Christmas eve- 2004

An evening worth remembering for Life time....

There were 10 of us in our best of days in Pune. along with my friends for a training at FTII Pune. Being 24th of Dec. the chill in the air, set a chill of excitement in our blood to get into some adventure. So all packed we planned to take a trip to Lonavla Khandala, and to celebrate our Christmas there. So our host for the evening, my childhood friend along with his friends booked a Sumo as we had no other option to go to Lonavla.... Being a Christmas time, the SUMO man actually robbed us of 800 bugs for one way!

Thanks to the master mind of my friend that we enjoyed the street lamps to the way to Lonavla. Generally people enjoy the site in the morning. Anyway, We were different... So we landed safe and sound to Lonavla. A small place but pretty indeed. lot of people were there to enjoy their Christmas eve....like us...

So we had 3000 bugs to njoy our selves. 3000 , 10 people that made 300 each. thanks to ATM cards which helos us not to carry to much of cash, but Gawd! the machines were not working . so 300 bugs to eat drink and njoy!!!everyplace we went demanded for 1000 bugs entry.... so only 3 of us cud get in, n it was hard to decide who cud be the lucky 3...so we decided to look out for some cheaper place.

Finally, one of our fellow partner got to know from somewhere that there was some place Dukes at Khandala, where food was free along with the disc. So fun and food were hand in hand... Then wat, without even giving a 2 nd thot we hired autos and went to DUKES of Khandala. And the site was worth million dollars when we got down at our destination. Dukes was actually a 5 Star resort... but we thot lets check things out. so we entered the resort, n guess who stood there, yes it was Isha Koprikar, top star then, the choreographer Ganesh, a huge black man. All of us decided to go back decently before we were actually thrown our of the place. We came down faster than we climbed up (Simple Physics). But now what....It was almost midnight and we didn't even have a cycle to get back to Lonavala. So we thought of boarding on our 11 no. bus and to move back. After walking hal way we saw a dim-lighted Tempo coming slowly and slowly. He was in no mood to work on a Christmas Eve, but some how all girls managed to get him all of us to Khandala. Any how we managed 10 of us in one single Tempo.

By this time we all were starving and really exhausted. Finally we entered a small little restaurant with a decent furnishing. We asked the manager as to what could be offered to us with the kind of budget we had. He welcomed us with a warm herat and man, we had the best food of our life time. All of a sudden, a Santa came to us, distributed some caps and with the party at its peak, we had a jazz there in the garden itself.

Finally it was time and we had to bid farewell to Lonavla. We boarded a train to Pune. Spending 2 hours near the stinky toilet, we finally were home. But that day remains fresh in my mind forever, as the best Christmas Eve of my life.