Monsoon and Thunderbirds.

Monsoon and thunderbirds

So Finally November it is

So it is final the Nakai wedding is going to be in November this year.. dates have been changed from Feb 29th 2008 to November 2007. Final dates to be decided yet !!

The Latest Trip Article

Chandigarh 29th June 2007

Delhi 26th June 2007

Mumbai 20th June 2007

So now I am a writer ?

BIG BAD ASS BIKER

So here i am the big bad ass biker who did a tango with a school bus a few days ago and well when had to make a decision do i hit the bus or do i brake hard and try turning the bike.. so i took the second option and guess what SLIP, CRASH , SKID, BOOM down I went.. Outside a hospital i must say so once Ouseph and Joy came from the office and saw that i had a problem while walking off i was sent to see the doctor who said "you need to wear the splint for three weeks and if there is a problem after that come see me"..

So that was what happened on Monday and since then I have been home hobbling around the house, playing video games and watching T.V. Let me tell you I AM BORED SHITLESS... Aghhhhhhhhh

More later ...:) this one was truly random

Bangalore - Ooty - Coonoor - Bangalore

A day at the beach

So I came back from Chandigarh on the 11th. Raghav's wedding was a blast it was 7 days of party it was great.

So i get back to Mumbai and get ready to get back to the grind. Nitin was still here doing his internship in town. So we hung out as much as we could partied one night and all that..

Ok now what happened while i was in chandigarh is that i resigned from my job in L'Officiel. Why you may ask? i mean i just started with them and it was a good place to work is a good magazine and all that... well here is your answer.. Autocar magazine offered me a job and now how the hell could i say no to Autocar. I mean its like a dream job for a nut like me to work in an magazine that deals with cars and bikes so that is the reason why i quit..

So i was supposed to start the job on the 15th and i got a call on the eve of the 14th that they wanted me to come to office on the 19th which was a monday. So now that gave me some time to kill. Now Amrita's movie had finished and she was free as well..! So whats the use of both of us sitting around at home for the weekend when both of us had some time off together. we decided to go for a holiday so out came the outlook traveller 52 holiday destinations around mumbai and the preperation began. It had to be a beach as I would consider my self to be a beach bum it had to fit the budget and well it had to be close enough to ride too because come on we had to ride there (Amrita has never been on a ride with me). So we pondered over the book and fught about places to see and then one place we agreed about GOA !!!!

630 odd kms from Mumbai a very long ride. Specially since we would leave friday and come back sunday and only have one day there .. but for Stella's, the cold beer and the beach where everyone know you what the hay.. The plan was made. I got out my Cramster's we packed them up and we were ready ..

16th morning 4:00 we were up and by 5:00 we were dressed had bid Nitin adieu (he was leaving for delhi that day on the 11:00 flight and then to chandigarh on the evening shatabdi) threw the Cramster's on the bike strapped on our helmets and our jackets and we were off.

It took us an hour to get out of Mumbai to Panvel and when we took the right to the Goa Road (NH - 17) we hit a traffic jam of mostly trucks (5:45 in the fucking morning only in mumbai) so i navigated thru and came to the front of the pack where there were people talking to some cops and that was the reason i thought the traffic was held up. So i gunned the bike and we were off once again.. Now i have travelled by this road before with Angat and Amber (when we travelled from Chandigarh to Goa in 2005 in a Maruti 800) so when i hit some fog on the road i was prepared for it. Now the fog started getting thicker and Amrita said something smelt funny well you know if you ride a bike you come across lots of funny smelling things when you are riding. So paying no heed to it i told her it was nothing and we carried on into the thick fog. The fog got thicker to the degree i could bearly see my front wheel and the smell(which was like a toxic smell) got to me and I could hear Amrita like coughing and wheezing and I felt like I wanted to throw up. This was also the same time i realised we were the only vehicle going that way all the traffic seemed to be going back toward Mumbai. So i decided to turn around becuase it was just weird. So we get to a dhaba and We need to stop becuase we were coughing and we needed a drink. We sipped our tea and wondered what the hell kind of fog we hit and I was thiniking is this the end of the holiday?

