Night Out

Our Long wait was over! We were going for a night out to Chandigarh. I was the most excited guy among the group and was planning profusely for the same. I had asked Rohan and Aryan to bring the bus tickets in advance and Karan and I were doing the other stuff. Sumit was already in Chandigarh and has arranged a car from his home for the night.

We took the bus from our college to Chandigarh as soon as classes got over on Friday and reached the bus stand in Chandigarh at like 8 pm. Karan was calling Sumit from 7 30 pm but as usual Sumit’s phone was switched off. I was getting furious because if Sumit is unreachable our plan gets changed which I never wanted as I have worked my ass off to make an awesome plan for my first night out with friends.

We waited till 8 15 at bus stand but still Sumit was not reachable so we decided to move and wait in some café. We took an auto to sector 16 market and went to Books and Brews café. All my anxiety and anger was over when I entered the café. The aura of that café was so astounding. There were people sitting and chatting, group of friends playing games, some of them were reading books and my favourite – there was a band performing awesome songs on acoustic instruments. My first words after entering the café were “It has begun.”

We ordered some snacks which were damn tasty, enjoyed that awesome music and played some indoor games like Ludo and chess. Believe me the fun of playing Ludo increases manifold in that environment. It was a hair-raising moment when the band started playing my favourite Sajni song from the JAL band. The vocalist was awesome. Meanwhile Karan had already made contact with Sumit and shared our location with him. He reached the cafe at around 10 15 pm. We were there in Books and Brews till 10 45 pm and then left for Night Food Street (NFS) to have dinner.

We had the best paranthas at NFS sitting in Sumit’s car and then headed towards Aroma Hotel in Sector 22 as we had heard a lot about that hotel. We parked our car next to the hotel and took a table at the food court. We were told by our friends that this is the after party place for the best girls of the city. All of us were ready to try our luck tonight and have decided to talk to random girls. We ordered some ice shakes just to pretend that we are also those after party people.

Time went by and there was no sign of girls at Aroma and we were totally full & sleepy after having Ice creams & shakes. It was already midnight and our patience for the evening was getting over when suddenly we heard a loud noise from outside. Everyone in the hotel fled to see what happened and saw two luxury cars racing away on the road. Rear bumper of one of the car was lying on the road which made it clear that the cars must have had a side to side collision while racing which produced that loud noise and then raced away. We saw a policemen intercepting the same on a walky-talky and came running towards Aroma.

As soon as he reached the hotel gate, he started shouting to all the people standing there “kya chal raha hai yahan pe ??, sabko utha k jail mein daal dunga. Bhaago yahan se” (“what are you looking at?? Get lost from here”). It was a confusing moment and then we realised that he was trying to shift his frustration from car accident in bashing on all the people. We thought to be away from all this and left the place and go to NFS again. To our surprise NFS was closed when we reached there. All of us were totally exhausted and frustrated. The night out was not going as planned. There was no fun element except driving on empty roads.

“Now what to do?” asked Rohan who was already half slept. Sumit said “let’s go to hotel Taj and have some fun”. Everyone was like “Dude! That’s expensive stuff”. He assured us to be cool and started driving to Hotel Taj. The Gatekeeper who opened the Main Gate was a big guy having Moustache longer than the length of my hair. He gave us a frightening look bowing down his head in front of us. It was my first ever time in a five star and controlling my emotions, I tried to keep some attitude while entering.

We entered the lobby area only two find two guys at the reception chatting with each other. They stopped talking seeing us and one of them asked “How can I help you sir?” Sumit calmly replied “Do you serve Alcohol at this time?” Four of us looked at Sumit’s face like we didn’t even know this guy. His tone and way of asking was so different from his normal tone. It was like he has a split personality. The receptionist replied “we are sorry sir! We can’t. but we do offer coffee at this time”

We entered their café and took a table. Sumit whispered to all of us “Guys! Just have fun, we are not ordering anything” to which I replied that “See the Rate list! I don’t think we’ll even order anything”. We stalled the waiter for next 30 minutes and finally Aryan ordered a Cappuccino which costed him ₹250 + taxes. We left as soon as Aryan completed his coffee. “Bullshit coffee” he said leaving the place.

