Heart and body, mind and soul... (part 2)

First off, I saw the Visa ad again, it's actually Mind and body, heart and soul. My bad.

We rejoin our motley crew sprawled across the mattresses in the other room, after having succumbed to paratha power. India Today Office Spotter had fired up some random tennis game and was losing to Federer, when he remembered cricket. This was the first sign. He replaced the tennis game with a cricket one, and started playing as India. Not so Hungry Sir Sleep-a lot called out play pakis, which we all silently acknowledged. At this point Ralph suddenly called out War! Huh!... Yeah... What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! It wasn't a number I had saved, so I handed it to the Upstanding Religious Individual. I wasn't sure why I'd kept Ralph with me that day, he just rang and rang and pissed me off all day. I had to remember to dump him on JD when I got home. Calling Ralph however, turned out to be the religious one's mamu, Mamu.
Mamu wanted to watch the match on a large screen in CP, with the company of alcohol, and all of us being of empty wallets were inclined to decline. When Mamu offered to foot the bill, we all screamed out We love Mamu! and got up. Sutta Break Caller and myself needed to answer vicious bowel movements, but couldn't do so at the residence of the office spotter, as there was no water, so we told the other idiots to get to TGIF and grab a table, while we went to my house. There was still a good hour and fifteen minutes before the match was to start, more than adequate time for them to get there, although my stomach was complaining a little more audibly.
I got home in record time. My beloved Silver Zen, Aurelia, made me proud.
My bowel buddy got a bit shy and clenched when we got to my place, as my mother had reached home by this point. As I attended to my woeful stomach, he managed to get himself and the office spotter an invite for a home cooked dinner after the match, which he was only too happy to oblige to. Having finally set out for CP, I stopped off at my beloved Pushpanjali gas station, the one next to The Grand, and while I filled my tank, the smoker went into the Acha lagta hai store and fetched me one of those canned Nescafe cold coffees I like to drink while driving. With a good forty-five minutes on our hands to get to CP, I of course, took fifty-five, having taken a wrong turn at some point and winding up at Gol Market, where I took another wrong turn and wound up at Karol Bag. At this point the religious one texted to check if we were near, and we replied back with our orders of Guiness and Kingfisher, with Mozerella Sticks. Having finally reached and deposited my beloved Aurelia in the Palika parking at a nice open spot, and memorizing that spot, we got lost two more times, once winding up near India Today, and the second time at India Today. Wait a second... We finally reached TGIF, getting ready to bypass the giant crowd as my reliable buddies would've got us a nice snug table fairly close to the screen, only to find them standing outside with Mamu.
Now Mamu's fairly fond of me, each of the last four times he's come down to Delhi to visit, I've gone along to pick him up from the airport, all the while singing the Mamu song with the religious one from Munnabhai.
Mamu rushed ahead to meet me before I could wring the religious one's neck and explained how they'd decided to check Ruby Tuesday instead, but managed to get lost in the giant expanse that is Inner Circle. What they quite wisely forgot to mention to me was that they could've written down their name at TGIF and gotten seated in a mere 15 minutes, but the religious one insisted that Ruby Tuesday would be empty, on the day of a world cup final.
We spent the next hour approaching every nice bar, every lousy bar, every shady bar, and eventually every coffee house to get to see the match. To calm Mamu down, I periodically checked the score on Ralph, who's capable of providing me with the internet. Finally, we relegated ourselves to watching the last few overs of India's batting at Wimpy's, surrounded by equally pissed off people picking at their shitty food which they had purchased just to get a seat at a place with the match on. My two (undeserving) dinner guests and I then left to catch the last couple of overs at home, and upon entering the Palika parking, promptly forgot where I'd left Aurelia, all alone, in the dark. For a few seconds an image of myself running around wildly pushing her buttons (not again!) the central locking's button yes, that joke got old last time until she called out to me flashed through my mind, but I quickly subdued the image and hopped over the barrier to where I hoped was sure I'd left her.
About forty five minutes, hour, many arguments about the music, and a few more cans of cold coffee later (the HP next to Khan has them too), we were speeding down the home stretch of Nelson Mandela and got in with enough time to spare to catch the last six frantic overs. There was much screaming, hissing, booing, and cursing, followed by abject depression, when Misbah quite arrogantly got on his knees to deliver a last pelvic thrust six and win the match, when our Mallu fielder got under there and won us our first world cup in over a quarter of a century. Much, much, much screaming and jumping and shrieking like little girls war crying in a manly, testosterone-filled way later, we sat back down to catch Dhoni a la paunch take off his shirt and put it on some kid, who I'll assume he knew, after which the camera shifted to a rather confused Shahrukh Khan a la scary abs fiddling with his own camera.
The rest of the evening (with JD suspiciously absent, even though I managed to leave Ralph behind for him, HA!) involved a mother-cooked dinner of khatti-meethi daal, bhindi, and pyaaj pulao, with much tattling-on-Renovatio. We then spent a little while making a CD for Adelina, Aurelia's music system, from office spotter's laptop, into which he quite slyly snuck in some Justin Timberlake, Mika and Akon, along with a few dozen Punjabi tracks. He did however, manage to put in at least one song I wanted, Chunbawamba's only known number, which provides much sing-along fodder. I do suspect he made that CD more for his own listening while on the road with me, but I will candidly admit I've been trying to sing along with Mika.