Agra Confessions...

This post is dedicated to all the awesome memories created during this very unplanned and unlikely trip - which in fact turned out to be a one very special and close to all our hearts. 

It was unplanned for we had not really been looking forward to it, had not anticipated that we would actually end up going for it (though the tickets were booked long ago!) - especially looking at the trend of our plans in the past which clearly indicated the fun part ended at the discussion stage. So, when at the last minute everybody managed to figure out an excuse to drop out from office for a couple of days, the plan was finally on!

Before I begin, here's an introduction of the characters:
Ankita: The Bride
Sneha: The late lateef
Mansi: The townie
Jinesh: A harrowed guy
Surbhi: A family girl
Suken: Let's not describe him :P
Aditi: That's Me!

Here was our planned itinerary: 

Day 1: Suken and Sneha to leave for Agra in afternoon

Day 2: Suken and Surbhi to attend the Sangeet. Jins, Mansi, Surbhi and I to leave for Agra

Day 3: Jins, Mansi, Surbhi and myself to reach Agra in evening. All 6 to attend the night wedding

Day 4: Fatehpur Sikri, Agra market

Day 5: Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and any other place feasible. Depart for Mumbai by night train

Day 6: Reach Mumbai

Here's what actually happened:

Day 1: Sneha manages to almost miss the train - again!

Day 2: Sneha misses us in the middle of the night...shares the phone with Suken?

Day 3: Surbhi raids the rooms

Day 4: Epic impromptu dance by Suken & Jins

Day 5: Monkey fight

Day 6: Robbery!

How did we manage to get so off the plan? Read on...

Day 1: The Ritual

As it is a well known fact by now, a trip cannot be complete unless Sneha manages to almost miss it. The record remains unbeaten till date - thanks to the fact that despite leaving well in time for the train (for a change), Sneha and Suken managed to enter the 3:00 pm train at 2:59:59 pm. Of course, we shall not blame her because it is obviously never her fault :)

Day 2: The Chaos

The Train: Adi, Mansi and Jins realize they are all in different compartments! Incidentally, Surbhi, who had booked her ticket separately manages to get a seat right next to Jins. So much for ladies quota! 

After about 5 trips to and fro between the 1st and the 6th compartment, and after having all the passengers in these compartments memorize our faces, Mansi and I manage to shift to the same compartment as Jins and Surbhi. The trip had finally begun! Fortunately for us, the uncle who was travelling with us had booked all 6 seats for his family, but could not be accompanied by them due to last minute changes. What was more fortunate was the fact that he had not cancelled those tickets - which meant we could have THE ENTIRE BOGIE OF 6 for ourselves upto Jhansi!

No sooner had we settled in when Surbhi does a Surbhi when she accidentally blurts out about her "family planning". (Please refer to the appendix for a full list of trip dictionary). This wasn't enough. So Mansi does a Surbhi too when she plugs her cell phone on charging and begins cribbing endlessly that it is not getting charged - only to have Jins point out that she has not put on the switch :)

Meanwhile at the Sangeet: Sneha was having a very nice time when she mixed some 2-3 varieties of drinks and started feeling reallllyy good. Things only got better when she started playing games.........

Back to the Train: Just as the lights were turned off and we were about to go to sleep, we get a message from Sneha: Miss you girls! That was it. Jins was offended that he wasn't being missed and we got extremely curious as to what made her miss us so much as to message us at such an odd time. She told us she was just playing games. Well, the next 2 hours were spent knowing more about the games Sneha was playing ;) For some very odd reason, only one of Sneha and Suken would talk at a time. Strange, isn't it? 

Day 3: Lessons of Life

This day turned out to be a crash course for Jins on "What Women Want". Okay I'm exaggerating. Actually it was just what we girls do that he may or may not have known earlier. We entertained him with a nice hour long session on how to spend an hour removing and applying nail paint and teaching him the difference between bright orange and neon orange. The session also added some more words from the female dictionary - the easiest one being "Awwwwww!!!". I can proudly say he has learned the usage of these words very accurately :) For those who think we girls completely overpowered him - hold on. He had his own fun when he taught us the mannerisms of an upmarket townie lingo which included some expressions such as being harrowed and mannerisms on how to make things look decent. 

