I vividly remember the last night
parade of thoughts during my slumber, resulting in the residual of a grin on my
sleepy face, the whole process. When the slumber broke, I came to senses, met
the real world and an another new morning which usually is bereft of any joy,
especially when I have to rush for work; but today, my grin didn’t scurry away
like a rat scurries away after seeing a cat, except Jerry. Jerry can kick Tom’s
ass any day. Period!
My grinning didn’t flinch!
A light headed morning wake-ups
are only a result of a good night’s sleep or no hangover; and waking up grinning,
mind you, a full ear to ear, is a lot more than a cherry on top of a cake. Oh
wait, before you open your judging fangs let me clear that neither I’m in love nor
I’m stupid; even my mother had me tested! Then why such an anomaly? What was
the dream about? Why it out lived reality?
I bet, by now, I must have let
down the curiosity of most of you, cursing, ‘He sounded promising and thrilling
this time and ended up being a damp squib. What is such a big deal about
playing games with your siblings? We play that all the time, don’t we?’
First of all, WE DON’T! Not all
the time. And if you are still wondering what is the big deal in playing, then I
pity you my friend. You’re nothing but lost. Secondly, I think it is a big deal
because we have lost contact with you-know-who, ah not Voldemort, your siblings
and friends. You dumb fuck! Thirdly, I believe I dreamt that because I happened
to indulge myself into such an experience. On my birthday night!
My room, post a cake cutting
ceremony and all the elders off to bed, was filled with sibling, cousins and a
few friends. We opened all the bottles – Whiskey for the boys, Vodka for the
girls, beer after Vodka-Whiskey and Breezer and soft drinks for the faint
hearted, children and a pregnant lady. Oh! My Bhabhi is pregnant and due in June. Along with bottles, we had also
sneaked in a few starters for biting, ice, playing cards, board games,
pen-pencils and books. It only meant a BIG NIGHT ahead!
Recent turn of events have made us all fall
short of time to catch up with one another, as almost everyone is placed and working
really hard to build a stable career. Those days are gone where we wouldn’t care
about waking up early and planning our day as per a schedule. Thus, giving us
all a small window to match our timings and work on the feasibility just to
have a good time together. Like most families, we do meet on occasions such as
birthdays or public holidays which promise the 3Ds: Dance. Daru. Dhamaal.
Coming back to the night, we all were
exhausted dancing with our tummies and livers imploring for you-know-what! We
struggled to mark a place for ourselves, first-come-first-basis, in my compact
bedroom, where we could seat leaning on something and still maintaining the
circle with all the paraphernalia for the night in the center on the bed. We
started playing cards to make some money while we were sober, then eventually
accentuated our wits with more brainy games as our minds got sloppy. We played,
splitting in two teams, a Low-Volume-Antakshri, Dumb-Charades, Cards again,
Quiz with pen-pencil as well as buzzer rounds, and with the decisive game for
the night before going full-fledged on drinking again – One minute.
The parts to remember were the
cheating done in these games – be it poker or be it a pen-paper game. A few of
us we copied answers or prompted wrong answers to the other team or distracting
from catching the charades. The most fun game was the decisive one – One Minute.
In this game, every player will get to select a topic on which every other member,
including the proposing player, has to write the highest number of elements
relating to the topic, within one minute. E.g. If someone selects cars, then
everyone must write as many names as possible within a minute.
Cars, body-parts, Pokémon’s,
flowers, rivers, capitals, etc. were a few of the topics. We selected worst of
worst topic we believed that we could write way more than the opposition to get
the edge. The best part was the adrenaline rush in each and every one either
writing or copying and the fun of chase in such an inebriated stage made it
special. Even a corrupt government would fall short of cheating when compared
to the cheating taking place. The even funnier part is when the correction is
being done, needless to say that everyone has turned into a doctor by now. A
doctor’s handwriting is still legible, but how is one supposed to know that B,
A, N…. and a little of scribbling ahead in Hebrew or probably Greek are the
remaining letters of the fruit called banana. D, E and a wavy line meant Delhi! God save
such chaos and competition and the rightful demand for that one full mark even
after a typo which ultimately made the checker to give in.
The best part comes when a team
wins, with a few deceits, with a team of righteous and an obvious-winning-padhaku-players. The deceivers will
tease the hell out of those players making, all in all, everyone laugh.
Finally, with the dawn turning brighter, all would retire into their respective
assigned beds. These being the normal rituals of the 3Ds of our night-stay, which
all of us made sure not to miss. Ending up with father waking up everyone as
early as possible in the morning, without a hint of the happenings of the
night.
Currently, May is going on, that
night, THE NIGHT was in March, still I dreamt it; it made my morning; still that
dream lit me up. Definitely, not ‘LITT ME’ up! Such are the memories, one of
the best, I know, I’m going to cherish till the end. After all, doesn’t happiness
lie in the small things we do with our loved ones? We had many such nights in
the past with, now, the frequency of such nights hitting a plateau on a PLC
graph, I await such nights like an ardent fan awaits the next episode
of the Game of Thrones.
Until the next NIGHT!