Falling coconuts

MBAs all over live by the WHPH philosophy, “work hard party harder”. As a consequence, post placement trips are quite common in bschool campuses all over… to the extend that not going for one of these is seen as “uncool”, so to say!

“what are you gonna do sitting holed up at home? Why don’t you join us?”

It may be a different matter that the last time you struck up a conversation with several of them was during the post admission meets.

If you think you can get around that difficulty by getting your friends together on a trip, think twice…

“no da, I’m actually going to sunderbans with these pmir people…. Lotsa cute chicks coming with us….”

Reader kindly note that he doesn’t even invite you…. Well, not that you’d go if he did. But still, it feels good to be invited, doesn’t it?

Move on to friend # 2. “da, I havent been home ever since I joined XL. Been busy with disserts and competitions… and I think my joining is in early april… so I really wanna go home…”

Why do I even make friends with these people?? Probably to get some last minute gyaan before end terms… The ungrateful bitch that I am, I also keep forgetting that this chap saw through all my group projects over the last two years…

Friend # 3… “dude, guess what! We are going to leh next week…”

Great! Here is a true friend…. But certain minor obstacles remain…. “dude, but don’t they like open the passes in june? I remember hearing that somewhere…”

“dude, when my dad is coming with me, why shud I worry? The pass itself is made for them!”

Oh! U mean YOU are going to leh… not US!!! ….. aaargh!!!!

Finally, I decided to tag along with my friend to goa! Several incidents made the trip and all the dough spent on it worthwhile...

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We were on a van from bombay to goa…. Frigging hot…. Suddenly, several of us can feel some droplets of water.. “great! Its raining…. Open the windows fully….”

I was about to do that when I realized something was amiss! The drops had a strangely obnoxious stench…. Probably just the area…. Maybe some garbage….

The van stops…. And a guy sitting in front jumps out… “BARF”….

YUCK !!!! I cant believe it!!!! all of us sitting behind jumped out to wash off the “droplets”!

Needless to add, the poor soul was referred to as “Raingod!” by his unsympathetic comrades for the rest of the journey…..

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We hired bikes to go from beach to beach…halfway through, suddenly out of nowhere my friend gets this impulsive need to ride!

“dude, sit peeche.. lemme ride… “

“okay fine.. take my helmet”

“dude, grow up! How uncool is that! I don’t need a helmet n all….”

“but….”

“no buts, sissy! Sshh”

Skeptically, I let him ride… hardly 5 minutes before a cop asks us to pull over and slapped us with a Rs 500 fine….

“dude, I got just 200…. Cough up the rest…”

Wonderful!!! What sort of a beggar buffoon sets out to roam around goa with 200 bucks??

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On the way back, we stop at a pub in bombay…. To dance our troubles away…. Teeny tiny hardly-five-feet-tall girls are let in…. but when it cames to me… “sorry sir, can you please show us the proof of age?”

I was scandalized!!!!! Hello…. I came of age like 4 years back!!!! Well, granted I don’t exactly have the physical dominance of the four feet tall schoolgirl who just went in, but I wasn’t about to argue with someone who looked like NTM and karthik ganesan put together!

My “friends” soon struck a deal with me… they’d go in and dance while I walk around bandstand for most of the night watching strangers make out in the most repelling ways, witnessed before only in jenna jameson movies….

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Several such stories later, I reach the safety net of jamshedpur where nothing can go wrong…. One thing that I’ve always been scared of in kerala is a coconut falling on my head…In a weird, twisted way, I’ve been skeptical of embarking on trips with a huge crowd of strangers as well… and now when I look back, perhaps it is the incidents rather than the people or the place that make the trip memorable….