Be it the journey of life or a simple train journey with family and friends.
I recently visited shirdi sai baba ji temple with my family and friends. A group of 5 families inclusive of 24 members in total. We were to catch our train from Nizamuddin railway station at 3:00 pm on 15th Jan, 2010. The train takes approx 20 hrs to reach Kopargaon junction which is half an hour taxi ride away from shirdi.
I've always loved to travel by train. Although it takes time, but there is certain mystery about railway tracks, small unknown junctions along the way, whistling engines, an organized mess on platforms, it just keeps me occuppied. Its like another world in itself. There are a lot of train journies which I distinctly remember for the sheer fun I had and this one certainly fits into that list very well.
Our train started on time. Initially everyone was busy catching up with each other and around 3-4 hours passed easily and we ate our lunch too. Lunch menu included Meethi parantha, Plain parantha, Rajma chawal, Veg pulao, Mix veg, Aaloo methi, gajar muttar and Muttar paneer. Yummy !!
After a filling lunch and lots of talking, What next ? Everyone joined in to play a couple of games of tambola excluding a few elders who were still too busy talking about politics, real estate, cricket and basically all the current affairs. I don't like Tambola too much but playing in such a big group is fun so I joined in with everybody and was lucky enough to have made a few bucks. I choose not to disclose the exact amount here due to security reasons :P
After a few games of tambola, it was becoming monotonous and mummy, bua ji, mithu bhaiya and company were not very interested in continuing. They rather preffered to chit chat. So that left me along with Shweta, Shruti, Kritika, Deepu, Sunil, Vicky bhaiya, Preeti bhabhi, Rahul and Anshu. We were also not very keen to play tambola and so the table was open for suggestions. So I suggested that we play "skip on 7" game where everyone forms a circle and starts to count from one end. First person loudly says 1, second person says 2 and so on. Whenever there is a number which is multiple of 7 or has 7 in it the person has to skip that number and say the next number loudly. So we need to skip numbers 7,14,17,21 and so on. We enjoyed playing it for sometime but started getting bored of it very soon.
We put on our thinking caps again. After a little brainstroming, I thought of dumshrads. Surprisingly, the game was new to Vicky bhaiya and preeti bhabhi. So a quick tutorial and we were on our way. We split ourselves into two teams and started exercising our acting skills. It was LOADS of FUN. Shweta, shruti and Kritika were especially sharp and expereinced campaigners but rest of us were "Oh my God ! What's that ??" kinda actors. But that was the real fun. To guess a word being enacted by a terrible actor can be lots of fun.
Speaking of terrible actors, Rahul deserves a special mention here as he had us all in splits of laughter through his acting skills. He made me realize that sometimes actions don't speak louder than words :)
If I were to give awards for the performances here's the list of peple who would share the honours.
best "I can en-act any word" award: Shweta and Kritika
best "I can guess any movie " award: Sunil (Artist hain bhai!)
best "Leave me alone, I can't act" award: Rahul
best "Blabber " award: Shruti
Everyone liked that game so much that we ended up playing for hours that day and even the next day in morning. Our train was 4 hours late in reaching Kopargaon... but no one was complaining. The journey was so much fun.
PS: My special thanks to the crew members :)
Starring: Shruti, Shweta, Kritika, Deeksha, Prisha, Deepu, Sunil, Vicky bhaiya, Preeti bhabhi, Rahul and Anshu
Special appearance: Mithu bhaiya, Aarti bhabhi, Amit bhaiya, Sheetal bhabhi, Daddy, mummy, bua ji, uncle ji, tinku bhaiya, seema bhabhi, rahul ke dada ji and goga bua.