We were having a good time enjoying the compartment to ourselves. But like everything good - this good time too came to an end - for an even better time. Enter Mr and Mrs Dadaji and his grandson. The three of them were travelling to Delhi to get the granny operated. She was such a sweet thing, smiled and said it all with her expressions, without uttering a single word for hours. Well, her husband more than made up for it. What started with a seemingly innocent query of "Where are you all headed to?" resulted in 2-3 hours of non-stop elocution by Mr Dadaji. In these couple of hours we got to know almost everything about him (quite an intelligent, learned, broad minded, interesting old man), his family (in all parts of North India), his achievements in life (being the Sarpanch of his village at some point), his opinion on politics (that was because we saw Mayawati board our train at some random station) and also got enlightened about some random topics ranging from India's freedom struggle, Gandhiji's biography etc. etc. etc. But the best part were the unforgettable 2-liner poetries he made up on the spot:

"Chai garam honi chahiye

Swabhaav naram hona chahiye"

And with that amazing session of chit chat we reached Agra...

The Wedding: Anki's wedding was bound to be the grand affair that easily qualifies for the title of a Big Fat Indian Wedding. It had all the essentials that a Marwadi wedding must have - an awesome venue in the Mogul Sheraton banquet hall, a royal dinner with more dishes than one can count, the Band Baaja Bride experience with extravagant dresses donned upon by both families, and of course, who can forget the belly dancers (Yes, that's right - belly dancers on the side stage throughout the reception procession)!

The expose: Well, Anki looked stunningly gorgeous. She made a beautiful bride :) Little did we know at that point that there was already another wedding being arranged at that very moment, right under our noses!  Enter Ms. Surbhi with her amazingly ancient cellphone. Surprisingly, we had noticed her spending a looooottt of time on her phone throughout the trip. Definitely something was fishy. So this time when she left her phone carelessly on the table and it buzzed, Mansi managed to steal it away and lo! The screen was flashing a message pop-up. The moment she read the pop-up, she left out a shrill scream and came running to Sneha and me. Our reactions were almost similar when we read the flash on the screen. It said:

"I hope I am not crossing  my limits"

Yes, it were exactly those same words. Surbhi was coming running behind Mansi to get her phone back, but of course, it was too late by then. Poor thing had to explain the entire story to us in detail. That's how we got to know of Mr. Jay (or Jai Ho! as Suken addresses him). Congratulations Surbhi! We let her enjoy her time and had our own fun seeing her blush at every mention of Jai ho!

The dinner: We wished her and then proceeded to the dinner area. Now, there were just so many options on the menu that we had a difficult time selecting what to eat and what to skip! Bust somehow, we managed to finally reach the Pav Bhaji counter. A point to note here is that by this time all of us were almost full, so we wanted to simply "taste" Pav Bhaji. Obviously, as everything else on the trip, this also had to go weird. So here's what happened. Suken got us a plate of Pavs and Bhaji. We finished the Bhaji but were left with Pav. So he went back and got more Bhaji. This time we finished the Pav but were left with Bhaji. So he went back and got some more Pav. Again, we finished the Bhaji but not the Pav. So he went and got some more Bhaji. And the same story repeated for about 5-6 times! As you can guess, we were too full for any desserts :)

The Pheras: Finally, the reception dinner was over and we had some time to relax before the actual wedding. So we freshened up and changed to something lighter, mingled with Anki's other friends, the normal chit chatting here and there. When the ceremony finally began, it was almost 3 am, and the bidaai was to happen after 7 am or so. We were too exhausted by this time to wait up through the ceremony, so we decided to head back to our rooms and take a nap so that we could be back for the bidaai.

Well, going by the exhaustion we had had through the 2 days, one would have expected us to be asleep within minutes. Once again that was not to be. As Mansi, Surbhi, Sneha and I got into our bed, we suddenly felt at a loss of sleep. Someone brought it up and someone else suggested that if we are not sleepy, we shouldn't let the guys sleep either. Surbhi, however, was an exception and still felt drowsy. So we told her that she can go to the guys room and go to sleep there. But first we must wake up the guys.

