Vermeen's visit to Bangalore and BMS-Elec's Dasara get-togehter at Sanjeev's home

Oct 1st, 2011, Saturday.


Vermeen had come down from Romania on a brief trip to India and took some time-off to visit BMS College friends at Bangalore. One of the pre-requisites of her trip was to enjoy an authentic South Indian Lunch apart from meeting us all.


Sanjeev and Surju hosted a 'propah' South Indian Authentic Lunch, and invited us all for a wonderful time off at their beautiful home. Archana and Shubha declared the dress code as Kurta and Jeans for men and Sarees for the ladies!.


Archana, Shubha, Vermeen, Tarun, Rekha, Navya, Naveen, Madhuri, Namitha, Janardhan, Sowmya, Srujan, Jaya, Sanvi, Jaya's cousin, Deepa, Soujanya, Pooja, myself along with hosts Sanjeeva, Surju and little Srivali, were able to catch up and have a gala time.


The event looked very festive and colorful. The ambience was just perfect and the kids had a great time as well. Lip-smacking food served on Plantain leaf tasted simply excellent and every bit delicious, thanks to Sanjeev's caterer! Overall a wonderful day to celebrate Dasara and catching up with old friends! BMS-Elec rocks!


Ramaneesh could not make it to the party and was dearly missed. Hope that the next time around he will be definitely be able to make it.


Here are some photos taken during the event.

Vermeen Visits Bangalore - Dasara Celebrations @ Nagehonolu

Visting Chennai for Abhi's Upanayanam

The preparation to visit Chennai for Abhi's Upanayanam began as early as a month before in order to beat the Deepavali holiday crowd. Reservations were made well in advance to ensure that all of us had a good travel to Chennai and back.

Amma and Jyothi Aunty left early on the 15th of Oct. Gopinath Uncle pulled along Soujanya, Pooja and Anna on the Shatabdi Express on the 19th of Oct. Kiran, Anu, Naveen, Sowmya, Dwarakanath Uncle, Geetha Aunty and myself took the Night train on the 20th of Oct.

Chennai this time, greeted with moderate heat and sultriness giving us all a lot of comfort. Delicate 'Bangaloreans' that we are, it was still hard for us to bear the humidity of the place.

We went straight to Paddu Aunty's house at Tambaram and got ready to hit the choultry after a quick bath. As expected, Abhi's Upanayanam had gotten over by 5:30 in the AM, so there was nothing much to be done at the Choultry, but to find a suitable location where air was in abundant supply. So we all found that beautiful spot somewhere on the 2nd floor and let ourselves loose to dissipate some heat.

While the most of the male tribe was horizontal, a few of the unlucky ones thought of a brilliant plan to have have lunch early and visit a few places before a few of us left back for Bangalore. Using all the networking skills of Naveena, we quickly arranged for a AC Tempo Traveller and in the mean time finalized the quick trip plan to cover Ashtalakshmi Temple @ Besant Nagar and the Marina Beach.

In the middle of things, we caught Abhi, Balaji Uncle and Paddu Aunty straying from their home range of the first floor and managed to take a few group snaps for posterity.

During the lunch hour, we witnessed the 'Post-Upanayananam' rituals of Abhi. The food was served and must say that it was Umm-mazing! By 3 PM, we had taken a small nap and all set to leave for the trip. So we packed our bags (well, we never unpacked in the first case!) and up we got loaded into the AC environs of the Tempo Traveller. We bade good-byes to Paddu Aunty, Balaji Uncle and Abhi and hit the road for the Ashtalakshmi temple.

We spent an hour or so at the Besant Nagar beach. The sun was shining hard, but the beach was pleasantly less populated, so out came the cameras for a whole lot of pictures. The setting was just perfect and all the pairs in the team wanted to be in front of the camera for once. Pooja had a whale of a time playing with the waves. The difficult part came when we had to pull her out of the beach to move on to the Ashtalakshmi Temple which is right on the shoreline.

The temple was neat, well maintained and visiting the 8 different Lakshmis was a breeze. There was no huge rush and we got ample time to go around the temple and spend some time there.

Once we came out of the temple, the male bastion latched onto a street-side bhelpuri-wallah and later the ladies joined the club. In my frank-est assessment, we made the Bhelpuri-wallah richer than the 'Ashtalakshmi' standing for eternity, inside the temple. Well, the Lakshmi is any ways the goddess of money, so she wont need it as much as the Bhelpuri-wallah!