So we start off again and get back to where we had encountered the Jam. I speak to the cop there and he tells me that a chemical tanker had overturned on the road and it was impossible to go down that road at least for another 6 - 8 hours. But he gave me another route to follow to get to Goa.. So off we were again the two of us to Goa.

It is a great road a bit boring at times at least when you are riding in a straight line for hours on an end. The painfull part is you cant speak to the person who is riding becuase of the wind and thru the helmets it is virtually impossible.

Now what is virtually impossible is sleeping on a bike. Well not if you are Amrita!! At one point i feel the wheight of the bike shift to the right and feel Amrita start sliding to the right suddenly i realise she has fallen asleep. So put my hand back to hold her and jam the breaks and she come straight into my helmet with hers which must have woken her up real good. After a nice monolog from me on why she should stay awake and not sleep on the bike we were off again..We stopped for breakfast and then lunch in the ghats(which was pretty good). At some point Amrita has managed to put her head down and positioned her self in such a way that she slept for at least an hour. God knows how she did it and god knows how i was riding because i had no clue that she was asleep just thought she had her head down..

Anyway 4 in the evening we got into Goa at 5:00 we were at Stella's. Who on seeing us commented on how mad we were to ride down for a day and then gave us our keys and told us the beer was ready at the shack. So we cleaned up had baths got all the crap off us and went down to the beach to watch the sun set and drink some beer and eat some food.

After a few beers and a bite to eat we thought why not go back to the room and nap and then at like 9:30 we can get up and go to eat dinner and grab a drink in Baga yea like that was going to happen! Our nap turned out to be from 7:00 in the evening to 8:00 the next morning.

So the day we were in goa we spent true beach bum style started with breakfast on the beach, lunch on the beach and lots of beers in-between. Ingos night baazar in the evening and then dinner back on the beach.

Sunday we started our trip back at 6:00 in the morning the trip was much the same not much crazy stuff happening. Except i got Amrita to sing and stay awake all the way back. We stopped fewer time and I rode faster and for longer stretches. We made it back home by 4:00 all black, tired and real kicked with our trip.

I am sitting here over a week later peeling becuase I got so badly sunburnt in that one day. We did 1200 odd kms in 3 days not bad for my first ride alone with Amrita in a place where I knew no one to come for backup. The whole trip was worth it.. We may have missed Roger Waters show in Mumbai. But we learnt how to fly for sure...

we have a few pics of the trip mostly of me becuase they were taken from amrita's phone (since both of us lost our cameras).

The road is now calling and I think the next trip may be Bangalore in March for the Iron Maiden concert but with the Inddiethumpers...

Dinner time ..

Goa

The Wedding

It is over here is the wedding ...

The Wedding

The Boys Sangeet and the after party

Boys Sangeet and After Party

The Shagan

The Shagan

The Girls Sangeet

As the wedding continues so does the party..

The girls Sangeet

The First Party

So it has begun and the party was at Raghav's and then it shifted to the girls house..

not everyone is here yet Angat is still to come... having problems with leave but he will be here. ok need to go shopping so here are some pics.. later

the wedding - the start

Raghav's final countdown

11:47 on the night of the 31st of Jan 2007 and I am sitting in Mumbai International airport waiting for my flight(AI 432) to take me (why only me where is Amrita? well she is working on a short film with Mira Nair) to Delhi from where I shall go meet Aastha and Amber and then catch my train to Chandigarh at 7:20 A.M. Its going to be a hectic night but why am I doing this taking off to Chandigarh just randomly with 2 brand new suits in my bag. I shall tell you Raghav and Tulika are getting married.. Raghav who you ask ? Raghav is my best friend and has been since i remember and trust me i remember real far back... Nursery I think is where we met and since then it has been history. Hey I remember playing a hand in getting Tulika and him together back in Class 9 in Vivek High School. We seem to have done it all together from taking off on our cycles to the botanical gardens in the wee hours of the morning as kids, listing to Aerosmith in our torn jeans and feeling cool, helped each other buy birthday gifts for our girl friends (actually Tulika for him :)) to sitting and talking about crap this time when he came back from Copenhagen.

