It was the mother of all MS Meets! 14 people were a part of it and none of them were non-MSians! The meet took place in a city (Lonavala) where none of these 14 resided. And the fun we had…it’s difficult to explain! I am not going to forget this meet ever!

8 people were there from Mumbai and the rest were from Pune. Mr Ketan was to pick up Praveen, Barnali and her friend Navlika. Me, Mr Dev aka Swamyji and Surraz were to reach Belapur Station at 9:30am from where he was going to pick us up. I had planned to wake up at around 7 am but the excitement was so much that I was up at 5:50 am itself! Knowing the irregularities of the local trains on the Harbour Line, I started early but unexpectedly, reached Belapur at9:10, ahead of time! When Harry reached the station with his Aveo,Swamyji and Surraz had not arrived yet. Surraz reached a bit late due to some reason and then came Swamyji and with it, we began our ride.

By that time, Mr Ketan had already reached the toll plaza on the Mumbai-Pune expressway. They waited till we arrived and Harry jokingly advised them to dance till we come! Finally, we met the other party at the Food plaza on the expressway and we began our journey towards Lonavala.

We reached the Bushy Dam parking lot at 11:15 am. The Pune guys-Sajit, Karan, Vijay, Akhilesh andAjit had already reached. We exchanged pleasantries and began our trek to some waterfall located on the other end of theBushy Dam. The fun was about to begin.

10 mins later, we were shocked to see Harry was nowhere in sight! Sajit searched high and low and some of us posted SMS reviews informing the MSians about the mysterious disappearance. Finally, we found him and realized that his shoes, as Sajit put ‘got ruptured’ and had gone to buy a new pair of footwear! And by that time, we had reached the waterfall too.

Sajit, Barnali, Navlika, Surraz, Praveen and Harry couldn’t control their excitement and went to enjoy in the water. The rest of us were busy taking pics and some of the pics clicked were damn embarrassing! Meanwhile, Vijay went to fetch Arun Da and after some time, the veteran and one of the most prominent members of MS also joined!

While the guys were enjoying getting drenched, Harry had a conversation withAjit and Akhilesh and impressed both of them. It was around 3:00 pm that we decided to head back, feeling damn hungry. We all stopped at Moti Ram’s restaurant. The superb English used on the numerous notice boards gave us unexpected entertainment! Vijay, who is a wonderfulsinger and guitarist, was to enthrall us with his performance in the restaurant. Unfortunately, the owner of Moti Ram sternly told us not to have any performance in his premises. Discussions of writing a review on this place started!

(CONTINUED IN PART-2!)