I didn’t anticipate that it would happen now. Infact none of
us predicted that. We were just carried out our day to day work in our office
without even having a thought of that (well, it is in my case atleast). Things
are keep on happening in the world around you even if you don’t notice. It
happened just like that.
Well, What happened is the question?
So the answer is “Trisha has decided to get married…” (name
changed due to confidential reasons :)).
By using that name I can feel your eagerness who doesn’t know about her and
anger as well who knows about her :).
Anyway please don’t judge that the story is going to be about her marriage.
She has invited few of us one month prior to her marriage.
Since it is in Pollachi near Coimbatore, the venue attracted us and we started
showing interest to attend that marriage. And ofcourse she is one of our
greatest team members and friends too - to not forget mentioning about that. We
started planning about the trip. While in planning we came to know that couple
of our vetty gang key members didn’t receive the invitation and hesitated in
attending the marriage. Well, here we had a challenging situation to trigger
some interest in them to join the trip. So, we decided to add another agenda in
our trip.
And that agenda is VAALPAARAI.
So, everyone agreed for the trip now even the vetty group
key members who didn’t receive their invitation. So the step-2 process is to
take permissions for the leave. Couple of us struggled a lot to get their
permissions since we are married. ;). We informed our managers for our planned
leaves and applied it. Our managers are kind enough to accept our leave
requests unlike our better halves (obviously it’s a joke :)). We planned to make
the trip in 2 hatchback petrol cars (jazz and i20). Here our plan goes like
this…. Start at Wednesday afternoon and reach Pollachi the same night. Thursday
morning to attend the marriage and start to Vaalpaarai, should reach there by
lunch. Rest of Thursday at rest, Friday to visit Athirapalli falls and Saturday
morning to start back to Chennai. Step 3 plan is to book our stays. Bride
promised us that she takes care of stay at Pollachi on Wednesday night. We have
to book the stay at Vaalpaarai for 2 nights. We searched for some resorts and
tea bungalows through internet. Nothing worked out but a resort we got it
through just dial. Deepika Residency is the resort name. We called the contact
person Kumaresan and registered our bookings and we paid 2000 as advance to
confirm the bookings. The story is about 2 parts… one is pre trip and the
second is on trip. Now we see the first part.
Once the trip was planned and confirmed all of us were bit
excited. Bachelors were excited because they are going for a trip. Married men
were excited because they are going for a bachelor’s trip. One guy was
interested to join the trip from another team since it is the bachelor trip.
Ofcourse he was married and a good friend of one of our vetty group key member.
Only one of us was not excited and even not remembered about the trip till we
started. That could be because he is a bachelor. One man got the permission
from his better half just a week back the travel starts. Meanwhile I was busy
in changing the batteries and car tyres to my jazz since it was already due and
for the safe of co travelers in the long drive. We were discussing and planning
about the trip /travel in our daily after lunch get-to-gethers. We were discussing
about the route to reach Pollachi and finalised the route as follows. Chennai –
Chengalpet – Villupuram – Ulundhurpet – Athur – Salem – Avinashi – Pollachi.
Then we were discussing about the driver options where we had enough number of
alternate drivers too. Some of our vetty group members who were not joining the
trip were very irritated about our chats in the name of planning, but we don’t
want to stop because of that, since it gave us the energy for rest of the day
work. Yes ofcourse, it was a good motivation for most of us to carry out the
work in office. Suddenly we got a doubt whether our cars would accommodate 5
members comfortably. Why doubt, let’s check practically. Few days we went to
the parking area and just rehearsed our seating positions. I don’t know exactly
what they concluded even the space is little bit constraint. We all were set to
go, so no constraints. I have created a whatapp group named Pollachi, to do the
instant planning. But I don’t see any important planning done there but shared
few songs list for the travel. Car owners should take the responsibilities for
creating the play lists. We had few sound check sessions in the lunch time. In
the name of checking audio quality we have taken rests in the car. But I dint
had any clue what would have happened if the sound quality test fails. All
these happened just because of the excitement of the trip.
When we passed the days like this the calendar has already
reached the travel date. Yes, that is Wednesday morning. We reached office with
travel bags since we planned to start from office at lunch time. Couple of us
were engaged in deadlines. So we planned to start as 2 batches. One has started
around 1.30pm with 3 members. It has to pick up 2 persons on the way, one from
Padur and another from tambaram. Another batch started at 3.30pm after they
completed the tasks. I am the driver for the 2nd batch. We had lunch
just near Navalur and started at around 4.30pm. So, the long awaited journey
started with wheat parota and egg kurma as delayed lunch.
We are here in the end of part – 1 – pre trip. Here comes
the part – 2 - On trip. Lets wait for that for next release.