It was now 2 AM and all of us was sleepy in the car. “What’s next” asked Aryan. I think Caffeine must have hit him after sometime. After asking us for 4-5 time he shouted “okay losers! Then I am taking you to SUKHNA LAKE”. “What! At this time?” asked Rohan to which Sumit said “Amazing idea! It’s awesome to go there in the night. We’ll enter there from the back gate”

We got down and it looked like a scene from a horror movie. He stopped the car in the middle of the road which was slightly lit and was covered with big trees. “Follow me” Sumit said after parking the car on the side of the road. He started removing some bushes from a pile and boom!! there were some stairs there. We followed him and reached to the top of stairs.

It was pitch dark and a slightly colder from the parking point. After reaching to the top Sumit said “And this my friends! The suicide Point of Sukhna Lake”. All of us were shocked and Rohan started running downstairs. He stopped and came back when he realised that only he was running and everyone else was still at the lake. Sumit started telling us about the stories of suicide point and then everyone started discussing horror stories after that.

The discussion got intense and little creepy as it was pitch dark and sometimes owls were hooting giving background music to the stories being discussed. We lost track of time when suddenly we thought something just moved at a very high speed making a whoosh sound. All of us came back to reality from the story life and decided to leave that place as it was turning terrifying.

“Let’s take a little walk and then we leave” Karan said who was sharing most of the stories and looked like he was not even 1% scared. So we started walking towards the main entry from suicide point. We must have walked for nearly 100 meters when we saw a light beam coming towards us. It became clear when the light beam came closer that it was some scooter but it became scary when we saw a policemen on the scooter.

He stopped in front of us and we stood like a rock. “Kya kar rahe ho yahan pe?” (“What are you people doing here?”) he asked with a threatening tone to which sumit replied “kuch nahi sir! Hostel se  tehalne aagaye” (“nothing much sir! Just came to hostel to have a stroll ”)

“Kaun se hostel se or itni raat ko suicide point pe kyun aaye ho” (“Which hostel? And why are you at the suicide point at this point of time??”) Asked the policemen

“Sir! Exams chal rahe hain to thoda dimaag thanda karne aayein hai” (“Sir! Exams are going on so came here to relax”) replied Sumit with some attitude.

“Abhi karta hu tumhara dimaag thanda. Le ke chalta hu thane. ID card dikhao apne” (“I’ll make you relax after taking you to jail. Show me your ID cards”) policemen said threatening us.

Rest of us were totally confused as we had no idea what Sumit was talking about and were mute spectator to the conversation going on. Karan whispered in my ear “let’s take him down. He looks drunk and he is alone”. I asked the same to Rohan and Aryan standing next to me to which they agreed. I think it was our desperate idea as no one of us wanted to go to jail. We were just going to take him down but before we could react he took out his walky-talky and said

“5 ladke miley hai Suicide point pe. Kya karna hai??”

(“found 5 guys on suicide point. What should I do???”)

A voice came out of the receiver

“Le aao thane. Yahan laake sabko set karte hain” (“Bring them to station. We ‘ll fix them here”)

All of us were stunned to listen to the words coming out of the receiver. Karan who was initially thinking to take the policeman down went down on his knees and started pleading in front of the policeman.

“Sir jaane do hum abhi bhaag jaayenge yahan se. phir kabhi nahi karenge yeh galti” (“sir! Please let us go. We’ll run from here and will never come here”)

We joined him and started crying sorry in front of that drunk policeman. He took pity + ₹500 from us and let us leave that place immediately. We ran towards the stairs and immediately sat in our car. Sumit started driving his car without saying anything. “Where are we going?” asked Rohan.

“We are going to PEC hostel. I have friends there. We can stay there for the night and then leave in the morning”. Then we understood which hostel he was talking about. We went to Krishna hostel in PEC and met his friend Gaurav over there. We discussed everything with Gaurav and his friends to which they laughed at us and one of them said

“Saalo din dekh k decide karte Night out. Kal election hai to aaj poora chandigarh sham se band hai or security itni tight hai”

(“You people should have decided a better day then today as elections are tomorrow and security is too tight tonight”)

This connected the dots why that policeman came and started bashing to public in Aroma hotel, why NFS was closed so early, why there was no one in Taj Hotel and why there was a police man patrolling on Sukhna Lake in the night.

We discussed about the happenings of that day with each other and came to a point that it was indeed a fun night. Finally we slept with a smile on our faces thinking that we faced so many troubles tonight but the night was full of different experiences and gave us a feeling that now we are ready to tackle everything in this world after leaving college.