"Night strolls & New friends" - Infosys, Mysore Diaries - #BlogChatterA2Z

 After our tip-off on “Enthiran” movie tickets, we became quite popular amongst our college friends. They thanked us profusely and invited us to dinner the following day, which was Sunday. 

“The Golden Grass restaurant is located right outside the campus. Let’s be there by 7PM”, Manish said. He was the leader of the boys and usually planned everything.

Myra, Arjun, and I had plans of going to the Golden Grass the following week but we were happy to go with a larger group and agreed to the plan.

The next day at about 6:20 PM, around 15 of us gathered in front of our hostel to go to the restaurant. We walked to the main gate and reached the restaurant by 7PM. 

The restaurant had a beautiful entrance and on entering it, it had large open grounds like a resort and had small huts, one each for a dinner party.

Looking at the long queue, we were glad to have a reservation and were shown to our hut very soon. It was beautiful inside. About 2-3 tables were joined and we all took our seats. We ordered almost every appetizer that was on the menu and ordered biryani for the main course. It felt nice to spend time with our college friends. Soon, the appetizers came by and they were delicious. The food had a very dhaba-like flavor to it just like the hotel. The main course was very good and so were the deserts. After a scrumptious meal, we paid the bill and started to the hotel.

We were all walking towards our hostel and almost reached it when Anusha said, “Does anyone want to come for a night stroll?”

It was around 10PM and sounded like a bad idea, the next day being Monday. However, I could not say “no” the idea of going for a night stroll in such a beautiful campus. 

“I’ll join you, but let’s come back soon”, I said.

Nobody else wanted to join us and they all went back to the hostel. We were just about to start when Rishi, who sat beside Anusha joined us. 

Anusha and I looked in surprise to see who joined us. We were both a little wary of him because he was quite observant and teased us quite often.

“Can I join you?”, Rishi said in apprehension.

“Of course”, I said.

 “Which path shall we take?”, he added.

“Let’s just explore”, Anusha said.

The three of us started walking and initially spoke about the classes and lectures. 

Rishi then said to us, “How come we never met in college?”. This led to a discussion on our college days.  We spoke about our classmates, seniors, all the ragging, friends, crushes, love stories, and so on. We just went on and on and on. We did not care how far we were going because we knew that we were safe on this well-lit campus. I kept checking my watch from time to time at first. After a point when it crossed midnight, I stopped checking time. I just wanted our conversation to go on and only stop when we’d finally shared everything that we wanted to. 

After a while, my eyes felt heavy and right on cue, Anusha said, “Let’s go back?”. I checked the time, it was 3:30 AM. Luckily, we were not very far from the hostel and within 10 minutes, we reached it. 

There was an awkward silence before we left. I looked at Anusha and Rishi: never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I’d do this with them. Within a few hours, we bonded so much that the three of us knew one another like old friends. I knew they were thinking the same. We finally said “bye” and left. On reaching my room, I closed the door and thought, “How come I never met them in college ?”….

-- To be continued

This post is a part of the Blogchatter A2Z Challenge.