What brews on a bus

WOULD IT make a good story if a bus full of city folk (all men) left Chennai to Pondy? You think it would have been boring, right? Wrong. The `Qwiky's on the move' trip to Pondy, was quite a trip, and that's an understatement. Read on.

It started an hour late, thanks to some of Chennai's enthusiastic janta not landing up at all, having changed mind last minute. Qwiky's T.Nagar wasn't exactly flooding with people. So, it all began on a grim note. The trip was to land up in Pondicherry for the inaugural of the coffee pub there.

A bus with all guys (well, there were a couple of girls hidden away as well) finally left Chennai at four, after posing for snaps for the media.

We drank `Tropicana' (supposedly orange and grape juice) and munched burgers, researching why Tropicana didn't have a grape flavour.

``Probably because this is the Sweet Orange flavour,'' said Praveen. ``Then, why is it called Orange and Grape juice,'' asked Oswin. ``Check the ingredients, it does have orange and grape fruit,'' said Manoj. The argument went on.

Gowtham, one of the boys, then drowned the argument requesting the driver to play `Metallica' (For the record, Gowtham lost the tape in the course of the journey after the driver told him that the tape was handed over to one of the boys. It always happens doesn't it?).

Anyway, continuing with our story. The bus reached Pondy after we slipped into a quick nap, woke up to drink more orange and grape juice, and discussed why `Pyar, Ishq Aur Mohabbat' fills us with hate and why watching `Yaadien' gives you amnesia.

We walked all the way to Mission Street, and into Casablanca where we fell in love at first sight with the colourful exoticism that the place exudes. Lot of foreigners... Er... apologies, they are local residents now. They actually belong to the land more than we do.

There were so many colourful clothes, sunglasses and other fashion paraphernalia roofed under an aesthetic architectural piece of a building. On the first floor, there was quite a crowd.

Mini Mathur, MTV VJ was giving away freebies to those who were able to spell Qwiky's and similar questions. The cosmopolitan crowd that landed up, was a surprise for the first- timers from Chennai.

Cups of coffee were given away free. And it turned out that Mr. Dilip Kapoor, who runs Hidesign, threw a party for the launch, one floor above. One of the wildest that Chennaiites would have seen.

Some of them meanwhile caught up with the 24 hour cafe by the seaside where you no longer get coffee after 10 p.m. And returned on time to get onto the bus that left Pondy like Cinderellas at the stroke of twelve.

It turned out that the organisers decided to call it a night when they sensed trouble brewing. Action-lovers, you might be disappointed. But there was no brawl at the pub.

On the way back, Kaushik, the leader of the pack, after having had no sleep in the last 48 hours, organised a serious intellectual discussion on the `chicken and the egg'. Hilarious. The rest, struck miscellaneous sleeping poses even as the bus hit Chennai at around 2-30 a.m.

By Sudhish Kamath

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