Manufactured Births

Urmila Sinha cannot remember
when she was born

The authenticity of birth dates came up for question today as Urmila Sinha was asked when she would like to be born. Stumped by the absurdity of the question, she left it to the Club to decide on her date of birth.
The question should appropriately have been worded as ‘when she would like to celebrate her birthday’. For, like Shekhawat, Nahid Khan, Naseer Putani Shah, Bhaswati Bose and many others, Urmila was born in some village home and not in a hospital. As such, she does not hold an ‘official’ birth certificate.
On the records of the Club though, Urmila’s birth date is shown as November 11. This, as we all know, is an assumption, which may or may not be true. But so far as we were concerned, it was important to know whether she would be giving us a birthday treat

Shekhawat (back to camera) narrates the saga of his catastrophic birth

on November 11 (i.e. a day after the Juhu Beach party) or some time later.
If there was anyone present who could empathise with Urmila completely, it was Shekhawat. All his life he has had to explain that in the absence of any hospital near his village, he does not have a birth certificate and the date mentioned in government records is actually a figment of his imagination. In truth, he is much older than his ‘official age’ of 76 years.
Today also, Shekhawat was hard pressed at explaining that when he was born, a terrible drought struck his village. Without elaborating whether he was the cause or that it was no more than a coincidence, he said he has to rely on hearsay as there were no means for confirmation back then. If anything, he has been able to locate his approximate date of birth by that catastrophe.
Shekhawat could well be speaking for all those who have no clue of when they were really born – if not hatched.

Bihari Milwani:
Nobody knows his/ her own birth date. It is only when our parents tell us the date that we accept it and inform the world.

Peculiar Dilemma

The exercises today, out in the open

Now that we are almost done with festivals and the monsoon is as good as gone, attendance for the exercises is beginning to look up. This has given rise to a peculiar situation. We need to decide whether to continue exercising in the China Hut or else,

Nahid Khan

go out in the open and work up a sweat as we had been doing for years.
Yesterday, we were confronted with this dilemma, when attendance hit double digit even before the start of the exercises. By the time we were half-way through, the China Hut was choc-a-block with heaving bodies as members tried hard to stretch their limbs without touching one another.
That was when we realised it was time to vacate the place.

Banoo Apa (back to camera) treats us to barfis

The weather had cleared out and we would no longer be constrained by space in the open lawn. But this morning, Nahid Khan put her foot down, protesting over having to move out. “It is too hot outside,” she claimed. “I need the fan to exercise.”
Indeed, it was quite sunny today. On being told that the fresh air and heat were perfect for exercising – the very purpose of our leaving home and being in the Garden – Nahid’s argument was that even gyms had AC. And she was only asking for a fan. She finally came around when told that fans were banned for a reason in the gyms of army and police officers and that ACs are installed in commercial gyms, mainly to attract customers.
But our dilemma is no way resolved. There are many like Nahid who have got so accustomed to exercising in the cool confines of the China Hut that returning to nature is not acceptable. That the China Hut was merely a temporary refuge from the rains escapes them. The choice is between creature comfort and a rewarding morning workout.

Lt Col Angad Singh (rtd):
Exercising under the large blue umbrella created by the Almighty is best. It gives you fresh oxygen, cover as per availability and sweating is desirable to remove all the toxins of the body. Keep enjoying and laughing.

Bihari Milwani:
The solution lies in sincerely doing Surya Namaskar. We must pray to the sun god to provide us some cool breeze.

3 Major Decisions

Discussions on charting a road map for the club

THREE important decisions were taken this morning at an informal meeting after the exercises:
One, the party scheduled at Juhu Beach this Sunday (yesterday’s post) has been postponed by a week. November 3 is Chatth Puja, a major festival (especially for migrants from eastern India).

