Feverish pace...

I got up on Friday morning shivering and cold, tips of fingers and toes seemed to have gone numb. Wrapping the blanket did nothing to assuage my condition. I was forced to admit the obvious, I was running a pretty high temperature. So after wearing a bunch of sweaters and slipping under the covers again I was faced with a very important decision - To go or not to go (to office)

My super-computerish brain immediately kicked into overdrive (after a slightly sluggish start on account of morning grogginess and high temperature). Doing teraflops of calculations per second I took into account a number of factors: a boring meeting at work, the Strings ( http://www.stringsonline.net/new/index.htm ), Parikrama and Saif Ali Khan concert in the evening, a looming game of tennis on Saturday morning.

On second thoughts, I took less than two seconds to decide that I was too ill to risk missing both these things.

As all DCEites are wont to remember and boast, Strings had their first visit to India when they performed at our festival in 2001 or 2002 (Anyone from DCE who remembers the exact date, please corroborate here). No one had heard Strings before that. (A small history lesson here: Strings started as a group of 4 college guys in 1989, then after 1992 the band disbanded only to be revived again by two from the original four - Faisal Kapadia and Billal Maqsood. And of course after that they came to DCE, mesmerised us with Duur ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHL3jjmHoUg ) and Anjaane ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8d4evNqsI ), and the rest, as they say, is history)

So taking the day off, and loading myself with Crocins, I curled up in my bed in the hope that the temperature would go low enough to ensure that I do not miss the concert. Fortunately, and through exquisite timing (I took a crocin exactly two hours before the scheduled time) the temperature was in the normal range.

Driving to Palace grounds in rush hour traffic was obviously a pain, but the anticipation of seeing Strings after so long saw me through (Yeah, I know, i'm not giving any screen time to poor Saif and Parikrama, but well my paisa wasool (value for money [Jeez, is that all the marketing courses I took speaking?]) was to come from Strings. Girls obviously would be more interested in Saif Ali Khan (Well, you got to admit he was playing the guitar quite well, and of course he's extremely good looking for a 40 year old man. So the girls were quite right in screaming for him) and Parikrama is more heavy stuff - Now i've never been the AC DC, Megadeth guy so Parikrama was more of an also ran for me.

But Faisal's voice, the songs that we love and the way they play the crowd. They had us whipping out our cellphones, lighting them up and waving 'em in the air - me amongst the frantic ones. It was awesome. We were singing along, we were trying to be louder than the other sections, we were swaying, we were jumping - it was the most awesome fun ever. Even last years Indian Ocean concert wasn't as much fun. And and and the 'Saare jahan se accha' their lead guitarist played in the end was goosebumps-raising.

Absolutely awesome.

And this morning, after another carefully timed crocin I went to play tennis. Three lovely sets. But am suffering now. The temperature is rising and I spent the entire afternoon curled up under my blanket feeling the extremeties go numb between bouts of shivers. In between I got up and sms-ed to get the score of the India-Australia test match (Didn't have energy to go to the living room and switch on the TV)

I've cancelled tennis tomorrow, but no regrets about yesterday evening and this morning. I will burn with fever, but will have a smile on my flushed face!


PS: If you didn't see Roger Federer vs Janko Tipsarevic (6-7 (5), 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-1, 10-8) magnum opus - you missed something huge. Watch it if it ever comes on TV - absolutely stunning tennis

PPS: India won at Perth, Aussie ki taisi! Yay!!