Adventures and Misadventures of Kashid

It was my birthday, so Soumo called up from office and said -- get ready .... i ll be back by 2-00 and we ll go to Kashid. So at about 3-30 that day all 4 of us, that is, me, soumo, Heema and Raj. From Navi Mumbai, Alibaug takes approximately 3 hours. So by 6-30 or 7-00 we should reach there. But just after Panvel, towards Penn our nightmarish traffic jam started. We too broke the rules to make an impromptu attempt, albeit a successful attempt to bypass the trail of trailors. But to no avail. Courtesy Raj's superb driving skill, we managed to bypass many, but couldnot manage to keep our date with the watch. At 7-00 we called up one alibaug resort, who confirmed over the phone that rooms are available. By the time we managed to reach Alibaug, its kind of midnight as per Alibaug Standard Time. Its 9-15 pm and almost everybody in and around Alibaug confirmed that all rooms are sold out. Our frantic search, calling up endless numbers culminated to nothing. So we thought of having our dinner. With all the restaurants overflowing with people and with very less time to arrange for an accomodation, we thought its better if we can very quickly wrap up dinner. So a small hotel/motel which was about to pull down the shutters we asked them. He had closed the kictchen for the day, however a modest two course Dinner comprising of daal roti was available, but it seemed like Amrit then. The hotelier tried to help us out by calling up multiple numbers, but to no avail. By this time this gang of one bengali and one Assamese couple had been joined by a Gujrati couple with two kids. Their hotel had cancelled their accomodation citing 'no show' due to late arrival(courtesy the traffic snarl). Some locals noticed our worried face. One of them offered his relatives 1bhk @ 3750 per night. His relative had luckily for us gone for diwali vacation to his Gaon which was a couple of Kilometers away. So at about 12 with some apprehension in mind, 1 assamese family, 1 bengali family and 1 gujrati family checked in to the 1 bhk together. This was my first time when I was happily…well not so happily spending the night with a complete stranger Gujju family. Heema tried to comfort me, but me stubborn kinds don’t get comforted that easily. A little adjustment here and there, the night passed by. The Next day we planned to enjoy it to the fullest. Had a quick breakfast at a food stall and we directly landed in Kashid Beach. It was around 10AM and the beach was almost empty and we enjoyed. We took so many pics, soumo and Raj enjoyed there puff after their last nights boozing plan was badly jeopardized. We played with Frisby, a little sway in the hammock, and finally dived in to the vast sea. Usually on such a trip we stuff all our stuffs in the hotel room and enjoy. But its different this time and all of us wanted to enjoy together. So we went back to the car, our mobile phone, wallet , camera everything was put inside the car. The car key is the only thing we had. We sealed that in a white plastic cover, dug up the sand some 25 metre away from the sea. covered the packet with sand and very intelligently marked the area with the frisby and our floaters. we enjoyed for the next half n hour and then suddenly soumo rushed towards the stall where me and Heema were heading. He asked whether we have taken the car key with us, and the fact that the car key is missing. And the search begins ...... with whatever we can avail, sticks and all we started digging up the sand, but high tide was approaching. Our floaters floated away so we cannot locate the exact area, and its already under the sea. How much sand we mange to dig up, in every next wave sea fills in more sand. We tried, tried, tried, and tried. And we failed, failed, failed and failed. Now we were without money, mobile, car and everything. Sun was shining bright, and we didnt have the money for nariel paani, colddrinks anything. it was almost 12 noon. Thats when the parking guy sensed something wrong and offered to help us with his mobile. But all the numbers are in the mobiles stacked in the car. Nobody carries a notebook nowadays and nobody remembers anybodys number except for the family, its all stored in the contact list. So we started calling up all the permutation combination of numbers we can think of. Luckily after a 20 minutes trywe managed to get in touch with somebody who is in diwali vacation 2000 km away from the place. He called up soomebody in navi mumbai, and theyfinally got in touch with us. Two extremely helpful guys from soumo s office Nayak and Arun k helped us. we have two objectives -- open the car and drive it back to safety - and so we need the duplicate car keys. Heemas neighbour helped us here. We asked him to break open Heemas apartment, which he kindly obliged. He broke the door lock, went inside the room, collected the car keys and passed on that to Nayak and Arun K. At about 2-30 pm -3-00 pm Nayak and Arun started for Kashid sacrificing their Sunday afternoon siesta. Now we were almost exhausted and resigned from the searching operations. We managed to gather sympathy from a food stall aunty, this kind lady offered us food beverages everything free of cost, she trusted us. After the food and beverage dose we were a little charged up, with nothing much to do, except for waiting for the two -- we agin dived back to sea. After around half an hour the low tide started. We were still playing with the Frisby and digging up here and there playfully. We lost all hope for getting the key back. Suddenly one white polythin got entangled in soumos finger as he was digging more and more. And my goddddd ..... it was the key neatly wrapped as we had done at the fateful 10AM ...... we almost started jumping with joy with Soumyo and Raj looking like Rugby players(almost in a heap one above the other…though thankfully in happiness). We dried the key in the late evening sun and luckily it worked fine and opened the car. We got back all our valuables mostly wallet and mobile. The clock struck 3-45 at that time. By the time all of us had realized it, howz life if u r without money and ur mobile. Without your wallet you cannot even enjoy the sunsoaked blue beauty of nature, your perspective changes if you dont have a slice of food in ur plate, or paisa in your wallet. However we called up our friend who has by now travelled at least 2 hours. All of us were trying to forget the last 24hours. So we hurried up for a resort hunt for the day. And luckily as it was a sunday, and all the mad tourists of Mumbai was returning back, we got a place in Kashid Beach Resort. It was quite a luxury, we freshened up and energized up. By this time it was 7 pm , its almost dark and Nayak and Arun K reached. I am really thankful to them. There will be very few people who ll be rushing to a 5 hours journey on such a short notice, to save someone elses vacation. That night we enjoyed a lot, relaxed, soothed and of course an extended booze party for soumyo and Raj. It was followed by a lavish dinner, carrom and tt sessions. But we still had not enjoyed Kashid, so next morning we went to Kashid beach again, approximately at the same time 10AM. We didnt repeat yesterdays experimentation, the key was secured in the trouser pocket strongly ties with multiple levels of knots. All of us splashed water and sand at each other, tried new ways to play with the waves, soaked in the scorching brightness of sun and later that day we started for navi mumbai. Needless to say that all of us had to take a monday casual leave. We carried back our brown tanned skin signatured by Kashid, memories of adventures and misadventures of Kashid and precious learnings of life.