Its weird I never thought that we would all be so far from each other Raghav in Copenhagen, Angat in Delhi and me in Mumbai we were nuts when we were in school and then you don't realize once that is done and you join college and once work starts all hell will break loose and everyone will take off in different directions.

Anyway I am straying off the topic so i am here at the airport waiting for my flight at gate 19 where it seems the ac is not working full time and they seem to be lots of mosquitoes (only in an Indian airport).

So the party begins tomorrow Raghav your countdown has begun in the words of Angat "you are a looser" and in mine "ha ha you are getting married" (this is coming from a guy who is engaged).

Any who I guess the pics i will upload when i have some (if i am in any state to take any will also make a huge impact on the fact if there will be any pics)....

Now it is time for me to play some games and waste one hour until they board me on to this flight ... come on i need to get to Chandigarh...

Mumbai Address

A/401 Bunch Berry
Yari Road (near yari road bus depot)
Versova
Andheri
Mumbai

cell phone -+91 9867639753

As for proper post it should come in a few days been trying to finish this months magazine so it can go for print. So that I can go for Raghav's wedding back to chandigarh..

Oh by the way since the last post I started work with L'Officiel. They are yet to tell me what my designation is but so far i have worked on 2 issues and apparently the Jan issue came out in record time (never in the history of the magazine has the magazine come out in the first week of the month on the stands) funny thing is that the art team was a whole new team when we did the January edition :) ..


A longer and detailed post later on Mumbai and the last 2 months.

Rider Creed

Something I believe in and live by.. :) take a look...
Rider Creed

Mumbai firsts

So my shift to my new life started with two Kismet and Angat dropping me to Delhi airport to catch the flight to Mumbai. This time I was not going for a 10 day holiday I was going to start my new life in Mumbai. So it has been over a month that I have been here and so what have I done in one month you may ask since I still dont have a job.

Well lets see I got to Mumbai and Amrita was still working on her movie Ta Ra Rum Pum so I hung around with here for the first few days at the set at Yash Raj saw some stars (Abhishek, Saif, Bobby Deol, Javed Jaffery et all).

Amrita lived in a nice One bedroom flat in 4 Bungalows which all of a sudden got very small as I got there as the occupants were Amrita, Sabrina (Amrita's sister), Nyma (Amrita's 12 year old niece), Shoba (the maid), Waffle (the mad cocker spaniel), Lou and Lara (two turtles) and me. So first order of business was to find a new house to shift too. Now Amrita and Sabrina had alreadys started hunting and had got a few places they liked and wanted me to see. So we went and saw 3 houses and the one that they liked i liked too and we decided to go for it. So it was a new building on Yari Road near a fishing village so we are near the sea like 10 meters away on the fourth floor and tow bedrooms and a huge sitting dining area and a nice kitchen and oh yea 2 loos (for the lack of images I am sorry I lost my camera on the train to Delhi so :( )

Now Amrita was working so was her sister and all of a sudden we had a new house that we needed to shift into by the 10th so Vir who was sitting at home started packing since we didnt have any time left. We met the new land lady and she said we could shift in anytime and we could start cleaning the place up and all that.

Now Amrita the Art Director that she is walked into our new empty house and said we needed to paint the sucker as it was all a horrid yellowish colour. So a call was made to her painters who came the next day to check out the house and Amrita told them what had to be done and they set out to work.

The dining room two walls were to be made an orangy dirty looking mediteranian wall ( you will get the drift when I have images to back it up). Our room got a nice deep red wall with a light grey on the rest and Saby's and Nyma got a Purplely wall while the rest a light green the rest of the house was painted white. The front door become a funky blue.

