You know how all those countless ‘Trip to Goa’ plans with friends never ever happen and at best remain a meme!? That’s because you don’t have a Bhagu in your life.
When you have a Bhagu, planning has no choice but to get ‘executed’, if you know what I mean!! She makes plans, executes them and then does the thinking, worrying and regretting. Her go-getter attitude has such a vital role in my life; if not for her there would be stories none to tell and dates zero to plot on an excel!
September 2022 will go down in the history of nostalgia as one of the most unique trips down our memory lane (several reasons!) because there was not one but four different plans executed most beautifully in her typical style, leaving all of us with fresh memories to last us until Bhagu’s next visit to India!
Warning: I do not have sufficient photos to support my story (I did try and the result was ‘nazar hati, durghatna ghati’) but I promise you every word will only reflect what actually happened. Zero exaggeration!
So yes, before we go ahead with the story, here’s a sneak peek and some words of wisdom 😀
1) Well for starters, this time we girls got kids of our own. So the bratty, messy, noisy ones? No longer us, infact the little ones made us mothers look like angels, albeit metaphorically.
2) Toddlers can scream. A pitch so high and shrill that you want to run far far away with but remember they are yours to run with! So travel light and smart so you keep your hands empty to scoop up kids rolling on the floor and pick up their toys thrown on the floor in that order. Not with luggage and carry bags with flimsy handles.
3) With kids in the toddler stage, you ought to keep your expectations extremely low when it comes to your appearance. Else you’ll want to look like Gal Gadot and you’ll end up a ‘Blunder Woman.’
4) Remember, beggars can’t be choosers. You can’t have yourself looking good AND your toddler posing perfect in one photo frame. That’s NOT possible.
5) Just because you are the ‘prestigious’ alumni of your school, you expect a grand welcome!
BUT brace yourselves for the gates to be closed on your face by the security lady. Also, you may not want to try “Please, I want to enquire at the office for a KG admission”. Keep in mind, your child is creating such a ruckus that you come across more as a kidnapper than the mother!
Keeping all of the above in mind, let’s begin this story!
With Bhagu in India, I decided to take all the efforts in meeting up with her and the little one because best friends don’t let go of those rare opportunities to meet up and revisit memories, especially if they stay in two different countries. You know, those cursed ‘lost-touch’ phases that occur from time to time, those never matter when you’re just meant to be. 🙂
Plan 1:
Thanks to the WhatsApp group Bhagu created (‘Tired Moms and Ram’), Ram had an inkling of what to expect when he said ‘Yes’ to meeting three girls with their kids! He very kindly offered to drive us to and from a lunch at Ovenfresh, Shivaji Park, and both times my son gave Ram reasons to regret his generosity. Lunch was fun, during which a penguin nearly landed in his otherwise bland mushroom soup, my son’s poop reached new heights (i.e. my face) and we would have been thrown out had we stayed there any longer!
Plan 2:
After adding another mother to the above mentioned group, we decided to meet again!
For the four girls it was an evening for a reunion in the same building that has seen them transform from toddlers to teens to thirty-year olds that now have juniors! While the older boys were engaged with cars, it was the toddlers that turned out real stars! With one wailing, another bathing (in mud puddles) and the youngest one waddling, the juniors made sure we mothers played only the ‘mother’ role and no other role!
Plan 3:
When Bhagu and Sneha come together, food has always played the most important role. Rest everything can wait, take the back seat. Will their kids too fall under this ‘rest’ category?
Not surprisingly, we both craved the same food, so a lunch date at Barbeque Nation was fixed! Honestly the kids deserve credit because they let us do justice to the buffet and saved the terrible trouble for the later part of the day!
After the meal we headed out to Inorbit Mall, Vashi only to be towing around two sleepyheads in pursuit of a store that didn’t even exist. Toward the end, Bhagu’s daughter, now on tantrum mode, was rolling on the floor of Bath & Body Works (yes, a great coincidence!) and had to be dragged out! As if this wasn’t enough for Murphy uncle, the handle of the bag full of toys from Landmark gave way and out came the animals like a breakout from a zoo! I’m serious! There was a Dino, a Monkey, an Owl and a Shark and we all just collapsed on the floor next to Exit!
This, however, wasn’t the worst part of the day. It was when Bhagu asked the Uber guy to turn on the FM and among several hundred ads we were blessed with one song, ‘Kusu Kusu Kusu’. Not an ideal song to entertain South Indians, especially frustrated mothers.
Plan 4:
The school visit. It FINALLY happened! (Bhagu created a group for this as well but we’ll let that be!) After two failed attempts, we hit jackpot on the third thanks to our impeccable timing and Pushpith’s ‘let me handle this’ talk! We earned ourselves a decent welcome into the school, that too by top officials in the Management Committee. (They saw us waiting outside the gates, dejection and desperation on our faces and a baby in my arms and the rest is this’story’!)
Four (+1) of us entered SIWS in swag waala slow motion, once again together after 17 years, missing those who couldn’t be with us and remembering the times that they did be with us.
Running our fingers over the walls, tracing marks on the very same benches, sitting on ‘my spot’….if doing all this could magically transport us to the past, would we want to go?
With little Shlok holding my hand and walking my favourite corridor, I found myself, for the first time, not holding onto the past and not feeling the need to dive headfirst into the past. I liked this present 🙂
A lot had changed. In school, in us…But all that mattered was us coming together in the present like the past was only yesterday 🙂
With phones full of photos and hearts full of mixed emotions, we went over to Di Bella for some gupshup over a cup of coffee!
You know what? Kids or no kids, some things don’t change. They need not.
You can still meet; You can still gossip,
You can still be silly, loud and shameless,
You can hog like nobody’s business,
And the best part?
Nothing you do or don’t need wreck your friend’ship’!
All you need is The friend.
Thank you Bhagu, Chandu, Shree and Pushpith.
Thank you Bada Sneha, Sripriya and Ram.
Thank you Arun for showing us around school and making sure we got out with no school property except photos! 😛
Cheers to nostalgia.
C.A.: Confused Aquarian 