So we headed to their rooms and knocked. The moment they opened the door, Surbhi barged in, practically raiding the room. Before we could figure out what was happening, she had occupied the bed and slid into the blanket. The rest of us, including the guys, were left standing, surprised at Surbhi's speed of the takeover.

Anyways, after a while of nonsense chit chatting here and there, we headed back to our rooms, setting the alarm for 6:30 am. Needless to say it was snoozed and dismissed without even realizing, and we missed the bidaai. Sorry Anki!

Day 4: Expect the unexpected

The next day was thankfully pretty uneventful. after a quick relocation to another hotel, we headed out for a visit to the Fatehpur Sikri and Agra market. It was a lovely day and the place was even more lovelier - except for the honey bee hives that occupied practically the entire roof of the Sikri.

After a delicious lunch at the Sikri, we returned to the city for some shopping in the city. This is where the guys sort of underestimated the girls and had to re-do the shopping ;) After an awesome session of hogging on street food - Alu Chaat, Gol Gappas, Tokri Chaat, Rabdi and the likes - we headed back to our hotel. today we had planned for a night-out and couldn't wait for the excitement to begin.

Later that night, we and Anki's other friends assembled in our room for the night sessions. A night full of craziness, silliness, weirdness and madness had just begun. After a happening game of cards and some other silly games, Anki's friends had to call it a night for they had an early morning checkout next day. So it was just us from then on. At some point, Jins and Suken lost some sort of a bet and had to give us a dance performance. Surprisingly, they agreed!

What followed next was mind blowing. A 5 minute long duet performance on Chhammak Challo with atleast 6-7 different variety of steps, and all in sync! We were astonished beyond words! Not just were they both sporty enough to agree for the dance, but each of their moves, each one's expressions and each step! It had to be seen to be believed.

Day 5: A chase sequence and a robbery

It was our final day at Agra and we wanted to make the most of it. We woke up with the driver's call. He had already arrived and we were still asleep, too hungover from the previous night. Somehow we gathered enough motivation to get out of the bed and pack up our stuff for the day. The plan was to check out and keep our luggage in the hotel lobby while we go visit the Taj Mahal, Agra fort, Vrindavan and Mathura. then we would return to the hotel in the evening, collect our bags and board the return train. Based on the time our driver had explained to us, it seemed like a perfect plan. Of course, we had been forgetting that we had Sneha with us :)

The Taj was beautiful. More than beautiful actually. Floating amidst the winter haze and soft white clouds, it looked like a fairytale woven in dreams that had just decided to come down to earth to mesmerize us petty human beings with its spellbinding beauty.

We then moved on to visit the Agra fort where our guide had amazing stories to tell us about the Moguls and their court at the time. We then headed to hog on amazing parathas for lunch. With our stomachs full, we were now ready for a long journey to Vrindavan.

Here we visited the local gullies of Krishna's hometown. Later we headed to the newly built temple of Vrindavan - a massive structure with fascinating murals and beautiful lighting that threw lovely patterns on the artificial scenes created to depict stories from Krishna's life.

It was already evening by the time we departed for Mathura, so a little crunched on time. But we are not the people who give up so easily. Mathura here we come!

The departure: We could not make it to old Mathura. We did manage to see the new temple there outside the original boundaries, but were running too late to visit the Yamuna. So this had to be it. We needed to get going if we had any intentions of not missing the train AGAIN!

We were running so late by the time we reached our hotel, and the hotel guy just wasn't being cooperative. We were all completely harrowed! We were trying to gather our bags and other belongings, when suddenly some guests from another room came to the reception and began complaining to the manager. Apparently they had a terrible sleep the previous night because of some chaotic noises coming from the floor above theirs. Okay, we realized that should have been our noise. Hmm...glad we were checking out.

