Sunday, July 1, 2007

Meeting of 4 Muskeeters: A tale of Squash,Tea and Non-sense

The Scene
It was one of those maniac monsoon rainy day in Pune,a regular feature of the past week. Indra Dev(The rain god in Hindu mythology) looked all set to deliver his full quota of the entire season of rain on this single day.Looks like he was striving hard to make a delivery well before schedule to get some performance bonus from the heavenly management team:-)

The Men
4 musketeers
Me - Ur Mr.Nice Guy
Ranjeet - Old miscreant
Ravi - Sporty guy with Irish connections
Sagar - Game for everything. Sole witness to the historic event of mine and Ranjeet's cycle purchase.

Undeterred by rains we meet at the Abs gym on the posh International Convention Center.A rare combination of people with Ranjeet, Sports and Masti being a common thread.

The Mission
Join the squash club of this rather lavish gym. Ravi an old timer in this game had introduced Mr Ranjeet to try his hand at this some time earlier. Two had joined this club sometime back. Mr Ranjeet sensing that he had a weak case of winning against Ravi, thought of a clever scheme to keep his self-esteem intact. He has tried to rope Me and Sagar to play with him, so that Ravi is free to play advanced level with coach. This is "One arrow hits multiple target" ploy from Mr.Ranjeet's hat. Rather surprisingly the squash court is undergoing a complete overhaul.A rather extravagant exercise, given court was in quite a decent shape and only a small repair could have taken care of the peel of plaster which had come off from one of the wall. Looks like activities like these are keeping the Indian economy growing at 8% rate consistently.

The Outcome
The squash in-charge was missing so we decided to go the nearby cafe and kill time over a cuppa of Chai. I opted for a rather exotic Mint Black Tea, ignoring comments from Ranjeet(an expert in making cheap comments:-() , whereas others settled down for a more common edition of this Desi beverage.I logged out from the group earlier as i had to meet an businessmen for some important discussions.As fate had it,I spent my next couple of hours listening to marketing seminar of Amway, a direct marketing company.This at the insistence of the Mr. Businessmen who i must say literally took me for a ride.

Later i learned that Sagar got sold to Mr Ranjeet wily mechanisms and trio treated on music for 3 hours at Kiva lounge before retreating back to their base camps.


As for me i am waiting to be the next prey in the squash scam...

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