It was one Thursday evening at work and most of my team members and few others decided to take half day off from work. It was around 5:30 PM and we were getting ready to attend of one of our team-mate's engagement function in Andheri. I was excited as always because in such social functions, you get to dance and eat a lot.
So we - a group of about 10-15 people decided to take a half day off the office, which is leaving at 6:00 PM after being in the office at 9:00 AM :) this was a joke those days, as generally most of the people used to stay late in office until 10:00 PM. We got onto the Andheri bus and occupied the last 2 rows in the bus. The bus started and we also started singing and playing Antakshari and playing jokes and making fun of each other. Because of the usual mumbai traffic, it took us about 1-1.5 hrs to reach Andheri.
We all got off at a place walking distance from the Community hall. On our way, we thought of buying bouquets for the to-be engaged couple. We bought two big bouquets from a road-side stall.
After about 5-10 minutes of march past towards the hall, we reached the entrance of the hall. Since it was a huge place, I asked the security guard about the proper hall in which engagement was going to take place. He said, he is not aware of any such thing. I thought poor fellow, he does not know anything and called our friend, who was getting engaged. Our friend said, that we have to go inside and the hall is nearby only. So we proceeded as per the directions given by our friend. We reached the entrance of a big hall as per the directions. We went inside and there were two people sitting there. We asked about the function and they said they are not aware of any such function. I said you must be mistaken and asked them to check their records. They looked at the record-keeping book and said no such function today. Then they said somebody must have fooled you today and then we realised yeah today is April 1st and We are the FOOLs !!!
You guys will say that we were dumb enough to believe this thing at first when the date was April 1st. But if you find out how the entire event was planned by our friend, you will believe one will easily fall into the trap. Let me list how he fooled us -
1. He sends out the invitation email about 3 weeks back and then goes to the office gym. When I confront him there knowing that the date was April 1st, he says no its true and he left his desk as he was feeling shy.
2. When we questioned him in the subsequent days about this, he one day gets a picture of some girl and tells us that she is the lucky girl and her name too.
3. Even after this my other friends suspected him, and they called at his place and asked him mom about this. His mom too said that its true. So see he had very meticulously planned everything.
4. Now on April 1st, to show that he is really busy in preparations he takes a day off from the office.
I guess the above 4 things would make anybody accept that yes he (our friend) was going to get engaged on April 1st.
Well after this he did come to the venue and then took us for dinner to a nearby restaurant. But yes, we were all made victims of April 1st by this great genius - Cheris Mehta !! Every year first April reminds me of this incident. Hats off to Cheris !!!
PS - The last time I talked with Cheris, he told me that his wife is pregnant and the delivery date is on April 1st 2008 !! :-)
2 comments:
God bless u. I though this was our little secret but you had to publish it to the world!!!
Very beautifully narrated! Hats off to you sir. Well this was more successful beacause of the sportsman spirit you guys had. We all will remember this event on every 1st April through out our life! And well there is something more to add in the event. These guys gave me an engagement ring and told me to wear it on the next day so that no one becomes aware about what happened last night. I wore it for couple of days but then it had to come out some day! :-)
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