We got back into our cab and next we left for the Marina Beach. The sun was almost going down and so we quickly took a few more snaps. A few "Shundals" later (Chennai's most renowned Beach-grub), we sat down on the off-white sands of the Marina, on a moon-less evening, surrounded by thousands of other visitors sitting bumper to bumper and watched the waves lash the beach.

Kiran, (Soujanya's maternal cousin), who has started working in Chennai a few weeks back, met us while we were leaving the beach. We pulled him along for a dinner with us. Later in the night, we had a sumptuous dinner at one of hotels near the Railway station.

We bade good-byes to Amma, Jyothi Aunty, Gopinath Uncle and Kiran (Souji's cousin) who would stay back at Chennai for a some more days and the rest of us (Anna, Soujanya, Pooja, Kiran, Naveen, Dwarakanath Uncle and Geetha Aunty) jumped into the train in our designated coaches on returned back to "Namma Bangalore" after a beautiful day @ Chennai.

Here are some photographs and videos that we took during our visit to Chennai.

Abhi's Upanayanam and Trip to Chennai

BMS - ELEC catch up @ Kuntz's place

Sunday, the 6th of September, all(most) of us - BMS ELEC - folks caught up at Srikanth's place @ J P Nagar.

Attendees included Sudheendra, Meera and Shruthi, Sanjeev, Sarju and Srivali, Naveen, Madhuri and Namitha, Sudhir and Jaya, Janardhan and Sowmya, Pooja, Soujanya and myself along with hosts Maaya, Chitra and Sreekanth.

The day warmed up with some major discussions around Sudheendra's recent invasion of China and how much he loved that place and his (mis)adventures with pure vegetarian food he consumed over there. Post that, we had some discussions going over with Education and Schooling in Melbourne, Bangalore and elsewhere followed by Alternate forms of Schooling, latest trends of schooling being adopted in Bangalore, followed by a few ideas on starting our own schools with the only motto of making money. With gray matter utilization reaching 100% and no space left to think more, Srikanth and Sudheendra went in search for Food for thought.

A super duper lunch with Spicy and Steaming Pulav, Raitha, Thair-Vada, Jamoons, Curd rice and Pedhas were just what the hungry souls wanted. Bur-rrrp!

The kids hijacked most of the lunch session and the next two hours afterwards, by a very good practical demonstration of how to bring the roof down with their tantrums. We (poor parents) were made mere spectators to the sunday matinee show of their amazing display of how easy it is to take control of the parents. Time was the only weapon the parents could bank on and we regained some strength when the sedatives worked to our benefit!

While entering the house, I remember the neatly ordered magazines, the creaseless bedspreads, all the cushions decked in place, chairs ordered neatly across the dining table. Well, need to admit that this was not how we left the house after the meeting! Thanks to our kids!

The tea-time soon followed where a new thread of discussion on Sudheendra's IIM college exeperiences which triggered off the nostalgic college days @ BMS, which continued till the late in the evening. Starting off with our exploits with various lecturers, our exam scores (and re-scores!), Copying stunts during tests (and its fallouts!), expectation of results after exams and consequences after results, Basketball days, amazing experience with our favourite lecturers starting from MNV, MM, Meena M'am, Alasingar, GG, RSD, SR, DRK, 'Crowbar' and many more!

By the way, no BMS-Elec discussion is ever complete without talking about the beautiful girls who have made BMS college of what it is today. The full list of girls right through our college days was discussed in the minutest detail. A few of them I guess are still being tracked even till today!. With all these discussions coming without any filters, I am sure newly married Sudhir and Janardhan would have a long drive back home. Sudhir, Janardhan, take care buddies and all the best. We will discuss about your 'traveling back home' experiences in our next meeting!

The event can be treated as one of the most 'rarest of the rare' in the recent past. Not because, it was difficult to get everybody under one roof with a short notice, but because, Sudheendra made it !!! 'Everybody' which included himself, wanted a photograph with him. A great group photo did the trick. Click on the snap below for a few other snaps.

BMS - Elec meeting @ Kuntz place

Well, at the end, It was just another fantastic day to spend time with friends and hope many more do come by. It simply brightened up my day inspite of the outcast weather, the recession hit IT industry, and the rising price of Dals and Sugar.

Thanks so much everybody for taking your time off for keeping in touch with each other. We definitely missed Tarun, Rekha, Navya, and families of Archana, Shubha and Vermeen. Thanks Kuntz and Chitra for hosting us all. (to be read: for being patient till we all left)

Folks - It would be great if you can send across snaps from your camera as well. I will add them onto the blog.