Chapter 6
Along the sea side

For the next half hour, we went to craft stores and roadside stalls.
My friend bought 2 pretty crochet lanterns for her home to be at Adelaide. I got a pretty lavender stoned "Neckley" (as the boy called it), bracelet and ear rings set at a great bargain. We walked along, took more photographs. Checked out more craft exhibitions.

We spent a while sitting in one of those beach side seat-enclaves and played around with shadows.

It was a pleasant time, when we didn't talk too much. Happy memories, and calm with the company.
They say you know you've got a real friend, when you can sit next to each other for a period of time, without talking, without feeling the need to and without feeling awkward at the silence.

I know we'd long since reached that level of comfort, but this was a nice moment- time, nevertheless.

When we felt fulfilled and ready to go (considering the 4 hr journey time ahead too ;)) we set off back to the bus station.


Chapter 7
Home Bound

We boarded the bus, armed with Pepsi and popcorn, so hunger pangs don't strike like in the morning.
We were both quite exhausted from the morning travel, and generally. We decided to be good children and take a nap. More experienced, we picked a better and more comfortable bus this time. And picked the side that faces the sea again.
Sleep came in pieces. Though, even when the eyes partially opened, there was a beautiful seaside with an orange sky draping it like a pretty veil. The tall trees, stone walls marking territories, small pathways, the sea through them, the occasional back water stretches, ponds with water lilies..all closed up for the night, beautiful holiday homes... sleep, dream and being awake happened, in mixed order, so much so that it was hard to keep track of what was happening, and too comfortable to want to bother.

I woke up after a bit, and found her peacefully listening to music. I decided to too.
I remember thinking that I should load some neutral un-mood-inducing music. I plugged in my ear phones anyway. Halfway into the song, I reached out for the pop corn, and that's when it happened.

Chapter 8
Chaos

The bus screeched to a halt.
People were hitting the side of the bus. There was yelling. Lights came on. Glaring head lights from various vehicles, facing random directions. Screaming and shouting.

I don't know if I'll ever forget what I saw next, though I don't think about it.
There was a man standing, and there was another man on the ground, in sitting position, leaning on the legs of the standing man. He looked like he was asleep.
There had been an accident, and the yelling and screaming, and bringing all the vehicles to a halt was mostly done by their friends.
We didn't get full details. We were hastily asked to close all windows, in case they started throwing stones.

My friend was scared they'd set fire to the bus, and she was halfway through calling a relative.
Technically I'm supposed to have been scared. At least a little. I still don't know if I was.

Our bus driver slowly inched forward, and zoomed ahead at the first sign of free space.

Chapter 9
Twilight

Wide awake after that encounter, we reviewed photographs taken. Ate popcorn (finally). And talked quietly in the dark. She told me about her fiance, about all their business plans together before they started their restaurant. We spoke about life. Why we're doing what we're doing now.
Transactional Analysis. Ideal careers.
It was as deep as it was refreshing.

The sky was lit up by lightning for the rest of the journey. Signs of distant rains. Added to the perfection of it all, like a big bang ending, the day deserved.

Not many people can completely understand or accept us. We, with our fast paced lives don't take time out to just talk about anything, and everything anymore. Dunno if it was one or the other. Maybe it was both.

This also seemed like the best time for our little interlude. When we're old enough to go off on our own, and young enough to not have too many responsibilities/ things to consider hampering our taking off on our own.

We realized that our interactions had become adult-like. But, with a trust founded in the youth of teenage. We've watched each grow from girls to young women. She noted more than once that in the 2 yrs she was away (at Australia) I'd grown from an absolute tomboy to a girly girl. Not so much in the way I dress, but in the way I carried myself. That's a nice thing :) While I did that, she found the love of her life, and they have an amazing fun-love filled relationship, so that's a nice thin too.

We just lay there talking, watching our lives from a distance. Till we eventually ended up at our destination.

We bid goodbyes and left :)

Epilogue

A Promenade is a leisurely walk taken in a park or a pretty place.

It's a time when you go out for a stroll, and talk in detail about something...anything...many things.

Our Promenade was beautiful.

I could have written a well rounded 10 chapters, I could have split it into a more holistic 5 parts instead of 4. But no, the point isn't striving for a perfection which sometimes is pointless. That day was fun. It was happy. It didn't change life. Nothing dramatic or melodramatic. It was just simple awesomely fabulous.

Our plans didn't span out as imagined. Our objective, or what we considered out objective (french food) was not met. Though we did go to Pondy. We had a brilliant time.

I've been looking for a purpose in life.
Dunno if this answers anything.
Dunno, if, once I find it, I'll be able to achieve it.
But, it's not always necessary to reach your objective to have crazy crazy fun!

I don't think life has perfect closures. I don't know if you find answers to the gazillion questions we seem to have all the time. I'm not sure if we'll find answers even to the top 10 questions.
Perfect house, perfect career, perfect spouse ... I dunno if any of those things exist.
But perfection exists.
It exists in the million little things that are all around us. We just need to take a better look, and notice it :)


So I'm gonna have fun, make memories, and laugh till I'm doubled over as much as I can, with as many people as I can!

