31st Celebrations at Matheran

Matheran is a heaven near Mumbai. I love the place. I had blogged about Matheran on my previous blog. So wont repeat the same things again, and this post is not about Matheran it is about our 31st celebrations at Matheran.

It is my experience that things that I plan well in advance, do not ever happen. I had been planning for the 31st Dec 2009 celebrations since Diwali. Initially my plan was to have a barbeque party at my farmhouse at karjat. But the house is still not ready to have any party. So I had to drop that idea later. My 2nd preference was to fort Raigarh. But eventually I realized that nobody would agree to come to Raigarh. I was determined to go out of Mumbai and celebrate the last day of 2009. At last just two days prior to 31st I came up with the plan of celebrating 31st at Matheran. Of course there wasn’t much response. But ultimately 3 of us made it successful.

3 girls having a New Year party in an old, small and secluded house, located in a Jungle like Matheran sounds totally insane. But well, we are really crazy and often plan such events and make them memorable with the stupidity we do out of over excitement and enthusiasm.

We started really early and could reach Matheran before noon. Our bags were already full with the stock of food items and drinks we were carrying from home. As if that was not sufficient, we bought more stuff from the local market. Our sacks were damn heavy, and the walk till my house, which is at the far end of Matheran, was a bit exhaustive. But it was all worth.

The main program was to have snacks with cake and red wine and play cards in the verandah decorated with balloons and crapes. The whole evening was gone in cooking corn chat and blowing up the balloons. At last by 10 all preparations were over, and it was time to shuffle cards and open the wine bottle. We amateur drunkards were handling a wine bottle for the first time. After caressing and cuddling the bottle for a while we proceeded to open it. It didn’t take us much time to realize that the bottle had a cork and we had forgotten the cork opener (actually, forgotten is a wrong word, because I never considered cork opener could be an essential thing to carry). Now from where the hell was I going to get a cork opener in the jungle? The market was 3 km from my house, and there was hardly anybody living in the vicinity that can have a cork opener. The only tools available in the house were scissors and knife. So ultimately I opened the cork by continuously prickling it with the scissors. No wonder I had to filter the wine before drinking. The efforts I took made the wine taste better as I was the one who drank most of it.

The rest of the evening and the following day was fun and was quite (un)eventful.

This incidence has led me to make New Year’s resolutions of learning “drinking etiquette”. I am serious about it.