| Hanging out with the Bangalore Drift!
Ring, Ring Ring, a couple more and the old man answers ‘Hey Manson’. Its Rudra on the phone, and the time is just a few minutes past midnight, so Rudra is done with his late evening rituals I guessed.
I had just landed into Bangalore, and thought I’d let Rudra know I was around. A little chat and we would be meeting at some over the weekend for a Team-Bhp meet. Iceman ‘Sirjee’ had called earlier in the evening and we would be catching up once I was a little settled around there.
I was going to be in Bangalore for a full week for the IMTEX 2009, so there was sufficient time to catch up with the Bangy boys.
Through the week I was in touch with Viddy, Akshay (v1p3r) and Amit (iceman), and I’d be meeting these guys alongwith the rest of the bunch over the Sunday meet. Unfortunately, Viddy had out of town plans for the weekend and the Friday we were supposed to meet my phone was stupidly unreachable. Weird!
Anyways, Sunday evening finally happened and I met Amit at Brigade road. It was a superb feeling to see a crowded street, be around people who were not engineers and only spoke about varied engineering jobs or products. Amit and I took off to his friend’s place where the raved Baleno was parked.
Took off in a short while, wait the reverse motion out of the friend’s place was just a shade over insane mixed with a few spirits
We were soon on our way to the Zonda owner’s place where v1p3r was going to meet us too. Zonda (sorry can’t recall his name) was over in no time, but Akshay obviously can never be on time. A little wait and we were on our way to the TBhp meet.
Through the drive Akshay, Zonda & Amit discuss various rides, maps, remaps, turbo, nos, some more stuff, wqhile I listenened. Amit has some fancy ICE in his Baleno, sounded good too, back to the blown engine, lightened pulley talk.
Meanwhile Amit’s phone starts to ring, ‘Sirjee bas do minute’, we’re a little late for the meet while everyone else is already there.
At a signal shortly after that, Amit suddenly remembers to make use of the seatbelt around him, damn it all that driving without a seatbelt makes me wonder what would follow, would be go over a bridge? No, Amit wants to show off his fancy suspension, the light goes green, and we literally jump ahead and now we’re just going at a stupidly fast speed and then bump bump and some more bumps, the suspension just makes it seem like a lousy speedbreaker and we move on. Soon enough, a couple of more ‘sirjee bas 2 minute calls’ and we reach the place.
One of the first people I see inside is Ajmat, good to finally meet him in person after all these years on the forum. Always a good thing to see meet Rudra after a really long time. Further on met some members whose name I do not recall right now. Prabhu was standing around too, I had interacted with him a couple of times earlier, good to see him in person. Vikram D came around to say hello, soon enough I discovered he belonged to my field of business, and almost immediately we were talking stuff from the IMTEX fair that I was there for in Bangalore.
Ohhh and then I see Keshav doing his turbo talk, he probably did not see me, or was mostly conveniently ignoring me, within a moment or less without any hesitation he got a really hard warm ‘hello’ on his back. He must’ve now realized who it could have been, thoda old time catching up and everyone settles with their food.
Through the dinner and then even post dinner everyone is just talking a lot, about cars ofcourse. In a while I had gathered that if one wants to make short/long conversation with a Bangalore Tbhpian all he has to do is say ‘RS’, within a couple of minutes you would have atleast a couple of people swarm up around you, lol.
Through all this Prabhu did well to keep me company, had a little catching up to do with Rudra and some RS talk further on with Ajmat.
A couple of hours later we leave, some more farewell car talk and we’re on our respective ways. Ajmat is sweet enough to drop Zonda, Akshay and me at Zonda’s place where Akshay’s newly acquired Yellow RS awaits us. Rudra needs to be dropped en route too.
Soon enough we’re at Rudra’s place, goodbye and a hug, no kisses, and we leave. Another short drive and we reach Zonda’s place, I bid farewell to Ajmat, thank him for the drive to Zonda’s place and through a smooth late night empty stretch drive Akshay drops me back to my hotel. We plan for the following evening, or the one after that and say our goodbyes.
Stupidly enough I forgot to carry my camera along, so no pictures from that evening.
We obviously meet a day or two later, accompanied by a rally car, and another fancy car like from the movies blended with a Chennai surprise. Will post again in a while, gotta get back to work now.
manson.
Last edited by Rehaan : 6th April 2009 at 19:46.
Reason: As per rule #11.
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1st April 2009, 17:26