Naseer Putani Shah returned
today after a critical eye surgery 

The beach will be virtually out of bounds for us as it would be milling with crowds of devotees and hangers-on. It was therefore felt that we should push our party date by another week, to November 10 (Sunday). The venue remains the same.
Two, the next New Year’s celebration will be held at Borivli National Park and for a change, there will be no outside food. It will be a ‘potluck picnic’ with everyone pooling in with home-cooked dishes and savories. As Nahid Khan put it, “we shall take our pick from whatever is available” rather than source food from some caterer or restaurant. This would be another departure from our norm.
Three, the Annual Day function stands cancelled. Instead, we shall be having Sports Day, as we did the last time around. It was generally felt that preparations for the Annual Function are not just time-consuming but also generates bad blood among members, especially during the rehearsals. Moreover, as Kiran Prakash pointed out, we suffer from an acute paucity of artistes and engaging outside talent is not a good idea. A sporting event is comparatively more inclusive, rewarding, enjoyable and well worth the effort.
These decisions are of course, subject to the convenience of all members. For instance, Yusuf Rassiwala will be away in Surat for a week from November 14. Any moment Shekhawat will air dash to his village in Rajasthan as a close relative lies terminally ill in hospital. Kiran Prakash will also be out of town during the year-end due to a wedding in the family… A consensus will have to be drawn at every stage owing to such exigencies.

Celebrating Diwali

Impromptu Diwali get-together in the China Hut

Banoo Apa came loaded with biscuits and potato chips today. Naheed Siddiqui brought imported chocolates. Rakhee Bansi brought flavoured pedas. And Urmila Sinha brought Diwali prasad from the puja she had at home last night.
Thus we celebrated the biggest Hindu festival of the year in the best secular traditions of the Club. Diwali was yesterday. Being a Sunday, we could not celebrate together. Today, the ladies more than made up for what we missed.
A bigger and more formal celebration now awaits us on

Rishi with his grandparents

the evening of November 3 (Sunday) at Juhu Beach (ref post of October 19).

Rishi (r) goes looking for a mouse

As reported earlier, Shekhawat has matched the Club’s budget with a personal contribution of like amount (never mind if this is his treat for a recent pension hike) that would effectively take care of 50 per cent of the party expenses.
Raising our festive spirits today, Bijoy Gupta’s grandson, Rishi sprung a surprise by dropping into the China Hut. This is his third visit in as many years. Since his birth, he has unfailingly been keeping his appointment with the Club on his annual visits from London.
Over time, we have had the pleasure of watching him grow into a lively and talkative little tot.
Rishi’s present fixation is the “three mouse” inhabiting his house. He therefore wants to be a cat when he grows up. He does not like dogs, even as they are “more big and strong”. He even took his “dada” (grandpa) to a nearby hedge suspecting that a mouse could be hiding there. When told that there were many of them, he scooted.
Gupta’s problem with Rishi is one of communication – a common complaint with doting grandparents failing to interact with kids born and raised on foreign soil. “He speaks a kind of English I cannot catch,” Gupta admits. “I do not understand a word he says. But he perfectly understands whatever I say, even when I am speaking in Hindi.”

Karun Sharma:
This is truly Diwali celebrated in the family spirit. It spreads across to the generation of grandchildren.

Bihari Milwani:
Now Gupta-ji must go to a convent school and learn how to understand his grandson. The fact is, I am also facing the same problem.

DAY 2934

Pic of the Week

Who says only babies need spoon-feeding?

Ruki Ruki, Yes Shekoo/ Eating Sugar? No Shekoo/ Telling Lies? No Shekoo/ Open Your Mouth, HA HA HA!!! --Bihari Milwani

'Raja-Rani'

Bijoy Gupta

Shekhawat was today anointed raja (king) of the club. By extension, we have become his praja (subjects). And guess who is the rani (queen)? Rukhsana Khan. Together, they make for an enchanting ‘Raja-Rani’ duo… or so would Bijoy Gupta like us to believe.
As for the optics, we must concede that Gupta cannot be entirely faulted. Anyone dropping by, as we exercise in the China Hut, cannot miss how Shekhawat and Rukhsana, both seated on high chairs next to each other, hold court while the rest of us pay obeisance to them. It is a spectacle reminiscent of the glory days of Indian royalty.
Significantly, Shekhawat and Rukhsana were both sporting enough to acknowledge the ‘title’ bestowed upon them.

