Jabaaz Onam 2007 Charlotte I

Friday Aug 31, 2007 : Guests are arriving........

"This silence is killing me. I didn't even want to go inside, its so empty." Vini was sitting outside of our apartment. I was returning after dropping the last batch of our guests to Charlotte airport. The 3 day Onam celebration at our house was officially over.



Onam celebrations have become Jabaaz's tradition now. Even though Jabaaz gang which initially consisted of us 6 roomies in Chennai, now is more of a huge mallu gang with six of us , our family and our friends and their family and their friends and so on. The lucky ones to host this event were us in 2005 and Jeggu Mon in 2006. Onam 2007 was all set for Minneapolis at Renji's house when he and Juny decided to escape to India rather than face this torture (they say the reason is visa, but we don't believe it). So we got to host it again. So Jabaaz Onam 2007 stage was finalised as The Queen City Charlotte.


The Onam list was ever increasing and finally settled at count 17 including us. The first guests to arrive was Mootta (means bed bug.. his nick name is Renjith) and wife Devu on Friday eve. Since we had more guest coming that night, we decided to prepare a mallu dinner with beef fry. Guest no3 Koshy was arriving from Atlanta to his friend Jeejesh's place at night and promised to pick Chicago gang from airport comprising of Mathai, Anto and Renjith John.


I need to side track for a moment to tell about Jeejesh. On thursday, Mathai called me. "Good news, 2 more people are joining us for Onam lunch,Jeejesh and his wife Shimna. No problem with you right?" "Do i have a choice? Thanks for letting me know this early." "Its okay, no need for thanks. Anyway note his mail id. Let me spell it out (in mallu accent) JAKKI ELEFANT ELEFANT JAKKI ELEFANT SAAMM HARRRRY @gmail.com" Did not imagine at that moment that this name would be one of the highlights of Onam. Poor Jeejesh who was meeting 14 of the 17 people at our house for the first time was hence forth called only as "JAKKI ELEFANT ELEFANT JAKKI ELEFANT SAAMM HARRRRY" or sometimes in short as "JAKKI ELEFANT".





Koshy and JAKKI picked up Chicago gang whose flight was delayed by 2 hours and dropped at our house at night 2.30AM. At night Mathai had called specifically and said no need to prepare dinner. But i don't think he remembered that at night, he was in "Must eat dinner, Must eat dinner" mode. So after attacking beef fry at night, we settled into bed at early morning around 4AM. All bachelors were staying at my house and families at our friend's house who were out of town.

Part II