So the house was painted and cleaned and ready for all of us to move so the day came where the truck came to pick up all the stuff and move us into our new residence. So officially on the 11th of November Vir Nakai officially had his own place and was finally out of Chandigarh mentally as well as physically I had finally left home.

The next few days went in Carpenter, Electrician, Plumber getting the house up and running. Now I sit in the Living Room with VH1 blaring Oldies music chilling in my house.

Now dont get me wrong its not like I have not done anything else other than shift and get the house running and shit. Amrita and I partied with some friends some old chandi school mates, went partying to DJ Aqueel's club Poison which was not that hot but we went back to Joshi's house where we smoked a cigar he got us for our engagement drank way too much vodka and had one glass of single malt. One evening I made an Italian dinner with Amrita and ate way too much. One night Nakai (he is a cousin of Amrita's just shifted to Mumbai as well he is a designer and is hitting Mumbai as well. being a Nakai yea he is related to me but closer to Amrita dont ask man its damn complicated).So I have my nights out here as well just a start to a lot more :).

Today I finally got my self a new Airtel Mumbai number which will get active in like 5 days (I dont get that why it should take so long and all that but hey whatever). I have given an interview and have a good feeling about it will update you on that when I know. On the 28th I fly back to Delhi and then to Chandigarh Angad and Tara's wedding and will be back in Mumbai by the 5th.

I think it will be great to go back to Chandigarh now to holiday and not as a resident coming back from a holiday. Sure I miss Chandigarh there is a lot to miss like my roof and drinking beer with nitin and mad life I had there but her who said Mumbai is not as cool.

Well that is that for me.. I will update my new address with phone number later.

Bunch Berry

Vir has left the building!!

I don't know where to start with this email that is weird because I could have sworn that it would be easy and all I would do is thank a few people curse some and viola I would have a farewell mail. Sadly most of the people I would have cursed are no longer here and there are quite a few to thank. So I guess I got to start somewhere so here goes....

July 2002 is when I came to Quark for an interview and trust me when I tell you I never thought I would get my job especially when I was handed a test for Java. So well I got the job and I came and joined a team called WPSI. It was quite freaky the first day here because I remember I walked into the office and thought to my self that damn that is a lot of nerds and there is no way I will be able to last here more than a month. That was like 4 years ago and I am still here well today is my last day here and let me tell you it was a tough decision for me to put my papers in because it was a good run and it is sad to see it end.

Well on a whole I got great memories of this place I have seen some real weird shit here but it feels like home. I am not going to start thanking people now because I don’t got all day to write this email.

To my team Creative Services rock you guys we do kick ass work, to the rest you ain't seen the last of me and to all the party animals you got my number next time you in my part of the world give me a buzz the kingfisher is always chilling as for now I am outta here.

My new number - +91 9316065611
Email – vir.nakai@gmail.com

leavin on a shit train

Good bye party 105

Bye Vir see ya later

Two weeks notice

After four and a half years finally I took a hard call I resigned my position as Design Lead at Quark. I am moving on in life I am going to Mumbai to joing my Fiance so we can start our lives together.
It took a lot of courage but then it is time to move on. Mumbai ready or not here I come...

Yara Bikki Gets Hitched

Last week I get a call from Varun(an old school friend of mine and a guy who is all over the world tending to his business you never know where he is best way to get in touch with him is let him call when he is free and you never know whent that will happen) and he says wanna get drunk on Monday the 25th. I was like hmm if that is the only day you are going to be in town sure.. So he is like perfect so on monday i am getting married see you there the card is in the mail ...

WOW ok .... Didnt think he would be the first one to get married out of the guys with Akal and Angad C on the verge of it themselves.

Well so I went and turned out I was to hang alone which I did but had a great time here are some pics from last night...

Congratulations Yara Bikki... Till the next time I get your call.

