Every Newyear’s eve is special and it has brought something great out of me. In past 4 years my new years went as following
2012- Was watching a Movie and it happened
2013- I was in IIT Madras hostel, and i went to each hostel room to wish them happy new year
2014- Was enjoying on East Coast road with bunch of close buddies
2015: Was moaning the loss of one of the closest buddy
2016— Here it is
Worked my ass off like a sincere Ph.D student till 9 pm. Finally to see lab become a deserted place. Decided that its time to please myself. Best way to please myself is not the spirits if you are thinking after reading the title. It was food. I craved to have grilled chicken, I went to Neama next to velachery gate and had a FULL grill Chicken for myself. Yeaa, Full indeed that too for a single person. It was so delicious with the different sauces and kuboos. An amazing arabian delicacy it was. While writing about it i can really feel the juicy succulent meat in my mouth
Devoured it and realized that this was just a starter. Then hopped off from this restaurant to another one, where I had my favourite Bullseye or Half boil. And took a lemonade. Followed by Schezwan Chicken Fried rice and Chicken Chilly. Then to end the meal i had another lemonade.
After enjoying the delicious food, i felt that i should have my Ginger tea, I have a habit to have tea after my dinner meal.
In the meanwhile, my friend goutham pinged, whats the plan I said eating and was thinking will catch up a night show in LUXE after the meal. Looked for tickets it was houseful, it seemed like there were many more intelligent people like me who wanted to welcome new year while watching movie.
Then goutham told, shall we go around chennai on Bike to see the celebration around. It felt exciting i told an instant yes and ask him to come fast. He as usual slower than girls in turning up was around an hour late. I came to my hostel room and was watching videos about the border disputes.
He came at 11 pm, and we started the ultimate fun loving journey to watch the spirit of chennai to celebrate new year. We decided to go to thiruvanmiyur beach. we managed to put some shortcuts and we reached their by 11:30
Voila, generally there is not even a single soul in beach, but it seemed like a lot of people, the beach was swarmed with people. People from all walks of life, young, old , gals , boys, aunties. I was seeing a different chennai.
Is this the same chennai which was battling with floods and now exactly 30 days later people are in full spirit to welcome the new year. There were some spirtual souls who were out with booze but nobody was in beach who was drinking, all drank their enough share and were having in the beach.
Young guys were dragging each other to pull them in beach, others were sitting talking, some were playing with colorful light bulbs, some were taking rides, some were looking at the sky and dreaming and yeaah most of them were full on in energy to dance.
Who says you need money to celebrate, you just need to go to beach side and you will see an awesome celebrations. We moved from one end of the beach to another. we spotted some gals as well. Then we finally decided to get a couple of kulfi for us. we thought prices will be inflated seeing the large number of people and less number of icecream vendors but it was the same as on normal days. We ate our kulfi and we were walking on the beach.
Goutham went to waterside in the beach to wash his sticky hands after having kulfi. I pushed him further. It seemed his pockets were shallow and his REDmi 1s, his prized possession was lost amidst the sea water. He started searching for it. One thing i observed, he was calm. he was not panicked. it taught me a lesson that being furious wont help even however bad the situation. Keep calm and let it come.
it was just 15 minutes before new year he lost his 15 months old phone, but his spirit was still enlighted to see the people bursting crackers and i could see the light in his eyes, full of excitement. There were fireworks all over the place. People with drums were also around apart from that, some sand artist had drawn on the sand, happy new year.
We were enjoying the fun of fireworks and dance of the drunken wizards. as the clock ticked, people started counting with it and dancing, everybody seemed to be happy there was a positive energy flowing, I could sense the spirit of chennai coming back after being flooded just a month back
As clock struck 12, everybody started wishing everybody, there was no discrimination on the basis of class, caste, creed, religion as there were only three words on the people’s mouth and those were Happy New year.
Shaking hands hugging and wishing happy new year… Almost 100’s of people wished me and i wished 100’s more without knowing them, all was happening automatically it was an amazing feeling.
Then we decide to move to besant nagar beach. As we took our bike out, we were struck in traffic. Guess why the traffic, because people were stopping and wishing each other happy new year.
Some of them were climbing on top of their cars and some even on others car. People were dancing in full enjoyment, cars opened their windows blew up their stereo and people were dancing around it.
I also disembarked the bike and was helping in clearing the traffic, wishing people and dancing also. This was the fun part, you dont even know and people come to you to wish you happy new year. it was indeed amazing. We decided to go to bessy and on the whole way there people tripling or even quadrapling on the bikes, only three words happy new year.
We finally reached bessy amidst all this chaos, bessy was 10 times more swarmed with people, on roads there were more heads than vehicles, it looked amazing, shops were open. We decided to go to church to pay our holy regards as this was christian new year mainly. There were people people every where, we were getting moved by the crowd and crowd was getting moved by us.
After taking the blessings for the year, we decided to come back, throughout our wayback from the beach to campus, we saw people wishing new year and doing stunt on bikes, police was rendered helpless.
Everybody was having fun, Church near IIT gate had caused long queues of car due to lack of parking.
We also observed lot of people fighting on roads creating jams in the influence of alcohol. We entered campus, it was few degrees cooler inside. We decided to go to RAMU for tea. In the middle we wished new year to all bunches of people we met.
At ramu had tea, met some people who also had gone to beach but we never met them there. Then I also met akhil who had come to see a concert at musical academy. After tea back to room, but night was still on.
We started watching movie gridiron gang on full volume, and in the meanwhile movie got over it was 5:30 in the morning.
To summarize, we realized the spirit of chennai without getting influenced by the spirit and celebrated the new year my way.
Life is exciting and beautiful, if you see it that way. Else its not..
All the best for the year ahead, i will keep coming with exciting adventures for you.