Antha Pathu Naatagal- Part 2

………The evening in Park hotel Bar was more than what we thought life in Chennai would be for those upper middle class and higher income Chennaites. We bumped into few sports icons of our age, notably Dennis Lillie, the maverick Australian pace man and few popular faces of Kollywood and Mollywood.

The bar was very noisy though and the techno stuff was mostly crap and was in high decibels. However the birds were extremely good looking of all sorts, including svelte escorts accompanying, funny weird looking, Thoppai Thannivalas!

Most of the birds were either smoking or high on their vodka cocktails, with very skinny and skimmed dresses, a delight to browse, after few a whiskies!!

We were also joined later in the evening by Saravanan, Napaa and our talented maverick Prabakar for few pints. The chaps were slogging their way, tidying up the last few bits in the venue with T Karthi, who had apparently swallowed quite few shots and went for an early, quite lie in.

However, we narrowly missed the late night disco on the ground floor as Saravanan and Napa were too keen for their night dinner, whilst I and Chandru actually wanted to do other things, including the Disco spectacle. Friends come first in our priorities and hesitantly, we moved out and visited a place called “Midnight something”, near Radhakrishnan road. It was our dear Saravanan’s turn to feed us. The place was full of people, and lots of traditional Chennai food too, which were soon emptied easily by our team!

The next day was Friday, which dawned a bit slowly on me as I was possibly hung over from the previous few night’s excesses. After a late brunch of Idlis and Paaya, I headed to the venue around midday, chauffeured by my cousin.

What a day it was!!!

As I mentioned in the other blog it was, very very surreal; initially most of the faces were slightly familiar and mostly unfamiliar, however, were etched neatly and solidly after few a minutes and hours. We were right on target soon.

It was a spectacle and I thought, was initially thinking and behaving like a child visiting Trade fair in Theevu Thidal (Island ground) for the first time!

Emotions were running very high near the foyer of the Hotel Sea breeze; it was as if I was swimming against the emotional tirade of tsunami waves. The noise was hefty; people hugging and shouting at each other and in some cases with complete bewilderment.

Some obviously didn’t know, what to utter, looking at those aged bodies and faces, that too, nearly after 18 years and were obviously, visibly gob smacked.

Suri ( Surya prakash) was on the cell phone, most of the time, must be, usual for him, however was neatly dressed, as usual of his college days and looking smart too. Babu had a big moustache and big bear hug too.

Sounds ( Purkees), Aaatiyampatti, Maha, Pramod, Jyothi, Ezhil, Sabeetha, Selvi, Bharathy, Sai, Revathy, Baba, Iyer, Prabakar, Mohan, Selva and Uma Devi were all in their own elements and the crowd was getting bigger with their families too. However, few old timers, fun loving people looked changed for good and muted too. Few were bloated and puffed up, mostly most of us had no hair on the forehead, except the girls (? should I say ladies).

However, one man was getting all the attention and was visibly on a top form already. It was VSV, the born again, entertainer, who is currently working as a Surgeon in Coimbatore. I could notice a visibly laughing riot around him as he was already high on few pints of “Shakeela” (Tequila)!! I must admit that I had never seen Tequila drank straight from the bottle, neatly, and was, gob smacked.

So we started with few beers straight away and VS went on a rampage with more shakeela straights, which soon knocked him off the pedestal. Sadly we had to miss his verbal non- stop entertainment during the evening hours, however, he managed to bounce back late into the night, with some vengeance against all of us. Wonderful personality!!


Well the evening hours and the next day events are for the next blog!!