My AIKYA family was Mr. Vinod Poddar - Chairman of the Poddar group of industries. We were about a dozen of us who had been 'adopted' by Mr. Poddar and invited over for dinner last night. The plan was that after my classes which end at about 7pm myself, Hardik "Rangeen" Jhaveri and Samridh "Ghungraloo" Sharma would head together to Poddar Uncle's place. But the bav we booked ditched us for some strange reason. So we found ourselves stranded. So we decided to take one of our batchmates car and head to Mr. Poddar's house.
Both Rangeen and Ghungraloo are hard core entreprenuerial by nature. They were discussing about business and value. Then the conversation between Rangeen and Ghungraloo enroute were something like this:
Rangeen: I hope he doesnt offer alcohol. I have decided to stay off alcohol for a month. Last term I drank like a fish. Need to detox.
Ghungraloo: Ya dude. Me too !!!! This time when I was home I was playing cards all night and in the morning when my Dadi woke up I was still drinking. This was when I realized that I had been drinking too much.
Rangeen: But he's a big-shot for sure. So I guess he'll have a big bar at his place.
Ghungraloo: ... and he'll have the best of whiskies and stuff
Rangeen: What if he offers ?
Ghungraloo: I'll head straight for Single Malt whisky ...
Rangeen: I'll attack Black Dog whisky ...
All this while I was wondering about what each one's first words in this conversation were ... ISBians I tell you ...
Soon after we reached Uncle's place where we were welcomed very warmly by him. All of us sat around in a big circle. Uncle told us about himself, his family, the businesses his handled but what came across as most interesting about him was his passion about Kailash Mansarovar. He talked about how he no longer into his businesses so that he could do something for the society.
Between munching on the delicious Corn pakoda and awesome Dhokla that Uncle had been serving us we had Dr. Somnath entertaining all of us by probing with endless tales about Mr. Poddar's connection to Kolkata. The Doc was missing Durga Puja at home and compounding that was the Diwali atmosphere.
Then Dinner was ready and weren't we hungry !! The food was so delicious that all of us descended on it like a pack of wolves. However Soham, Puneet, Sukesh, Vikram, Tokas, Nandan and Sarfi were on a balanced diet.
While Aanchal, Janani and Suparna were on a See food diet. They only saw the food; ate very little of it. They had some very good insights about how to fool our body when it comes to Calories.
Then we played a funny game - Who wants to be Jalebionnaire ? In this game Uncle chased us and fed us more Jalebis than we have ever eaten. By the end of it Arun "Frenchy" Sagar and Ghungraloo had beaten others by a margin of about half-a-dozen. Rangeen and I used our own hypothesis to dodge most Jalebis. Aanchal and Suparna lost whatever competitive advantage they had won over other girls in terms of Calories input in a single meal that night.
But as the famous quote goes ... If nobody cant, VibhorKant ! At about 11pm just when everybody had been battered and bruised after eating about a dozen Jalebis, Vibhor wanted tea ! In shock Tokas fainted ! Finally Dr. Somnath could retrieve him from the shock without using his medical skills.
All in all it was a fun-filled night and hats off to whoever conceptualized AIKYA. Its a awesome platform for some real social networking and each one of us went home that night richer by experience. ISBians are priveleged in matters like this. Truly looking forward to the next one.
