Rain on the beach, and Chetan Bhagat

Abhi's 'big' catch

Last weekend was the most fun we had had as a family in a very long time. We were at the Marari Beach Resort, celebrating Abhi's boss's birthday and we had an absolute blast. This, despite the weekend being the one 'when the rains strengthened over Kerala', to quote the Met Dept. It was some 30+ hours of great food, great intoxicants, great company and well, not-so-great kids but what the hell, you can't have everything!

My daughter hasn't inherited our love for the sea. To the contrary, she's petrified of the waves and hates it when anyone she knows steps into seawater! Anyways, Sunny (that's Abhi's boss's elder son) had a  wound on his foot that had to be kept away from water. So he was in babysitting mode, making sandcastles with Ditu. Soon I joined them and we made this futuristic looking thing with underground nuclear reactors and an extensive defence system and access roads. Unfortunately, I can't find a pic of the completed castle!

In the private pool with Jacuzzi

Sunny, Ditu and the beginnings of the castle

Abhi fulfilled a long-held dream of sitting on the beach while a storm brewed around him. Yeah, I know, he's a little weird but I love him to bits! The food at the restaurant was fabulous, to say the least. Dinner was accompanied by live 'classical music: tailored to suit the taste of the predominantly European and north Indian crowd, the music was heavily influenced by old Hindi film music. I don't know whether I am being kind or sarcastic here.

Bliss needs no caption, eh?

The experience as a whole was heavenly! Add to it the fact that most of us were out of mobile coverage area! That's like hot chocolate sauce on a scrunchilicious banana split. Well, you get the drift....

Coming to Chetan Bhagat and 3 Idiots. This might sound like too little, too late but I take back all my vociferous support for Mr Bhagat on various online forums after watching the movie. Before I went to the movie, I had only read his One Night @ The Call Centre and while I was not charmed by his writing, I did like his tongue-in-cheek dialogues and the crazy plot.

Well, I recently read the book that started it all: Five Point Someone. And I must say that this is one time the film-makers were justified in using the 'Inspired By' tag. I mean, what sort of credit is Bhagat talking about? As an aspiring writer myself, I hate it when writers are cheated of their due but this was stretching it too far. 3 Idiots is way different from 'the original' and this was the only time ever that I found a movie more compelling than a book! It's sad that Bhagat took such a myopic view of the whole issue: yes, his book is entertaining  but nowhere near the absolute roller-coaster fun ride that 3 Idiots is! You just have to live with that, Mr Bhagat, and be happy that the film helped you sell a few thousand more copies.