ISABS Umang Party

community, event

I have been an active member of the Mumbai Chapter of ISABS since my ALHP. Now, I have reached a stage where I need to attend an intern’s lab in a National Event to begin my internship, and thus, for the first time in a long time, I was free, but I didn’t attend an ISABS Mumbai region Event.

I missed the community. I have invested a lot of myself in ISABS, and I was aware that this was the second Umang Event, which is an outreach kind of thing for lower budgets. This time, the Umang Event was sponsored heavily by Chapter Funds and took place in the regular event location, instead of a cheap location like the first event. I was interested in seeing the impact on the community.

So, me being me, I invited myself to the last evening party just to touch base with the community. For the first time, I was in the community, but without the pressure of being a participant. I hadn’t even realized that there is a pressure in being a participant. But it was a new experience. I could stay up late without worrying about waking up in time for the morning lab, I could eat to my fill at lunch without worrying about falling asleep in the afternoon lab……

But I digress.

I traveled by train and miscalculated the required time horribly as it took me three and a half hours to reach Karjat, much of which was spent in absolutely mind-bogglingly crowded trains. Things got better after Dombivli (though I still didn’t have a seat) and I joined a group of women singing songs to pass the time. Now, I have a fairly good voice, and the enthusiasm with which one team accepted me helped allay some of my misery and got me into party mood in the unlikeliest of places - an overcrowded train.

Sang and chatted much of my way to Karjat, looking at the time and willing the train to go faster, but alas, it took as much time as it took. Being late was worth it, because a gorgeous hunk called Raka was concerned about me traveling to Modi at night alone, and came to pick me up from the station and thus I finally arrived.

What I found amazing about this event was that there were 3 BLHPs and 3 ALHPs. This ratio is amazing for me. Usually, the BLHPs are about 3-4 times as many as the ALHPs. On one level, I was excited to see the percentage of participants taking their journeys ahead in our Umang community. On the other, I was concerned that the higher budget of this time (as compared to the previous time) might have blocked new entrants from the low budget category. Indeed, much of the “low budget category” was in the ALHPs.

The party itself was an amazing experience for me. Having attended the previous Umang, most of the ALHP participants were known to me, and my entry into the party was one of great welcome and surprised excitement. The warmth overwhelmed me. This is perhaps the first event where I walked in knowing so many of the participants.

I spend almost the first hour of the party just seeing people and hugging the ones I was close to, meeting the others, asking about them…….. catching up. I met Kishore again, who was doing his co-facilitation (he’d done his internship lab with us when I did my Phase B), Ashish (we did Phase A together), Sowmya (ALHP), Dr Satish (he’s a total fun riot), Raka (my husband - and the good doctor’s partner in crime), Farida, Artee, Chandan, Kiran, Sunita, Sushma, Meghna…… and maaaany more from the previous Umang gang. I was amazed that people remembered me so much!

A couple of friends came to tell me things like “you made the party complete for me” and “I had missed you”. Others took me aside and we had heart-to-heart catching ups….. It was an incredible feeling of being welcomed, included and totally drenched in affection.

The facilitators seemed rather busy with Raji not feeling too well, but I did get to spend some time with Sanjeev who seemed more interested in my husband than me (alas, the woes of having attractive husbands and fickle friends ). I met Vikram, KK, Shridhar and Altaf at various points in the evening and the rest on the next day.

Met many new people as well. Many people who knew Raka from this event had this intense curiosity for who his wife could be, and I found people introducing themselves and sharing this curiosity and approval - we were pronounced “made for each other”, which makes me giddy with joy, but it was also strange - we were mostly doing our own things, and not really “couple stuff”. I’m so used to connecting with Raka as a friend and part of group in public, that this whole thing with “Raka’s wife” in ISABS - which is like my own home ground - was a different perspective, and quite nice in its own way.

Of course, the music was on, and when there’s music, there’s me, moving to it. I’m not much of a dancer, but what I lack in skill, I make up in enthusiasm, and it was great fun.

This party was edgier and faster paced in terms of intoxication than my previous ISABS parties and while puking was right up there on my “ick” factor, thankfully it didn’t happen much, and the whole “unplugged feeling” was amazing in a very “dil se” way.

Some of the night passed in confusion and back up with some participants drunk (hey, which party is complete without that?), Raji falling ill from something she ate (or didn’t), an extremely dedicated doctor Shiela ensuring her comfort, Vikram hunting for medicines in the middle of the night at local hospitals…..

The surprising bit is that while the party atmosphere gets to me always, this time I was jhooming after having drunk very little (which no one believed, but I really had only two glasses). Must be the fumes in the air. I was swaying, but my head was clear - strange. Might also be tiredness - I hadn’t slept much the last whole week.

I was crashing in Asha and Anisha’s room. Hey that’s interesting - Asha-Anisha….. and we had loads of girly time walking on that eternal Modi road and then in our room……. until we finally….. slept.

PS: Spent some fabulous girl time with Raji under the heading of “taking care of her” the next morning until she felt better enough to attend the second lab of the day onwards. We had met on earlier events in the community and had liked each other on sight, but rarely spoken more than “hello, how are things going?” I had nothing to do, and she wasn’t feeling well, so she had taken the first session off. We chatted, gossiped and did all the catching up that we had been unable to do by virtue of being busy with something or the other on earlier events. In short, we ignored her illness in favour of having fun and starved of all the attention, it reluctantly slunk away.

Vidyut @ July 13, 2008