Hope you find your moment of Funnestness !!

Au revoir :)

The Promenade - III

Chapter 5
Funnestness !!!

I loved it ! I loved it! I loved it! I loved it!!!!
The next 45 mins were probably the BEST of 2011!!

To explain why, I gotta give you a mental idea about the place.
The Promenade hotel is a 5 star boutique hotel. It is gorgeous from all angles. Every direction you look is literally picture perfect! It had the quaint Italian cafe feel on one side, sophisticated french restaurant inside, breezy sun umberrella-d feel on the other. A midst this was a small cosy pool, that was situated on a lower level. Stone stars led to the pool, surrounded by flowering trees and beach chairs.

Being 2 young women with a camera, and unlimited access to all the prettiness, oh boy did we go crazy!

It was like a half hour photo shoot for each of us.

I can't describe how or why I loved that place so much. SO much I wanted to just stay there forever. I never stopped smiling once when I was there. I was soooo happpeeee !!! Apparently in true love, you can never quite put your finger on a particular thing that makes you love so :P

The kiddy pool was all of 1 feet deep, and water lover that I am, immediately walked right it. There were pillars separating the kiddy pool from the deeper pool.
The beach chairs, under the flowering trees were perfect.
The ornamental pots - well I'd never have guessed that pots can be used to well!
The pool was big enough, but small and the combination of stone and water was waaaayyyy to heady for me!
Even my friend couldn't understand why I loved that place so much! :P
I was jumping, skipping and laughing all the while. It was bliss !!! It was excitement. It was a pure high :D

Bah, just thinking about it makes me smile a mile wide and miss it!

The only think I didn't do, was dance inside. I dunno how to swim, and falling in would have been slightly anti climax.;)

We left at 4.30 pm.
I realize now, that when I left I was happy.
I guess that place made me SO happy, that I couldn't be anything but for a while after. Knowing I had a great time and awesome memories to carry from there forever.

Now that it has been 2 days since the funnestness, I'm starting to wonder and slightly worry if I would forget how the spectacular range of positive emotions during those 2.5 hours felt. But, I hope, if not remember the feeling, my life has adequate moments where I feel so close to euphoric, that its easier to deal with the rest ;)
(Sounds dramatic, I know, but I wish you feel it too, so you know too!)

We left happily for the beach walk and souvenir shopping :)

The Promenade - II

Chapter 4

The Promenade Hotel

This hotel was along the beach side, a little further down from the cafe. First sight, if I had to use one word to describe it, I'd say it looked calm.
Since it was 2.45 pm by the time we reached there, there weren't too many people there. We two exhausted travelers flopped onto a nice comfortable sea facing sofa.


You know what they say about overall dining experience? This was it!

The food was not french :P It was not my definition of yum looking. We didn't even order dessert because it was too late. But it was delicious. I had spaghetti with basil, olive and something else. Olive turned out to be olive oil, and the basil was ground, making my spaghetti look greeeen. And I can be plenty skeptical and picky about food, and I'm vouching for it. It was yum, filling, without making one feel stuffed.

You know, though I live in a sea side city, I've never had a sea facing meal! I was surprised at this discovery. Especially since the effect is so peaceful!

That day, that morning, during long coastal journey, there were plenty of times when I thought to myself "This feeling right now, being surrounded by all this beauty, and feeling this content was enough for me. Even if the food sucked, or pondy is nothing as I expected, that journey, and those careless, weightless conversations were enough to make this trip perfect."

So every new nice aspect added to the perfection so wonderfully.

Before our meal could come, when we were nibbling on our starters, we were blissful.
Completely, absolutely,.. peaceful, calm, and blissful.
Not happy, you can be happy and sad at the same time. But this was more. And all positive.
It probably sounds hyped up. If I were reading this in some blog, I'd think the writer just has an overactive imagination and ability to sugar coat. But no... it was calming.

My job. Her career identity. Our futures. Relationship issues. All of it...none of it mattered then.At that moment, life as it was, wasn't perfect. Life didn't have to be perfect. Everything didn't have to be smooth. Issues didn't need to magically resolve themselves. Perfect jobs/ boy friends didn't have to appear out of no where. Childhood issues didn't need to be resolved.

For that one and a half hours, everything was perfect just the way it is. And we were content, completely content.

The Promenade - I

Prologue

I heard somewhere that there are 2 kinds of happiness in this world, and my friend added one more type.

  The kind you feel when you're remembering a pleasant past incident is one, 

  The kind you feel when thinking of an inviting future/ moment in the future,

and finally, the happiness you feel at the moment.The  peace, bliss, contentment and lightheartedness that spreads from within the core of your being till the tingly sensation you feel at your fingertips. This kind will probably eventually turn into type 1, after the moment has passed. But that moment, it feels like that's what we live for - Moments like those. 

We all make plans, build up expectations, imagine the future playing out perfectly in our heads - things we see, dialogues exchanged, looks passed, feelings felt. All wonderfully choreographed and directed a thousand times - attention given to every minute detail - before the moment arrives.

