through, so naturally, we were petrified till he entered a house after crossing the graveyard.
The unpleasant, though adventurous experience ends here. Reached his house, started the car at around 1 AM, went to egmore not knowing which was the best route. I am sure somewhere I mentioned we were very well favoured by luck, so we were also quite unsure of whether the restaurant which normally functioned till 2 AM would be open today. But yes, after giving us the flat tyre and after we had courageously walked through a graveyard at midnight and came out of it alive, luck pitied us and we heaved a heavy, audible sigh of relief when the guard at the gate of Mathsya opened the door with a salute.
So, for people who did not know, Mathsya in egmore is open and allows people to enter till 2 in the morning and don't deny ANYTHING you ask for. (anything thats there on the menu card) The ambience was fantastic; I would say the food was terrific too, but I was not in the right mind to judge as I was ravenous and even raw green vegetables would have tasted as divine as my mom's Pori Saathumadhu or Bisi Bela Baath.
Aahh yes, here is the route that we took that eventful night.
