I have to have some sweets in the Tiffin, if the Sabzi I am having isn’t a preferred one. I am looking out for the Sweets on the kitchen shelf, not found though. Thought of giving a last try, as I was getting late for the office, I opened a Tin and there it is. Finally a Eureka moment for me. The famous “ Lonavala Chikki”. Smiled a bit looking at it, grabbed it, and headed to the office.
I got the Chikki from Lonavala itself, the place where VERVE had its 2nd Get-Together. The place was decided with one voice, as there were some obvious benefits. It’s close to Pune. Since we had people coming from different cities like Banglore, Kumta, Jaipur and Chennai; meeting at the Pune office was convenient. However, getting all these people traveling from different directions at one place wasn’t a cakewalk. As we were planning to meet in the last week of December 2020, the time when Covid restrictions were eased up, things were slowly put on normal footing; getting railway and flight reservations done amidst such a situation was an uphill task for sure.
A week prior to the get-together, we were busy cherry-picking the resorts. Even though we didn’t have a shoestring budget, we wanted to strike a good deal and it did ask for a lot of conversation with a number of Resort Managers. Eventually, we sealed the deal and the best one (we suppose). With all the preparation going, we were eagerly waiting for THE DAY.
Finally, the VERVE GANG gathered at the place, emboldened and excited!! After having a hefty breakfast of Idli, pohe, and Vada pav, we, the fifteen energetic VERVE-ians , seated in 3 cars kick-started the journey to Lonavala. The car I was in, was a perfect example of VERVE’s cultural and linguistic diversity. The way, a hard-core Maharashtrian Girl Priyanka was trying to teach Marathi to Chennai Girl Gayathri, was hilarious. Mispronunciation and weird accents got all of us laughing throughout the journey. I guess they both believed that Gayathri would be a fluent Marathi speaker in just two hours of the journey. In the second car, Shubham in charge of the steering, was teased by Akanksha for choosing the most traffic-choked roads. The third car, driven by Imran, correctively chose the roads of less traffic but reached the Resort we didn’t book. The silver line of this chaotic cloud was, Aastha, upon reaching there, immediately took the pictures and even posted it on social media platforms. Eventually, after the eventful two hours, we all reached the Resort (The correct one!).
Awesome!! Scenic View, lovely ambiance. We were in awe of the place the moment we stepped in. The rooms were luxurious and spacious too except for the room in which the Boys preferred to stay. It was a tiny one but had a direct entry to the swimming pool. It was already 2.30 pm so we had our lunch right away. The food preferences were the only thing that separated us for a while, the Vegetarians and Non- vegetarians. Had some divine food. Chicken Gravy, Puri, Salad, Rice, yummy it was. The food was equally delicious for Vegetarians too. Aromatic paneer, potato sabzi, raita, and our favorite Ice-Cream. The food didn’t taste like typical restaurant food and that was the best part of it.
We played few games post-lunch and there came the time to jump in the swimming pool. The oval-shaped pool was suitably deep. The Boys were animated, they were diving in, playing Volleyball with the balloon filled with water. The Girl Gang too joined them. Few of them demonstrated Backstroke and Butterfly style of swimming. We had a ball!! (even without having the actual one). It was getting quite cold, we were shivering, and there came the Hot Tea and Onion- Potato Pakode to our rescue. We enjoyed the pool time to the fullest but the Boys just didn’t want to come out. Seeing their magnetic love for the water, they must have been aquatic creatures in their past lives.