Raja and Rani (at the far end) hold court in China Hut

Shekhawat even started to throw his weight around, ordering people the way some raja would. And Gupta was just as unsparing, poking fun at his friend all morning. “What are you doing leaving your rani behind?” Gupta would say every time Shekhawat left his seat.
There is a back-story to this though. Rukhsana needs the height of two chairs (one on top of the other) to adjust the level of her seating ever since she underwent a hip surgery. A single chair is too low for her. So, for the past two years, she is the only one to have an extra chair to herself during the exercises.
Shekhawat obviously does not like this. Call it one-upmanship or childish envy, he has of late, been insisting upon an extra chair to be on level with Rukhsana. Moreover, he makes sure that the two double-chairs are placed side by side so that they get to sit next to each other. This has been the standard operating procedure for us since we moved into the China Hut about six months back.
So it is not unusual for Shekhawat and Rukhsana to be seen sitting together in positions of pre-eminence (at least, visually) while we exercise. But for Gupta to pick on them today and confer the title of a royal couple would seem a little odd. If anything, this is evidence of his fertile imagination running riot.

Home, Sweet Home

Razia Khan tip-toes into our morning discussions

Should the elderly be made to relocate under family pressure, however well-intended the move may be? Regardless of whether the new home is better located or more spacious, even luxurious and comfortable, is it fair to uproot them from their well-settled lives?
This became the subject of animated discussion today as Rukhsana Khan revealed that she is longing to return to the flat she vacated six months back. Sadly, the place has been put on rent while she presently occupies a lush, sprawling apartment in a prestigious high rise not far away.
Clearly, she does not feel at home in the new address.

Kiran Prakash

“A home is where your heart belongs and you develop roots,” opined Banoo Apa, who is almost in the same boat as Rukhsana. “Whatever the drawbacks of my old flat, it was there that we made our fortunes, friends and foes… We belong to that place. I still feel it is calling us back.”
Coincidentally, Banoo Apa and Rukhsana had moved out of their homes around the same time in April and went on to be neighbours in the same apartment complex. Apart from the avoidable expenditure on commute (earlier, they could walk it to the Garden), both of them have not yet got over the feelings of nostalgia and it surfaces regularly in their everyday conversations.
On this, Shekhawat is completely rigid. Over the years, he has acquired several high-end properties around the city, but has never thought of shifting into any of them. “Why should I shift?” he questions. “My flat is auspicious to me. My family and I are well-adjusted here. We are not interested in moving into a new locality and starting life afresh.”
Meanwhile, Kiran Prakash has returned to his old flat after spending a year or so in Malad. The distance and heavy traffic en route to the Garden were major deterrents for him to report for the exercises daily. For the last five months he had completely stopped coming as he got busy refurbishing the flat. So when he showed up unannounced this morning, everybody was overjoyed. We raised a fourth laugh to celebrate his return.

Bihari Milwani:
After a long and extended rainy season, we saw the ‘ray of light’ in our Kiran Prakash.

Attributions

Shekhawat growls at an invisible Gupta on the chair

Wagging the tongue, an exercise meant to jog the brain cells, is specifically attributed to Yusuf Rassiwala. But he is not the only one to have an exercise to his name. Thanks to Shekhawat, at least three other members have come to be associated, directly or indirectly, with one or the other exercise every morning.
The first is Rukhsana Khan. The moment a call goes out for 'Nach Baliye', Shekhawat gets into his act. While all of us would dutifully rotate our hips -- first clockwise and then anti-clockwise -- he would launch into his bizarre spiel: “Rukhsana-ji, wherever you are, dance karo!” (Should Rukhsana be present there with us that day, he would switch to addressing Razia Khan in absentia).
The second is Naheed Siddiqui. Here the trigger is ‘kaan kheycho’ – tugging the ear lobes. Shekhawat’s standard pitch (in translation) here is, “Naheed-ji, whether you are in the kitchen or bathroom, in the bedroom or on the road, pull your ears!” And if she were to show up later, he would

