London Eye...

London Eye...

Me and Raki had never thought that we would have such a blast new year eve party in our life, that too in a city like London. I atleast had hardly imagined myself coming out of my college with a graduation cap on my skull. Well it happened when i decided to spend my long Christmas-New Year leave in London even though i had other plans to go around country side of England and Scotland to see raw celebrations of biggest festival season of the year. That was my second visit to London. I had travelled once before to make my presence at my niece's birthday party. This time i chose to travel in the day time as i missed beautiful landscapes between Glasgow and London when i travelled last time. But for me the first two hours of my journey was exciting and later it all looked same to me. Vast grass fields and bald mountains dint impress me much. A small smile used to arrive on my face whenever i saw couple of cattle and sheep wandering inside wooden fencing of those fields as if they owned those lands.

I reached Victoria station bit earlier than expected. Probably the train staff were in hurry to go there home on Christmas Eve. As usual i went to the underground London Tube station with a tube map in my pocket. I got into Victoria line and then took Jubilee line at Green park and travelled till Finchley Road. Then came Dakota Metropolitan line and took me to Harrow-on-the-hill station. Its just 10 mins walk from the station to my sister's place. And i loved walking on the pavements of London. My cousin sister and her husband were waiting for me near a mall and took me to an Indian Chit-Chat shop, as i had missed my lunch on the travel. I need to mention about how few areas in London have been asianized. Harrow-on-the-hill is one

of them. We spend next two days in shopping, restaurants and spent an evening in Greenwich park. Greenwich clock is located on a small hill surrounded by a vast green field. I was not disappointed even though i had enormous curiosity to see zero degree longitude line. I was keenly waiting to stand on that line which is also called prime meridian line.

As it was getting hard to pass time at my sister's place, i decided to meet Aravind who stayed in East Ham. We had couple of drinks in a pub near Tower Hill. Then we went West Ham to meet his friends. We had dinner together at Spice Inn restaurant where we get unlimited meals at around six pounds. And we got to see few Indian chicks too. Coincidentally one of the hotel staff was my class mate in college.

Then went to Horsham on Thursday i.e., 29-Dec-2011 to meet Raki and Co. There were few Kannada guys working along with him in the same project. I got along very well with them at our first meet. All of us had dinner at Raganna's place. Raki and me are so much starving for talks, our conversation went on till 3 AM in the morning. We had plans of hitting the tennis court in the morning. But by the time we got up, people were having lunch. Raki and Anand planned for a small trip to Briton. Its one of the busiest cities in England and i loved the place very much. Not because it is a gay city, but it has pebble beach, Briton Pier and Hard Rock cafes. Just think about how you would feel if you walk on the pebble shore holding your girl's  hand and breaching the hard breeze which was neatly blended with moisture and humid. That too under the grand lighting of Briton Pier. Unfortunately i was with two guys in a gay city. The temperature was too low after evening and we were drenched in rain later. There are no words to cheer when we saw our guys waiting in Horsham with Bottles of a Scotch. Then started our Raganna's dance. My god man! it came as a very good surprise to me. I never expected a guy like Raganna would do such acts. After few more drinks, he was uncontrollable. Since i gave him very good company, he never cared for others. Raki was only guy who didn't dance and he was busy in shooting. That craziness stopped just after two in the midnight. Not to mention, most of us had hangover the next morning.

The video Raki took of the last night party was an instant hit and the video gave us much confidence to carry the same amount of enthusiasm and energy  to the London.   All of us left Horsham in the evening of new year eve with bottles full of liquor and bag full of snacks. The National Rail took us through Ockley, Box Hill & Westhumble,  Leatherhead, Ashtead, Epsom, Sutton and finally reached London Victoria station at 6:30 in the evening. Few of us already had few drinks in the train and never to mention our Victory was totally out of order and his craziness went to peak when we saw enormous wave of crowd in the city. We even dint spare London Police. We sang Hindi songs and made them dance. That's the beauty of western world. People are very sportive. We wandered in the streets of London for a while and settled on Victoria Embarnment at around 7:30. Westminster, St Jame's Park, Queen Elizabeth II conference centre looked wonderful in the night. Crowd started pouring in and by 8:30 the street was jam packed.

Vicky had found some white company and he was totally involved in that business and in return of his entertainment to them, they threw few drinks on him. Raki and Ananda went to see around and got struck in the crowd. Aravind (our beloved child) and his girl friend Peeyush are supposed to join us. But they came and disappeared in the crowd. May be he needed much more privacy. May be he din't like the way our guys were staring on his girl friend:) Our Ravichandran was busy shooting chicks and was trying different angles to analyze their assets. So only me and Raganna left who had nothing much to do. So we finished our drinks and started looking at others drinks. 

The kick of alcohol had already started its chemical reaction inside our body and was pounding the doors of our brains. Raganna was the first one to open the door and the effect was visible in his dance. I also joined him after a while and it went wild later. Crowd made way in middle and made a circle kinda arrangement for our dance. That was enough for Raganna to showcase his variety of steps. His snake and veena moves were super hit. Victory also joined us after some time and those were damn good moves with a women. Later few other also joined trying to steal the show, but crowd wanted Raganna. It was more like a flash dance. People loved it. DJ had started playing best songs form his list. I heard he was from BBC Radio and he was an Indo-Briton. So we heard couple of Indian songs too. Kolveri and Chammak Challo songs made people crazy.

Count down for the new year started at 11:59. Clock bell started ringing at exactly 12:00. Euphoria was unbelievable. Fireworks at London Eye brought heaven to the Earth. JOY was seen everywhere. People were wishing each other by hugging and kissing. A bright welcome to the new year with lot of hope, loads of prosperity and tons of happiness. The environment was electrifying and i thoroughly enjoyed the moment. I just closed my eyes and thanked god for giving this opportunity to celebrate new year with my friends in London. Raganna shed few tears and i had to shed few from my eyes to console him. After a while crowd started disappearing and we just followed them. We were hungry and exhausted. On top of that we had to control Ragannna and Ananda. Drunken people were still singing and dancing on the streets. We grabbed few burgers when we reached Victoria station and the celebration became history when we hit the train back to Horsham.

I must say that was the best new year celebration so far in my life and i will definitely carry those memories till the end  of my journey. This blog is just a way to thank my friends Raki, Raganna, Ananda, Victory and Ravichandran.

With Love,
RD