Varuns Wedding

Sep 26, 2006 - 18 Photos

GO WEST

So Kismet and Nitin were planning to come home last weekened and Kismet calls me and says lets have a BBQ since Mithu is leaving for England and it is her 21st Birthday next week and i wont be here lets BBQ..
so i said get to chandigarh and we shall plan it. Nitin and Kismet get here friday night and we all sit around chill eat dinner and all that and decide to get up early and get up early to get some work done for Kismet and get this party planned..
Saturday morning bright and early at 9:00 (hey its a saturday what is brighter and earlier than that) we get up and decide lets do this kismet says lets do somthing different this time .. "lets use a new marinate and have Mojitos" sure says I.
So with our lists in hand of things to do and stuff to buy for the party Mom, Kismet and I took off to get everything done. Around lunch time Jai calls and well he wants to take us for lunch hmmm sure we tell him to come home and chill while we will take a bit as we got some bank work for Kismet to finish.
so we catch up with Jai get in his new Honda ZX take off to pick up nitin and then the age old question of where are we going comes up ... Ahhh Oriental Lounge no one has been there yet cool lets go.. ok this seems to be becoming about lunch when it is about the BBQ. so to cut lunch short we had a couple of beers and good food Oriental Lounge is definatly a cool place (yet another one in chandigarh I tell you it gets better here every week)..
So at 4 all of us get home to a shit load of work that needs to be done to start with the chicken needs to be marinated for atleast 4 hours and well we had to still get the stuff ready... Amrita will agree total Nakai chaos leaving everything to the last moment.
well we had jai stirring and sipping the marinate lol, one maid chopping the onions the other making coffee and Kismet and I making a mess in the rest of the kitchen with the rest of the ingredients :) ohh i for got to tell you what we were making.. well Buffallo Chilli Chicken and Cagun Barbecue Corn to which i promised people i would put the recipie up so here it is

Buffallo Chilli Chicken
Its a recipie out of a Book now not mine :)

1kg chicken,skinned
3 spring onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup(250 ml) tomato sauce
4 tablespoons beer (now you know why jai was sipping it)
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 table spoon tabasco sauce

Now apparently this serves 4-6 people as per the book so for a party of punjabis i did what i usually do i multiplied it by 4 since we had about 12 people coming :) hahah.
now all you need to do is Score the chicken at 2 cm intervals.
Put the onions, garlic, tomato sauce, beer, vinegar, honey and tabasco in a dish and mix to combine and add the chicken cover it and refrigerate for 3-4 hours and then throw it on the BBQ when you ready..

Cagun Barbecue Corn

you need as much corn as you want but still on the cob break it into half
Cajun spice mix
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
now all you got to do is take some butter and brush it on the corn and sprinkle the cajun spice mix over the corn and BBQ i did the same to Potato's which were cut to 1 cm thick slices hmmm how well they came out ...
ok now for the important part

Mojitos
Bacardi Lime Mint leaves lots of embrown sugarSoda and loads of crushed ice
basically the mint and sugar go in the bottom of the glass you got to crush em there and then add the lime and the ice and the bacardi and then little soda and wow a bomb ass drink ...

so anyway we get everything together while nitin brings the coal and the beer and then kismet goes upstairs to the roof to get the seating and shit ready.i get the BBQ ready and the coal is up now all we got to do is wait for the party to begin.

So Baaz calls and says should i get music and all we got are two small speakers so i tell him yea get it we can play it thru the laptop.. Now Baaz being Baaz did bring the music with just a little twist he got 2 woodstock speakers, his amp, his laptop and his mixer ok then :) seems this party was taking off already so once we were all set up BBQ music and the Mojitos going the party just got better and better..
Check out the pics for your self :) we packed up at 5 am sunday morning all night we were blasting the music and the creating a rukus.. it has been a while ...
But well then it was a party for a friend who is going away and well she was turning 21 the next week right ...
GO WEST MITHU
oh about her turning 21 she had a party a her home with some college friend and well let me tell you that was quite crazy as well ..shhh i came home at 5 then too :)
who says chandigarh is a quiet sleepy place huh ....

Go West

Sep 23, 2006 - 61 Photos