Banoo Apa (l) receives Shekhawat's half-sponsorship for Beach Party

greet her by saying, “I have already pulled my ears on your behalf” (whatever that might mean).
Next is Bijoy Gupta, his favourite. In fact, he has two exercises attributed to him. One is during ‘Kissa Kursi Ka’ when he would pointedly urge Gupta to lower his bums ‘down-down-down’ in the half-sitting position… till the latter, out of sheer exasperation, would snap back, “Go see a doctor, you need to be cured of this bimari.”
The other and most popular Gupta-attribution is the Lion and Lioness Laughter. Here Shekhawat addresses his pal as ‘Gudhri ka Lal’ with such fervour that even if he were not to be present, the chair (or space) he usually occupies becomes the focus of his impassioned growls. Gupta becomes miraculously visible to Shekhawat only.
Amusing as this may all seem, we have all got used to this drama playing out every morning. Nobody as much as raises an eyebrow when Shekhawat gets into his act. And if, for some reason, we are deprived of the spectacle, frankly, everybody feels uncomfortable. For, something has surely gone amiss.

Ray of Hope

Siba Prasad Maitra (c) allays fears of  PMC Bank depositors

With the state election now out of the way, those of us who had sunk our savings in PMC bank (ref post of September 25) are beginning to feel upbeat. Siba Prasad Maitra today raised our hopes further by announcing that a merger of the beleaguered bank is on the cards. “Do not worry, your money is safe,” he declared.

Razia Khan

“You will get your money back.”
This was music to our ears. Maitra’s assurance was in conformity with recent statements by the state chief minister, as reported in the press. There have been other indications as well to suggest that all is not lost. However, in the absence of a definite timeline for accessing our deposits, an element of doubt still hangs in the air.
Meanwhile, we are seeing a flurry of jokes on the subject, the latest being a message from Razia Khan on WhatsApp yesterday: “Good news for PMC bank depositors. Merger of PMC Bank with Big Laaf Co-op Bank Ltd, Mumbai, the largest cooperative bank in India. This bank has shown interest in the merger formula of the state government, RBI sources said.”
Whatever anybody may make of this, the point is, Razia has been badly impacted by the PMC crisis. She even broke down in front of us last month when she learnt that her deposits were frozen. Today, for her to laugh in the face of adversity (and bring cheer to others) says a lot about her inner resilience few can ever claim.

Lt Col (Angad Singh (rtd):
The government can ill afford to allow PMC Bank to sink. Efforts are already on to merge it with another bank. Depositors will get great relief soon. Be cheerful and positive.

Collective Amnesia

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RUKHSANA KHAN

Forgetfulness got the better of us today. This is nothing new. Amnesia is a common affliction that comes with age. Individual slip-ups keep happening and we usually overlook them. But how would you explain when an entire segment of the exercises

Razia Khan (c) conducts the exercises today

is forgotten and no one gets any wiser till it is too late?
Surprisingly, it was Razia Khan who raised an alarm when she realised that we had skipped the entire second round of the laughter exercises today. By then, we were already half-way through with the tai-chi exercises. Nobody else, among the dozen members present in the China Hut, had noticed the lapse!
Oddly enough, Razia did not give a very good account of her own memory while conducting the free-hand round earlier.

