Chapter XXVIII
Midnight Café: The Lunch Box Journal
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Story so far: They sat in the car outside their office in confusion whether to go to Pondicherry or to the next alternative in the agenda. In between confusion, they even thought of ditching the odd and carry on, but that was a very unlikey event. And hence…
A week-long plan to Pondicherry was soon a bust when Akhil decided to flip the switch right before the journey. So, the next alternative plan was set in motion. It was their first time traveling there to the Midnight Café, while Gautham had already been there once a few years ago. But this wasn’t his recommendation, it was Likitha’s suggestion as she had heard good things about the place from the friends of hers.
The place was a few miles away from the city. The drinks which they had got were quite welcome inside the premises of the Café, so they kept the drinks in the car and they hung out with some good food, a few too many puffs of hookah, a little more coffee and a lot of talking. The usual things that keeps coming up during such meetups are the girls. Akhil had the same question asked every time and the answer seemed consistent, but the effort from Likitha was way too much than expected of her. While a few things did come to light which was known but they lacked clarity as always.
While the other groups of people had their share of fun, the guys seemed to drown themselves in white smoky puffs. While the girls took their farewell, they ordered another round since every table had a specific time limit and upon exceeding that, it could be given to someone else who were waiting outside in queues, or else they could order another round. After having felt that they had too much and still haven’t gotten high after two rounds of hookah and coffee and French fries, chicken grills and veg pizza, they decided to retire for the day. But all of them were still lazying around. They just wanted to sit somewhere and just hang, talk or no talk. They sat on the ground outside the Café only to find a huge queue and large groups of people waiting to get inside. They were happy that they came early or else they would one of the group waiting for their turn. After lazying around for a while, they were still not planning to go back home. The time was still 3 AM and the drinks which they had got were still in the backseat of the car. They can’t drink outside in the parking lot. After getting bored of the growing crowd at the Café, they decided to go to the Coffee shop which they saw on their way to the Café. They spent another hour there drinking another round of coffee and some late night snacks and talked a little more about things. After a while, the mosquitoes did their magic and was driving them away and even they wanted to stay a little longer, they couldn’t take the mosquito bites. They all got in the car and decided to retire for the day finally. The next retirement plan was sleeping over at Gautham’s place who wanted to show his new TV and music system. A few things changed from the previous hangout at Gautham’s place. He moved to a bigger apartment and got himself a new television set with surround music system, along with his already owned Projector. Well, he was given the Ghizmo guy tag for the very reason for being to frantically in love with electronics and music as well.
As they reached Gautam’s house, it was close to an early morning which was usually the waking up time for a whole bunch of people, except all of them. Neil, Akhil, and Sameer were feeling sleepy while Gautham fired up his large ass TV and they went to sleep off for some time. Aryan and Gautham were watching a horror movie since it had the perfect surround music to get the perfect scare. Gautham seemed to be feeling sleepy, but since Aryan was staying up as he usually does almost every day which didn’t seem like a new thing at all, he accompanied Aryan in watching the movie. When the first movie which they both had already seen got over, Akhil woke up from his sleep and even though Gautham insisted that he stay for at least breakfast, he had to rush off to an appointment to get his bandage on his removed. Meanwhile, Aryan and Gautham were on their second movie when Neil woke up from his sleep because of the vibrations that the music system was producing. Gautham insisted them to stay for the breakfast which stretched towards the lunch as well while Akhil missed on some delicious homemade food.
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(To be Continued …)
Meanwhile, Akhil went to the doctor to get the plaster removed which was planned for a previous week, if it was done, then they might have had a chance to go on the Pondicherry trip.
– Check out for new updates in the new posts –
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ak, mmxviii
