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Posts tagged saturday
Chennai Life – Ep.2
May 23rd
You all love weekends, don’t you? I used to love them too, once upon a time. Here in Chennai, I wish weekends would be wiped off the calendar for good, to be replaced by 2 more working days.
“Why?”, you ask. So lemme tell you, I live in a God-forsaken place where I’d be lucky to find a restaurant open on Sundays. Saturdays are comparatively better, since most food joints in this area are open. Now this may or may not apply to Chennai ‘city’, so don’t get too wound up. However, the heat is still terrible. Apparently the Sun doesn’t do us any favours on weekends. The heat just makes me wish I could run away to the office and spend the day in the air-conditioned rooms.
So yes, we don’t have an air-conditioner in my room. In any other place, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But when I mentioned this to a friend of mine who was brought up in Chennai, she was shocked. Not having an AC in this city is equivalent to a death-wish, it seems. Still, I shall brave the weather and try to survive the 2×4=8 days of a month or two, somehow. After all, I’ll probably be posted at some place other than Chennai after training is over, right?
Right?
Right??
How NOT to Spend a Saturday
Nov 8th
Let’s be honest. We all make it through five working days just because we anticipate a relaxing and fun-filled Saturday at the end of those five days. I actually start the countdown on Monday – “Just 5 more days to go, so hang in there!”. And it actually works! At the end of each day, I proudly say to myself that I’ve survived another long and boring 10 hours. This pride turns into unbridled joy at the end of Friday, for obvious reasons. That’s when I start planning for Saturday, one of the 2 days in a week when I actually don’t curse the whole world when I wake up. 
This Saturday though, was different. The apartment where all of us live, wore a deserted look since most of the people had left for nearby tourist spots on Friday night itself. I didn’t accompany my friends to Tirupati since I’d already been there once. I also didn’t have any intentions of sight-seeing in Bangalore, since there was hardly anyone to accompany me. So I thought I’d deal with some of my responsibilities as the unfortunate Class Rep ( more on that in a few days), namely getting a file photo-copied for the entire class. And for that, I needed to travel to the Academy from the apartments. Our bus leaves at 9 AM on Saturdays and as I had feared, I woke up at 10:30. I took along another friend of mine, Subhash, who needed to get some things done. And as if waiting for a bus wasn’t bad enough, it started raining. Luckily for us, we didn’t have to stand in the rain for too long. The photo-copying got over pretty quickly, Subhash got his chores done and since we had nothing else to do over there, it was back to the apartments for us.
By the time we reached our dwelling, it was time for lunch. Now lunchtime is a time when we actually get to see scores of people, some of whom we might have never seen before in the Academy. But today saw a record turnout of just 30-35 unfortunate souls who were left behind. On top of that, there was no electricity since morning. So our usual TV and lunch routine had to abandoned. Instead, we had Subhash playing his cellphone on full blast, churning out some of his all-time favourite songs. 
After a rather sumptuous meal, again we had nothing to do. The weather was very gloomy thanks to the constant drizzle. There was still no power and none of our laptops had enough juice to last the length of a movie. The best we could do now was to go to our rooms to sleep and wake up only when it was tea-time. I had already exhausted my sleep quota for the day so it was almost impossible for me to take a nap again. So for 2 hours straight I lay on my bed, listening to the radio. Tea-time couldn’t come soon enough, I thought.
In the evening, the numbers fell even more – only 20 or so were left by now. Thankfully, we were able to watch a bit of TV and then a few of us went for a stroll in the street. Soon it was time for dinner and TV. After another walk in the street, I sat glued to the TV, watching Hellboy-II. Actually this was the most interesting and exciting thing I did all day. The movie got over at around 11:10 and I rushed back to my flat.
And as I turned on my laptop to check my mails, I felt a sudden urge to document probably the most boring Saturday I’ve ever spent since I’ve been in Bangalore. The result is this post and a prayer – a prayer so that may I never have to write such a post ever again. 
