Whatever happens, it happens for good..!! :-)

Oh yes, the moment has arrived. After countless days of contemplation, I've finally decided to start blogging B-) Before I start, I'd like to thank my brother Deepu and my friend Kirane for providing me the spark for this jumpstart :-)
Also I've decided that I'll be writing on these 3 topics : Real Life Stories, Sci-Fi Stories and Technical blogs on Microsoft Technologies.

I will be starting off today with a "Real Life Story" and here it goes.

It was 4 o'clock on a Saturday evening when  my brother and my friend came up with an idea of riding to Mandya to have the famous Mandya Special Benne Dose at my Grandpa's hotel. We started from Bangalore at around 5 o'clock and had planned to return back by 9. We started our journey by refuelling our bikes and checking the tyre pressure to ensure a smooth ride. Everything was fine until we reached Bidadi, where my bike's rear tyre got punctured. "Three people should never travel together, It is inauspicious"  was what my friend had told me before leaving Bangalore. The superstitious remark which my friend made had come true. Even though we managed to find a puncture shop near by, there was a long queue in front of that which ensured that our weekend was going to get spoiled. As expected, it took more than an hour to get the tyre fixed and it was already 7 o'clock which meant we could not proceed further as we had to return back early. This sent us into a Weekend-Depression-Syndrome (which usually happens on a Sunday night though). As if the God had conspired to spoil our weekend, it also started to drizzle. After consoling each other, we decided to have the famous Bidadi Thatte Idlies at least and return back. Hot and steaming Thatte Idlies along with the ginger tea was a true mood-booster. After a sumptuous evening snack, we left Bidadi around 7.30pm. Cool weather and the drizzle made our ride back to Bangalore really enjoyable. As we approached the city, we saw a crowd gathered in front of the Mercedes Benz showroom located on the highway. Observing closely, my brother found out a really hot couple performing Salsa inside the showroom. We parked our bikes outside the showroom and rushed in (so that not even a singe second of the performance is missed ;-P ). As we entered the showroom, we were surprised to see that everyone was in a blazer-suit. "S!@t, this is a planned audience, and we are not supposed to be here" was our instantaneous reaction. There are always a few moments in your life when you'd wish dinosaurs weren't extinct, and they came and swallowed you up. This was one those moments. The Salsa performance ended in no time and as we were planning to escape from the crime scene ( I forgot to tell you that we were in slippers and t-shirts with torn jeans :P ), we were asked to shift our focus to the car launch stage for which the entire event had been planned for. As we neared the stage, my friend started screaming "Guys, Irfan..Irfan..Irfan". And, yes, to our disbelief there was Irfan Pathan, the star of Indian Cricket Team standing right in front of us. Looking absolutely stunning on his leather-jacket-cum-blazer attire, milky white complexion, 6'2" tall, chivalrous (ok, I know I've started to sound like a teenage girl now :P ), we were delighted to the core on his presence.


 After launching the new Mercedes Benz B-class car which he was supposed to, it was announced that audience will be asked a few questions and the winners will be given away signed goodies from Irfan and a chance to get photographed along with him as well. First question was to name all the 3 sports images drawn on the newly launched car - they were actually scuba diving, sky diving and slalom canoe. Even though I knew all of them, I was a bit hesitant to raise my hand and answer them in the crowd. When we found out no one was able to name the third sports image (Slalom canoe) correctly, my bother and my friend forcefully raised my hand to get noticed. The anchor spotted and called me up to the centre stage to name the sports images. As I named them effortlessly, she asked Irfan to had over a signed cricket ball to me. I was already on cloud nine B-) He signed the cricket ball and gave it to me, shook hands and gave a pat on my back B-) I wished him good luck for the upcoming T-20 world cup in Sri Lanka. "Thank you so much" came the reply. I was amazed to find out that he was such a down-to-earth person. This was followed by a "Yes-I've-Got-an-Oscar" kind of celebration by three of us.


 In the meantime, we lost track of all the other questions that were asked and it was down to the last question to be asked. The last question went like this "how many wickets Irfan has taken in the ODIs?". People started guessing..190..200..210 etc. and Irfan was not agreeing. When a guy from the audience shouted "160", my clever brother noticed a slight change on Irfan's expression (you should seriously consider Face Reading as a career option bro ;-) ) and guessed "170". That was a BINGO..!!! B-)  Irfan spotted my bro and called him up on the stage. Then he was handed over a signed miniature bat by Irfan. We started jumping around in celebration.



 After taking few snaps of Irfan and obviously swanky cars in the showroom (yes, we were visiting a Mercedes showroom first time in our lives :P ) , we decided to move out.  Before moving out, we were trying to collect our photographs with Irfan taken by the official photographers. As we were about to leave, somebody from the behind came up and said "Guys, stop..!!". We thought "This is it. We've been caught for gate-crashing."  The scene reminded us of the one in Three Idiots where the protagonists of the movie are caught for gate-crashing a marriage party. The man who came up was in his mid-thirties and was in a blazer suit. Even before he started speaking, we told him "Sir, We are still here to collect the photographs taken with Irfan. We will leave as soon as we get them". To our surprise, the gentleman had a broad smile on his face and he said  "Guys, it's ok, here's my business card. You can call me any time for the snaps. Now, there's an open terrace dinner arranged. Please have the dinner and go". I took a glance at the gentleman's business card. It read General Manager, Sales, Mercedes Benz. We started pinching ourselves in disbelief. We had become celebrities..!!! B-) Upon reaching the terrace we found out there was a Seven-Course Luxury Dinner awaiting us :-) . We were not even close to their prospective customers, still the kind of reception that the staff at Akshaya Mercedes Benz showroom gave us was truly impressive. Their services were as good as their products.  We ate like if there's no tomorrow and couldn't stop ourselves smiling. We had a broad smile on our face throughout the evening. It was an evening to remember forever.
As they say, whatever happens, it happens for good.