Everything and More.

Yesterday was absolute brilliance! Like I mentioned in my last post, it was Jo's birthday and her performance in the evening... What I didn't mention is that we had planned to turn up at her house at 7am to surprise her!

L-R: Sonu, Antu, Sharan, Vini, Gauri, Jo, Tina, Madhuri

Initially the plan was to do it a day before her birthday because it was supposed to be a public holiday and so we could go over to her place early morning but then it turned out that we had classes on Thursday morning so we had to shift it to Friday morning. "Okay, all the better to have it on her birthday anyway," we thought to ourselves. So we'd wake up really early and aim to reach her place at 7am and THEN go to college. (haha! we can be pretty ambitious sometimes :P)

So Thursday came, we went to college, pretending like we didn't really have any plans for Jo's birthday and as far as she knew we'd all just meet at college in the morning... and then it rained. It poured. In fact it was probably in the top 5 wettest days of this "monsoon". We woke up in the morning and it was raining, we went to sleep at night and it was raining and we woke up on Friday morning and it was STILL raining. So we conference called each other and had to rearrange our plan again to accommodate for the rain because Bombay is a mess when it rains - trains get delayed, everything is unpredictable... the works. This was at around 6am. We decided to wait and see if the rain subsides and then leave after that. Anyway thankfully, the rain did subside enough for us to be able to make a decision to leave and we finally all got there by around 7:45am and waited below Jo's building while Gauri tried to stall her and prevent her from leaving her apartment to catch a bus to college!

We went up, rang the bell. Jo's mom opened the door and let us in. We all sat in the living room and we can hear Jo getting ready in the bedroom and looking for things and then she steps out...

SURPRISE!!

Gosh, it was awesome! She didn't have a clue and it all went off so well! Obviously we didn't end up going to college after all. Jo's mom made us breakfast (she was our co-conspirator of the entire plan), we ordered Chinese food for lunch and we just hung around at her place pretty much the whole day (we even had a much needed nap in the afternoon! :D)! And then in the evening we went to watch Jo perform!

Jo's chaddi-buddy, Madhuri was also there which was really great! We got to interact with her quite a bit over the last few weeks as we planned and coordinated the whole thing. She put together this really great scrapbook for Jo with little messages from all of us and lots of photos and we got a gorgeous little dress made for her.

So it was a fabulous day! All of us just being together has been a rare occurrence this year so it was just great to hang out and relax!

There are plenty of photos but for some stupid reason I took my camera cable to Antu's place on Thursday and I left it there and haven't been able to get it back yet! I got some awesome shots at the programme last evening on Jo's camera but I haven't got those yet either! :( So it'll have to wait till Monday...

The above photos were taken by Jo's dad and Sharan respectively. The first one is a group pic of all us including Madhuri and the second is from the scrapbook!