Thursday, January 29, 2009

Hope of a party

“Next Saturday is my party”, exclaimed Krishna in the true Katte spirit. All the faces of the members lit up with the sound of “Party”. The occasion was Krishna’s birthday and like every year Krishna announced the party. Incidentally Krishna is the only member of the Katte who treats his mates on birth days. He had been following this process from a long time without fail. There have been multiple speculations by some of the Katte members about the attachment of Krishna with his party on birthdays. Some of the primitive speculations are, “Krishna is happy to be alive”, “Krishna wants to remind members of his being alive”. One of the widely and wildly accepted philosophical reasons is “Krishna likes treating his friends and Birthday is just an occasion he has chosen for consistency”.

Nevertheless when it comes to parties, Katte members never worried about the reason. They followed the philosophy of “Do not find the root of a party, just enjoy it when it comes”. In the history of the Katte there have been many reasons for parties. The prominent ones being, “Other members know that somebody has cash in his pocket”, “One member saw, a beautiful girl smiling at another Katte member in the class”, “Somebody just felt that he needs to treat his mates in middle of a Katte meeting”, “One Katte member quit smoking for a week”, “Missing Katte member visited Katte after 2 months”, “Somebody went abroad”, “Somebody saw a new restaurant and decided to acquaint his friends with the same” etc. etc. It never mattered to Katte boys of what the world thought about the reasons, and always indulged themselves to find out the source of next party.

Katte members looked forward and enjoyed the party, just like tribals of the long forgotten era enjoyed their rituals. One can easily say that the sincerity with which tribals approached their rituals is followed by the Katte members in the modern era.

Just before day of the party Krishna, emailed his mates with the terrible news of postponing the party. He was supposed to be stuck with a deployment or some such sort of crap at office and couldn’t make it. He proposed to postpone the party to week after. Krishna was a statesman of the Katte and there was nothing for the Katte members to doubt his character. But, Krishna also sent an email with the news of him not able to attend Katte meeting on Friday. Some of the Katte members became anxious as Krishna never had a history of postponing a party and very rare history of missing Friday meeting.

To give a brief history of Friday evening’s meetings of Katte members, Katte used to convene all days during the student and un-employed times of Katte members. All the well meaning members visited Katte everyday, without fearing the sun, moon, rain, cyclone, storm etc. Over a period of time as the Katte members got into professional life the meetings shifted to week ends. As some of the members got married the Katte used to convene on Friday evenings only. This Friday evening meetings of Katte used to be in restaurants and never got the tag of “Parties”. This is because the Katte constitution clearly states that “Any Katte meeting/outing clearly sponsored by one individual only is deemed as Party”.

Followed by Krishna’s email, there were other emails mentioning various reasons for different people not able to make it to the Friday meeting. It was not very inspiring to see the missing of party and to top it, cancellation of the ritualistic Friday meeting. In the gloomy environment of financial depression in the world, the missing of party and meeting was not taken well by the remaining members. The members who were expecting a party or worst case a meeting felt sad about the state of affairs.

With all the terrible things happening around the world and Katte on a Friday evening, Rama sends a sweet email to the members saying “I am going to treat you all next week after Krishna’s treat. Reason will be revealed on the day of the party”. In reply to this email, the least eligible bachelor (one who is engaged) of the group, Kumar, sends an email requesting him to give an opportunity to treat the Katte members in next 2 weeks, as he will not be available after this period due to marriage preparations. Not many members were present in the office, when these emails came, and Katte members do not have a habit of checking emails from home.

The next week, when the Katte members saw the emails, they were thrilled. The week which ended with a gloomy environment of missed party, gave way to flood of hope for future weeks.

The members quickly got involved with solving the grave problem of priority of the parties and the locations for the different parties. Katte members with all the renewed energy typed away emails with various suggestions on the location and the order of the party. The party givers typed away emails, fighting against the various costly options selected for the party location.

Katte was out of the depressing environment, and one could feel the renewed energy of the Katte members even through the computer.

--Madhukar Hebbar

4 comments:

VidyaShankar Harapanahalli said...

Cool Man,

some kar'sevak gave a party to another Kar on that gloomy day... highlight was uncontrolled laughter by former while eating biriyani rice... It was quite different...

another person present some'ru had a good time... called it as layoff party... those specifics are missing

Keshava said...

Maga, I like the way, you have mentioned: The Katte coming under depression and getting out of it, spontaneously. Probably, any non-katte member will feel the reality about the awesome rituals / schedules followed in our Katte. The narration is cool. Huge improvement in your presentation style.

Atmaram said...

I liked it.
Writing is very good, more importantly its nice that you have given an humane touch to the katte itself.
If a non katte member reads it he will know about all the hard work that goes behind every friday meet, like deciding the venue

Madhukar Hebbar said...

thanks for all your comments guys..