Sense of belonging is sweet. Even if you find it in a band of misfits from the same field. Ours is journalism. This is a recollection of the last party we had at the Heaven on TTK Road

“Knock on the door,” the calling bell has conked off!
“Don’t open the fridge” – the door’s just a spoof!
“Stand under the fan, the room is really hot!"
That bathroom is a monument. The broken basin a relic? You bet!

An unlikely place to be called heaven
But, surely a paradise for the gang of nine.
Angels live here! “Mind you, the most improbable ones.”
To me, the very best of God’s daughters and sons!

The community hall is filled with cigarette smoke
Empty bottles of nectar say why no one spoke
In my usual place, straight under the fan, I sit
And dreamily dissolve into a musing fit.

Pondering if life’s just a dream to yawn through
I’m lolling on the famous green chair, watching the cooking crew.
The pretty supervisor walks around with her hands-in-my-pockets pose
A few sets of ogling male eyes follow her, wherever she goes.

After a week of taking on auto drivers with unhidden wrath,
Our sweet little 'Medusa' is either throwing up in a bathroom - or throwing away in hideous sloth!
A real ‘roll-model’ of an aspiring journalist.
Out-of-the-world expletives! - she has added to them her own list.

[Meera’s Bhakti is legendary isn’t it?
The former ‘ll do whatever she deems fit
And the latter’s sense of humour absolutely nonpareil
No wonder, they make my world young again.]

Ah! Here is our Black Magic Woman.

She walks into the dance hall a happy chick
And, invariably, crawls out a drunken, decrepit wreck!
Top on her hate-list is all veg. food,
But she’ll still argue that a little whisky,
with a slice of lemon, would do her good.

“Get a life, Man!” the singer bellows!
But never really rude to her own fellows.
What with bankers and the like for friends!
Amazing how she copes with world music trends.

Hey! Here’s the Baby of the gang!
A fairy indeed, in the kitchen so wrong.
Trust her for a neat pep talk or for consoling the class
And at anytime, in any City to guide you to the ‘Blue Cross’!

The ‘Ray’ of Hope! Apparently, reveling in solitude!
“Willful or forced?” Don’t ask me. Ask the dude!
You know what?
He’s in the ‘who’s who list’ of the city – as ‘what’s that’.

The instructor sticks to drumming on his belly
Even as he watches music videos on the telly
A break for him from the “fat bird and the man in shades”
And before him the image of any other teacher fades!

Lulled by the sound of running water from the tap
And the smell of the sweet smoke that we smoked, we slowly fall asleep.
Not sober enough to drink in the beauty of the scene,
I decide to open up another beer-tin.