Quickly we rushed out of the place and got into our car. We had exactly half hour to board the train and within this time we had to manage loading our bags into the car, dodge the evening traffic to the railway station, settle the driver's payments and climb the bridge with bags and find the correct bogie. Oh, and not to forget the pedas! With pin drop silence we made our way to the station and having realized we had some time to spare, quickly rushed to purchase the pedas. Thankfully we were able to board with five minutes to spare.

Our trip had been a super success and it should have ended at that point (after another awesome dinner of course). But as it were to be, picture abhi baaki thi!

Robbery!: We were to reach Mumbai very early the next morning. A couple of hours before that, Jinesh gets a call from his brother in the US. Now some background here - Jinesh was staying alone in Mumbai at that point and since he was travelling, his house was locked and empty. Or atleast that is how it was supposed to be. But that is not what his brother told him over the call. He was in fact quite surprised to know Jins was still on the way, in  train. Who had spoken to him over video call just a few minutes ago then?

According to his brother, Jins had received his call over Facetime just 5-10 minutes ago. Though they were not able to speak, but the description of the background - a brown sofa, a well built guy answering the call - quite resembled Jinesh and his house. Was it what we were thinking it was? Immediately Jinesh's sister in law (in US with his bro) panicked. We were worried too. There was definitely something spooky here.

Either his brother had dialed a wrong number or someone had broken into his house. Wrong number over Facetime was not a possibility. So it meant a robbery was taking place at his house right this very moment! The thief must have picked up the tablet and when he saw the incoming call, he must have accepted it in his panic. So the guy Jinesh's brother saw on the video call must be the thief himself!

This was beyond anything we had ever anticipated. What could we do sitting here in train? Was there actually a thief at his place? Likely - he said. Just a few days ago there had been an incident where the rods of his window had been widened when they had been out - as if someone had tried to break in. Maybe the thieves had been keeping a close watch on his movements all along! And so this time they grabbed the opportunity.

Jinesh placed a call to his neighbour and requested them to open his house with the spare keys he had left with them. The neighbour aunty, very gutsy indeed, agreed to help. She went into the house and checked every corner of it to be double sure. No thief there. His ipad was also on the bed - right where he had placed it before leaving for the trip.

So no robbery. Thank God! But then, who was it that his brother had seen on the call? Nothing was making any sense. Well, nothing we could do at the moment. So we urged them to take it as a case of cross connection and ignore it atleast for the time being. At the back of our minds, though, we were all still worried.

Mystery un-revealed: We reached Mumbai before sunrise. Exhausted with the endless ordeal of even after event, we just wanted to go home and crash for a while before heading back to the routine of our jobs. Only, there was the mystery of the robbery yet to be solved. And solved it got. The next day Jinesh explained to us all as to what had actually happened. The silly error that led to this huge chaos. Here's the gist of it: Jinesh had visited the US just a couple of months ago and had taken a temporary sim card there for using during his stay. When he returned, he had discarded the number. But the telecom company had not. They had re-assigned it to some other guy (also well built, and who stayed in a house having brown sofas similar to the ones at Jinesh's place). His brother had the US number still saved, and that night, had dialed the US number instead of India number. The other guy had received it from his home in US and caused all the confusion.

Wow! Who could have imagined that! But we were all super relieved after hearing this. No robbery AND no mystery. And an awesome trip with loads and loads of memories. Well, all's well that ends well. But for us, it was a new beginning of a treasured friendship of lifetime :) Cheers!

Appendix: The Trip Dictionary

1. Family Planning: A planned outing with your family

2. Doing a Surbhi: Managing to innocently pull off a joke on yourself
3. Townie: A person who often attempts to flaunt his or her lifestyle through usage of superfluous words such as "harrowed" etc. or through high handed behaviour

4. Harrowed: Expression used by townies when they feel annoyed

5. Awwwww: A feminine expression used by girls to either a. express warmth or b. annoy guys

6. I do!: A term that always succeeds at scaring off guys
7. Decent: An act of good doing done solely with the intention of showing off your nicer side - just for the heck of it
8. Playing games: Left open to audience interpretation....