Sometimes, what we end up with is a grave disappointment (Like the classes me and a friend of mine planned for, forever) At these times, just the planning and imagining was so much fun, that it's easy not to feel too disappointed.

At other times, what we plan / expect isn't even the shadow of what is to come, that we're blown away by it's sheer awesomeness!

The plan: Go to Pondy for lunch

Expectation: French food, souvenir shopping, fun 2.5 hr bus ride with lots of time to yap

Day: 27th August 2011

Chapter 1

The East Coast Road

Since both of us lived pretty close by, we met at 9ish last Saturday morning, after cancelling plans of last minute shopping for the trip. We had a plan. Simple enough: Go to a French Restaurant at Pondy and eat yum french food. Since the restaurant options had already been googled, we felt we were all set for the trip.

Expected travel time was 2.5 hrs. 

We entered the big big bus station and got into the first bus that had the name of our destination on its route. We realized later the silliness of our idea when we started to wonder if the bus could really win the race, if we were running along side. Nevertheless, the climate was perfect (Nothing too special if you're from the regional hillside areas, like my friend with me :P), and the entire stretch of travel, after leaving the city was along the coast. I LOVED it !!

Every time my school friends (a girly bunch of 6 of us) met up, we make such a ruckus that after a point  we started hunting down not-so-crowded hang out places. This, so the chance of us getting kicked out on the grounds of disrupting public peace reduced.

Unfortunately, on a bus that was slowly getting jam packed, our voices still felt the loudest. But caring about that lasted all of 8 seconds every one hour, when we suddenly noticed someone (new) looking at us.

The sea was blue blue blue. And the soft green of freshly washed leaves everywhere swayed peacefully as though dancing to a soft melody only they could here. The mildly cold breeze never stopped throughout.

At 12, 2 hours after boarding the bus at 9.43 AM, the bus stopped for a tea break. We got cookies merrily, and that's when noticed a board that said 101 kms to go.

If there had been background music, it would have gone from ta da ta da da da to twoooooiiiiinnnnngggggg.

We settled ourselves much more comfortably in our seats and set our minds for 2 more hours on the bus.

You know what the best part of travelling with a good friend is? You never really can run out of conversation! I remember back in our college days, we (my friend is from my coll ) used to spend hours yapping after hours, and then meet again the next day and start like we'd been apart for ages! It was just the same, the fact that we had been apart for a while gave way to that much more conversation!

We spoke about the her upcoming wedding, work lives, future plans, dream houses. Planned out bits of our dream houses from random houses we saw along the way. We conspired on easy ways to go up in life :P Jackpots that are easiest to hit.

I mini checked out this cut guy who was in the same bus ;) But he was 99% younger than us. So just made do with the fact that he was wearing a giant huge watch, which was in my line of sight. Hey ! A girl can always look :P

Before we knew it, we were at pondy!

Chapter 2

The Beach Side

Once we reached (finally at 2 pm), we realized that we should have got a bit more information, rather than just names of the top 3 french restaurants. Pondy was a mini city, and we had kinda envisioned a small beach side place with the restaurants lined up like RIGHT THERE. Umm... silly, I know.

We asked a few people, who looked most like natives, where any one of those 3 restaurants could be. We'd decided on Le Cafe. (I admit, around 1 pm we were both so hungry that we were ready to eat anything anywhere. Maybe for the heck of it, look for restaurants with Le/ La/ L' in their name. But since we'd reached, we thought, we're so close, we can make it. Yaayy for that decision!)

Everyone we asked told us its possibly along the beach, to be more specific "At the beach side!"

We had become quite skeptical by then thought. All the restaurants we'd passed didn't have Frenchy names. And Pondy didn't look like the tourist filled, activity ridden place I had imagined. (In my defense, I don't think I've been to pondy

Our driver was a very sweet yappy guy, who was telling us quite openly that the most famous thing in Pondy is the Alcohol. He was certain there wasn't much else we could get as souvenirs. He left us off at "The Beach Side", gave his number for when we might need a ride in the future and left.

"The Beach Side" is an awesome place!!! So very beautifully picture perfect. It was a row of Victorian era architecture, interlinked naturally with modern architecture - over looking the deep blue sea. The sea starts abruptly after a rocky wall, but that added to its charm. 

The road was wide, traffic scarce, and temperature perfect.

Chapter 3

Le Cafe

This is a very short chapter.

We entered. Found that its an out door restaurant. Pretty looking, quite crowded. 

But not even the teensiest bit close to the sophisticated French Restaurant we had in mind.

Hey, I don't know what exactly french cuisine constitutes of, but I do know that french is almost synonymous with sophistication. So a casual outdoor restaurant is NOT what we traveled 4 hours and 200 kms for!

We politely excused ourselves, and left in search of a more french french restaurant.

Before we move, I'd like to take a moment to explain something about Le Cafe that caught me. This was the only building that was on the beach side. The rest of the buildings were on the same road, but on the other side, facing the Beach. But Le Cafe was on the Beach Side. It looked like a house that had been converted into a restaurant, and a good look around showed how charming a home it would have made. Uncomplicated, simple and sweet.