Friday, May 01, 2015

Calcutta Trip.....#1

//Post end-sems.....:)
Finally, we left the clouds of uncertainty back and once again regained the much-required solace after end-sems.
This was the time to witness the most PEACEful environment for the Physics Sem guys in Kharagpur. We could feel the air, the moment and the freedom. The Chemistry Sem guys were looking extremely devastated by their fate (ET ahead).
In such a scenario, we decided to fulfill our plan to watch the Christopher Nolan classic, 'Interstellar'. This wasn't possible in Kharagpur, Calcutta obviously.
//The plan....
With such thoughts in mind, Kushagra, aka Kush (the fun-loving Delhiite) approached the room of action, D-102. Parth lay in his iconic and trademark style (not sure if I should call it 'style') while Nishant lay scrambling for another novel in his much-celebrated collection. Vaishal couldn't really recover from the aftermath of losing a lump-sum of 2 marks in his latest exam. In such an environment, Kush emerged from nowhere and demanded the duo to leave for Calcutta at the earliest, while Parth, being a Chem-Sem guy, being left out.
Meanwhile we all arrived and the message quickly spread over to me, Vraj, Yajat and Tejas.
Me and Tejas had earlier found out that no tickets remained for the INOX cinema hall at Salt Lake from some sources. So, we denied going uselessly to Calcutta.
//Snap goes the plan....
But,

//The reassurance....
But, due to some really active work by Parth, we soon found out that most theatres in Calcutta ran almost empty. The mood soon picked up and we decided to make haste. We soon had our lunch at the mess and quickly proceeded to the gate. We picked our cab and hurried to the Kharagpur Station.
The former longest railway platform in the world welcomed us all. We had all arrangements made for the journey and quickly went to catch the 2:00 train. We got into the local (my first ride in a local train), and soon we were off on our journey to Howrah.

//Journey begins
We soon became bored by sitting and decided to engage in some sort of activity. We started playing many games and had many great and convincing talks with each other. After the much exciting and memorable journey, we finally reached Howrah at 5:30.
Howrah, the enormous station (infact the largest railway station complex in the nation), welcomed us to the 'City of Joy' -Kolkata.
We had the intents set but didn't know how to get going. We roamed aimlessly for many quarto-hours ("my invention"- blocks of time interval of 15 min. duration) and finally decided to take a cab to the nearest mall in the hope of catching the 7:30 show. But, unfortunately the traffic dissuaded us from doing so and we reached well after the speculated time.

//The mall
The Forum Mall housed the INOX, the place where the scene of action was to take place. We took our tickets for the next show at 10:30 and went to roam in the area. Located in the posh area of Calcutta, Camac Street, the mall was really a delight to watch. Excuse its size, everything else was wonderful.

But we had a mammoth task ahead. We had to burn some 2 - 2.5 hours of our time and we were literally without an idea. We had to first feed ourselves.
This was actually already premeditated that Nishant would be giving his Birthday Treat to us. So, we decided to merge the occasion and have a great dinner. We decided to reach somewhere where we could feed ourselves at Nishant's cost. We were lucky to find some location some 2-3 kms behind the mall. So, we took the city bus (fabulous ride, I must admit) and reached the expected place. After the short excursion-seeming trip, we ended up basking near Park Street.
Ambitious of a grand party and theoretically founding us at an awesome place excited us. We rushed into the Pizza Hut parlor in the vicinity and had a delightful dinner. (Ended up making the waitress uncomfortable...ahem ahem, Lad you exceed yourselves...)

After having a hearty meal, we had a greater task at hand (or maybe "at foot"). Having no cabs or buses nearby, we had to walk up the distance we had initially tread on wheels. In short, we had to clean our own created mess and reach the hall (cinema hall, not LBS. Bitch Please !) on time. The distance: 4 km, maybe (I forgot to carry my magnetotronic, ultra-hyper-induction-coiled distance meter with me which was actually my fantasy. But being a geographer, was quick to jump to clues.) And the time, some couple of quarters of an hour.
Walking aimfully on aimless and metalled roads had never been as fun. Nishant was really slow and we would have made it in half the time had Nishant offered for a lift on Vraj. But Vraj never proposed for it and hence, we had to walk it off.
Reaching the place some 5-10 min ahead of time under given circumstances was enough reason to qualify this act of us on our CVs.

Then it began. INTERSTELLAR.
Frantic, Heart-soothing, Nerve-rattling, puzzling and possibly teasing us IITians to learn such quality of science, the movie was indeed, fantabulous.
We walked off marinated in the ocean of knowledge and emotion.
Hopeful we were of experiencing a classsic, but such levels were undreamed of in this part of the world.
In short, movie raapchik thi bidu....

This was followed by our haste when we conjectured that the last locals leaves at 02:30 and we have 01:45 on the clock.
We rushed into one cab (lucky we were to fit in) and reached Howrah.
We broke a law there and were all set to break another one.
Without tickets we crept into the ready-to-move KGPian local and found us expecting KGP at 05:30 in the morning. Lad, Vaishal, Nishant, Vraj etc made themselves comfortable and slept.
We reached our home-de-jure, LBS by 06:00, content and most importantly, half-asleep.

Without thinking much, we crept towards our beds, inside the blankets and had a cozy and decent sleep.
This marked an official end to our trip.  //Jo_bhi_hua_,_achha_hua

We were now prepared to face the blazing guns of the Robotix Winter Workshop.

So, without much delay, I end it up here with a bonus for all readers.
Note that, it has nothing to do with the above shit.

Mausam-e-hasin mei mai nikla dhoondne koi shandaar shaam-e-gulshan... 
Pata chala, mai yaaron ke saath Algorithms by Cormen padh raha tha... 
Aur jab mere bagh-e-alam mei tashrif laya koi haseen khwaab, 
Tab mei shaan-e-shaukat se yeh blog-e-zamaani ko likh raha tha...

Adieu..!!

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