Hanging out in New Delhi

Last to last week I was getting home from vacation, so was in Delhi on my way home. I met up with my best friend in New Delhi and as per our plan we were supposed to board a bus to Shimla in the morning. Given how spontaneous we can be, right after our breakfast, right about when it was time for us to board our bus, we decided to stay back in Delhi and play catch up! And hand out during the day.

We bought small miniature locks to secure our luggage with and deposited our luggage at the cloak room at ISBT Kashmiri Gate New Delhi. Next it was time for us to board a Delhi metro to one of our favorite places in New Delhi – Connaught Place (CP in more hip terms). The metro station was crazy with such a huge rush, it was Saturday morning so I guess a lot of commuters were on their way to work. There were lines of human beings walking right up to the escalators and then down them at Rajiv Chowk , it seemed like there was a production line of full grown humans! I wish I could have clicked a pic.

So we arrived at CP and went to a nice restaurant – The Zen, it served chilled Indian beer and some nice cuisine. We sat there getting drunk by the minute as we sipped on our beer and caught up with each other, in just a little while it felt like our old times of being partners in crime in college were back. We dissected  “hot topics” in our lives, right from careers to business, to relationships, to social problems in India like corruption and rape and ways to deal with them.

Having Lunch at Connaught Place, New Delhi.

Soon enough we were both a couple of bottles of beer down and decided to take a stroll through Connaught Place. We got a couple of things done, bought some stuff and were ready for another round at a bar. This time we chose a pub, before getting in we inquired if they had a DJ playing since we figured that after our heavy talk at the restaurant earlier we needed some nice music to relax to. We got in and were told that the DJ would start playing at 6 PM. It was 7 but there was no DJ playing, we thought again the Indian time, we were used to it so we carried on sipping our beer.

We watched cricket on one of the big televisions while we waited for the DJ to start, soon enough he arrived and played. As soon as some of the house music and pop music played we thought it was the right time to switch gears so we ordered tequila shots. Party rock Anthem, remix of Rolling in the deep, Kid Curi- Day n Night are some of the songs that were played.

Soon after that at around 8:30, a band appeared who were scheduled to play live there. They started off and in an effort to catch the pulse of the crowd asked for song requests. There we were, requesting for songs we had loved through college – Gun n Roses : Knocking on heaven’s door, Oasis – Wonder wall, Coldplay – Yellow, Goo Goo Dolls – Iris. The band was super they played all of our requests and that too quite well. We really enjoyed ourselves, they played songs from Eric Clapton, Metallica too which were really nice to listen to. By this time we had had a lot of tequila shots, we were 6 down by the time and were out front showing the rock peace sign to the band and headbanging on songs that demanded it.

Soon enough, the band decided to take a break and went out, we followed them, we thought we could do with some hanging out with them since we had loved their music so much. We introduced ourselves and the band by then had noticed us since we had made a lot of requests and cheered them on. They were simple folks from Goa and were very easy to talk to. I broke into a fit of drunk talk and told them that they were very lucky to have had the chance to follow their passion and they were doing some great stuff with their life. I went the way of demeaning Indian engineers and other professionals who might get into jobs for the sake of money without having any real passion. In short – I just felt very passionate about the necessity for everyone to work a job they were passionate about. I was leaving back home with a lot of retrospection to do.

We went back in and my friend got us two more rounds of tequila, we were now 8 each down and beginning to drift out of our senses.I was disappointed that  a proper place to dance wasn’t available otherwise I can guarantee that everyone was ready to burst into some wild dancing.
It was 11 PM by now and we had missed all the buses that left for Shimla. We frantically started discussing our plans for the night, I wanted to continue partying and see how things went, on the other hand my friend who was more in his senses wanted us to leave for the bus station (Inter-state bus Terminal) and see if we could find anything.

After a bus ride to Chandigarh followed by a taxi ride to Shimla, I was back home, in a hangover and yet I had enjoyed myself to the fullest. I had enjoyed the spontaneity with which we decided to stay back in Delhi and have a day out. I enjoyed catching up with my best friend after around 5 months and the partying at the pub was the fittest end to our day out.

New Delhi – Connaught Place, after all isn’t a bad place to hang out at, given you have the right company 🙂