Sisterly Love: Mallika (l) feeds Rukhsana

She committed countless mistakes – forgetting to repeat certain exercises, mixing up the sequence, not completing a drill (like kissa kursi ka) and so on – much to the amusement of all present.
At every point she had to be corrected, though it must be said that many of the gaffes were deliberate. Moreover, there was a concerted effort all around to confuse her into committing more errors and she willingly played to the gallery. In the end, Razia got to prove (though belatedly) that she had the sharpest mind among us all.
Amid all the laughter and bonhomie, former president Mallika Kagzi made her way into the China Hut as a ‘special guest’ of Rukhsana Khan’s birthday celebrations. She presented the birthday girl with the club calendar and posed for photos. Indeed, it has been ages since we saw Mallika last.
But the most memorable part of the celebration was the massive treat Rukhsana had arranged – neatly packed idlis, medu vada, samosas… and tea. Banoo Apa pitched in with delectable rawa halwa, befitting the occasion.

Bihari Milwani:
It was not lapse of memory but the presence of Mallika that diverted our attention from the exercises!

Poll Day

We wrapped up our exercises early as it was polling day. People had to go out and vote for the assembly elections. Turned out

Shekhawat (ext right) refuses to go to Juhu Beach on Sunday evening

that barring Shekhawat and Yusuf Rassiwala, none of us had our names on the electoral list. Bhaswati Bose had tried to get herself registered afresh, as recently as two months back. She was given a computerised number after 10 days which should entitle her to exercise her franchise. But to her dismay, she discovered that the number does not figure anywhere.
Meanwhile, our outing at Juhu Beach on Sunday evening (ref post of October 19) has been pushed by a week. Shekhawat realised today that October 27 is Diwali weekend and that he would be caught up with too many pujas at home. Setting out on Saturday evening would be equally inconvenient. So by common consensus it was decided to postpone the ‘beach party’ to November 3, i.e. the following Sunday and accordingly, inform everyone in the Club.
Hopefully, weather conditions should normalise by then and we would be out of the current wet spell.

DAY 2927

Pic of the Week

DANCING IN THE RAIN: GUESS, WHAT SONG ARE THEY SINGING TO EACH OTHER

'Aayaa sawan jhoom ke!' --Bihari Milwani

'Gori tera gaon bada pyara/ Main to gaya haara/ Aake yahaan re...' --Anonymous

Beach Party

Weighing all options for a week-end bash

Wet Morning: Unseasonal showers took us by surprise

A beach party is in the offing, most likely next weekend. Coinciding with the Diwali festivities, this would be a departure from our routine celebrations in the Garden or at best, in some fancy restaurant nearby.
Moreover, it shall be the first time that members of the Club would be meeting in the evening over tea and snacks – unlike our regular breakfast bashes in the morning.
The venue and date has been tentatively fixed for Juhu Beach on October 27, Sunday. A final decision will however, be taken in the next couple of days after arriving at a broad consensus among members.
The idea of “doing something different” on Diwali came up this morning when several options like China Garden, Tiwary’s and Kailash Parbat were discussed. These were found to be either ‘unaffordable’ (given our budgetary constraints) or else, ‘unpalatable’ insofar as the food on offer is concerned.
It was generally felt that being an evening get-together, we should no longer be restricted by having to choose from a counted few eating places in our neighborhood that open early in the morning. Basically, we ought to be combining the party with some recreational activity (having music, games, etc.) like a picnic of sorts. Needless to mention, participation in the outing shall be limited to members only.
The only foreseeable dampener to our plans is the freaky weather conditions prevailing at present. The monsoon is supposed to have long left us but even today, we were subjected to a continuous drizzle all morning, effectively forcing us back into the China Hut for the exercises. In fact, we have been having the ‘light showers’ since yesterday and there are no signs of any let up.
Should it continue to rain next week-end, our bhaji by the beach will go for a toss. Let us hope this does not happen.

Colourful Past

Shekhawat never tires of telling us of his childhood days – of the deprivation and hardships he had to face till a chance recruitment drive near his village landed him a job with Indian Navy and changed his life. We have heard him narrate those stories a hundred times.
But there is another aspect to Shekhawat’s past that he was to reveal for the first time this morning. Like any seaman, he has visited many foreign ports – from Bangkok and Pattaya to Muscat, Jakarta, Sydney, Singapore...

