Please read the chapters in order starting from Drowning — Chapter 0
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April for me was going to be a tale of redemption and recreation,
April for Varun was going to be a fable foretold,
April for Supratik was going to be a song that was promised.
I had been dangerously ill a week ago,
Varun voraciously vacationing with vice,
SUpratik stealthily sauntering towards sanity,
I had just lost 5 kilos,
Varun had been 5 inches deep,
Supratik, well Supratik hadn’t had a sniff in 3 years.
We needed each other to be a little jolly,
We needed Goa to live in folly,
We decided to dance some psy & pop some “….”,
T’was the second day of the trip. As always I had been up early. I don’t like missing any bit of Goa when I am there. I finished up some work. It being Friday I decided to log off really early. This was going to be the first trip of our trip. Shiva Valley had been looked and booked. My credit limit had been reached and breached. The entire trip had been 5 months in the making. Owing to our first rave together being a smashing success, Varun & I had decided to invite Supratik for our inter-dimensional adventure, our intergalactic soul-surfing. We wanted to travel on this mind-altering ride with him around us.
Supratik? Why Supratik — because he is who he is. He is a cool dude. He isn’t directly my friend. He is a friend of Varun’s and a business partner/boss of Utkarshs. Utakrsh, Varun & I along with 2 other monkeys were a part of a group called — “Dhumrapaan”. Lately, Utkarsh’s light had dimmed a little. So we decided to invite an updated version of him. Supratik is the funnier, handsomer version of Utkarsh. He is a baller of a guy, with an effervescent personality. He smiles a lot and generally does not wear the disappointment a bespectacled person is expected to wear. I have never seen him hung up on an ovary in the past. I must add however, that he has been running dry on the field in the past 2.5 years. Covid or not, there’s simply no excuse for that degree of inactivity. The rule’s always the same, “Lower your bar or raise your budget.”
However, he is a real one. He can match you word for word, drink for drink & ideas for ideas. This entire character sketch is both pivotal and peripheral to what happened later that day!