We are all ears as Shekhawat comes up with anecdotes from his colourful past

Much as the visits were in the line of duty he found himself exposed to the seamier side of a sailor’s life beyond imagination.
“From good food, drinks and other creature comforts, we were quite well off inside a ship,” he narrated. “We lacked nothing... except for one thing. Don’t forget we were young then and our wives were away while we sailed the high seas for days on end. So the moment we dropped anchor, all the men went berserk and abandoned the ship.”
Where did they go?
“At every port there is always a colony of exotic ladies of the night,” Shekhawat continued. “They catered only to shippies like us. We went to their quarters. They were out of this world. In peak winter when I had to wrap myself from head to toe in woolens, I found these girls in Australia wearing next to nothing. How do they withstand the cold, I still wonder.”
Shekhawat came up with many such anecdotes and concluded that Jakarta would rank as the “best port" in his opinion. Today though, he looks back at those indulgences as sinful. That is why, he says, he seeks the forgiveness of the gods in his daily prayers. “I pray 21 times to 11 gods every day, asking each of them to forgive me for my past sins,” he boasts.

Karun Sharma:
How can it be sin when two persons are happily engaged in an activity? It would be a sin if it is forced on anyone.

Fresh Fodder

Banoo Apa's recipe for Gupta's flights of fancy

Bijoy Gupta found fresh fodder for his ongoing tirade against best buddy Shekhawat. Last evening, by some strange coincidence, they bumped into each other in the waiting room of a doctor. Both were with their wives. It was a crowded place; still, Gupta tried to draw his friend’s attention. But Shekhawat looked through pretending he did not recognise Gupta. Only while leaving the clinic, he waved goodbye and disappeared with his wife.
Gupta has not forgiven Shekhawat since. He ranted on the phone with friends over Shekhawat treating him badly at the doctor's clinic and then spent a

Best of buddies: Shekhawat and Gupta

sleepless night plotting his revenge. In the morning today, Banoo Apa provided him the perfect recipe for getting back at Shekhawat.
She had come carrying a bulky bag – obviously containing a flask of tea and paper cups. (It turned out to be lassi.) But that made no difference to Gupta. He announced off-hand while the exercises were on that Shekhawat would require an extra cup of tea today because a ‘guest’, who he was too afraid to introduce to us, has been kept waiting outside the Garden.
“Banoo Apa, don't forget to prepare two cups for Shekhawat,” he urged.
“I don’t drink tea,” Shekhawat snapped.
“Doesn’t matter,” Gupta retorted. “She can have two cups then.”
Shekhawat ignored him. But Gupta was not letting go. “Why don’t you call her inside the Garden?” he needled. “Why keep the poor thing waiting outside the gate? We are decent people from respectable families. Besides, we won’t tell her a thing about you.”
Even as we knew that the so-called guest was a figment of Gupta’s imagination, nobody could resist the temptation of stealing an occasional glance at the gate. Shekhawat however, was nonchalant. He quite understood where Gupta was coming from and why he went on spinning bizarre tales (too lurid to be published here) about his relationship with a female who did not exist.
In the end, the two friends were seen hobnobbing under a tree.

Think about it...

Search party for gold earring

Nahid Khan dropped her gold earring in the Garden today. Or so she had imagined. It was nothing as significant as the famous jhumka that fell in Bareilly ki Bazaar many eons ago. But it was no less valuable. The last she remembered wearing it was at home when she got up from sleep this morning. In the Garden, while conducting the exercises, she discovered the earring was missing.
This was enough reason to suspend the exercises and rummage through the grass for a glimmer of that gold. All of us searched, eventually to draw a blank.

Zarina Khan (l) says her goodbyes
before leaving for Qatar tomorrow

We could only hope and wish that Nahid would find the earring at home – maybe, stuck to her pillow.
The incident brought back memories of the first play we had staged on our annual function three years back (ref post September 10, 2016). It revolved around an ornament Santosh Tyagi (playing the lead) had dropped in the Garden and

Naseem Khan (l) treats us to packed foxnuts 

the ensuing search that involved the whole Club (and even the police). In the end, Santosh recovered the 'sone ki chain' from her almirah at home – much like what was to happen to Nahid today when she found the gold earring lying on her bed.
But this was a sign to us. It is time we start gearing up for this year’s annual function. Last year’s was a no-show because of the terror attack on security forces at Pulwama that claimed 40 lives. For that function in February, rehearsals began in the Club around Diwali time.
Diwali is now round the corner (October 27). We need to decide on a date, that is, if we are to have an annual function at all. Or would we settle for a Sports Day, as we did the last time around? Or should we have both? Think about it.

Lt Col Angad Singh (rtd):
Nahid's incident certainly reminded me of the Annual Function. We must celebrate it in a befitting manner. Similarly the Sports Day also needs to be enjoyed and celebrated. We should start preparing for the events well in time. Hope everyone agrees and contributes his/ her bit to make them a success.

Picnic Hangover

Depleted attendance for the exercises

As expected, attendance at the Garden plummeted this morning with only die-hard loyalists of Big Laaf reporting for the exercises. The rest of us were mostly home nursing a hangover from the picnic yesterday. Bihari Milwani and Urmila Sinha were the two notable exceptions today, not having gone on the picnic.

Moti (r) with Jiah Rajput yesterday

A jubilant ‘fourth laugh’ went up after the exercises to mark the success of the outing. Zarina Khan and Shekhawat were complimented for making it all possible. Other names mentioned included Karun Sharma, Nahid Khan, Bhaswati Bose, Afreen and Jiah Rajput (nonagenarian Moti Gursiani’s adoptive grand-daughter) for not only being the most reckless and energetic of the lot, but also ensuring that everybody had a good time.
“The last time I enjoyed so much was 23 years back at a picnic in Water Kingdom,” recounted Nahid, who narrowly missed breaking her neck twice on a water slide.
But Shekhawat had a grouse. He still could not forgive Razia Khan for conducting a housie session without a No 34 tile – the number he was waiting for (in vain) to claim a full house. Fahmida Khan’s smart move at hoodwinking the players also came up. And mystery still hung over the No 77 tile that robbed Niloufer Rassiwala of another prize.
Comic situations such as these make for a memorable picnic. We were one small, composite group of 24 and perhaps, that is why we had a blast. Revisiting the same spot was clearly inconsequential. “We should go on more of such outings, maybe once every three months,” Karun Sharma suggested.
“Don’t forget to include me in future, wherever you go,” said Moti Gursiani by way of thanking the Club.

Moti:
The account of our picnic to Saina resort was quite interesting. May I take the liberty of correcting the spellings of names. My surname is Gursahaney (not Gursiani). My adopted granddaughter is Jiya (not Jiah).

The error is regretted. --Blog Monster

Saina Revisited

Today’s picnic nearly did not happen. Yesterday Shekhawat called Samara Gardens to finalise arrangements (ref post of October 12) and was told of an arbitrary hike in their rates. The person at the other end was rude and abrupt, refusing to engage in any further conversation.
Enraged, Shekhawat took the uncharacteristic decision of dumping Samara Gardens there and then and calling up Saina Resort. Unilaterally, without consulting anybody, he ‘shifted’ our picnic there – this, in spite of our having already been there in the past.
It was a wise decision in retrospect, as the accompanying pictures amply suggest. Had Shekhawat not taken that call, the options with us were to either cancel the picnic or postpone it indefinitely.  
Moreover, settling for Saina, did not cost us any more than what we had budgeted for. In fact, we were left with a surplus, which was equally divided among members of the group.
All’s well that ends well.

Photo Credit: Some of the pics above have been clicked by Jiah Rajput.

DAY 2920

Pic of the Week

"MY BICEPS ARE BIGGER THAN YOURS!!!"