The Fireworks

“Come on. Let go”, Shubha said as she urged me to join them for the dance. It was 1 am in the Desi Party in Chicago downtown. I can’t dance. I could never relate to the idea of moving your body to the music beats.

It took me exactly 4 tequila shots to join my friends on the dance floor. Martin my teetotaler friend sat in the corner looking at everybody happy that he will not see them in heaven. Initially it was easy –

The kite dance – where you pretend that you are flying a kite looking towards the ceiling,

The snake dance – hold your hands together like a snake hood and go up and down in wayward motions,

The Amitabh dance – walk slowly raising your hands up alternately,

The train dance – form a circle, keep your hands on your neighbors shoulders and keep running till you are tired,

Ball catching and throwing – Imagine a imaginary ball and keep throwing and catching it rapidly.

And then my body had consumed some tequila, my brain had come back to normalcy, I did not find any meaning in doing these exercises anymore. So I joined Martin in the corner and I drank some whisky while Martin kept sipping at his lemonade.

It was just this morning that we had landed at the Chicago airport. The July 4^th long weekend we were looking forward to. We were 9 of us. The names will appear in the order of appearance.

Our host Miss Sakshi was a very sweet girl. She left no stone unturned to make us feel at home. She treated us with her amazing cooking skills, which she claimed to have developed on her own. All her recipes have a flavor of the MTR rasam powder. Be it Pav Bhaji, Alu Mutter, or anything else. No doubt that she is the biggest fan of rasam powder. May be MTR made rasam powder just for her.

But I digress.

What I actually wanted to say was that we were treated to a sumptuous feast of Chole Puri, Hakka noodles and tea. And then at quarter past 12 we hit the road. The plan was very simple. Drive north 1 hour to Lake Geneva and jet ski, drive back 2 hours to downtown Chicago to witness the all important July 4^th fireworks. And the fireworks might be like any other fireworks we had seen before. But for some reason we were not supposed to miss it.

And what great weather ! Clouds and clouds everywhere. It’s funny how even ‘good weather’ can be a relative term. I just love the rains. I am just so hard-wired to love them. I wished for it to rain any minute.But everyone else in the group of 9 wished otherwise. They had jet ski on their minds.

“The clouds are dense. I wish it rains”, a very excited me said.

“Don’t be a sadist da”, came the pat reply in thick Tamil accent from Rajeshwari.

After a smooth drive of 30 mins which was full of conversations about favourite heroines and movies, the traffic came to full stop. And with that the faces went sad again. My only interest in Lake Geneva was the beautiful water front and the Vanilla softy ice-cream which was sold on the pier. I had to retire from jet-ski prematurely, thanks to my friend who was showing me how to make circles in the water. The jet-ski toppled and we were stranded in the center of the lake for about an hour. Forget the huge fine which the jet-ski company charged for their damages. Now making circles in the water on a jet-ski is a nightmare for me.

After alternating my leg between the accelerator and the brakes for a few hundred times, the traffic began to flow again.

Damn! No signs of rain yet.

Now, Lake Geneva is not just a lake. It is a small town built around the big lake. Seemed like the whole Illinois was there for the weekend.

Now this place looked so pretty. Restaurants and lodges lining the one side of the main road and the blue violent waters of the lake on the other side. Wait a second. Did I say violent? It was unusually windy that day and the high waves looked very dangerous. It took some time to get all 9 people at one spot. And after depositing a layer of vanilla softy ice-cream and the “salty and not so tasty” pretzels we set out to shop for jet-ski rentals.

“We stopped renting for now. The waters are very dangerous now. Go and check ahead.”

The next shop – “Everyone has stopped renting jet-skis for now. We do have a speed boat available though.”

Everyone was understandably dejected. But the most affected seemed Preeti. Her ever smiling face and 32 teeth (this is an assumption) had gone missing now.

I was more than happy to drive back to downtown and have some fun. But Miss Sakshi, our host had not given up. She had other ideas. She made some calls, gave some credit card numbers and then.

“Guys, we are going to Fox Lake! They are open now and I have reserved a few jet-skis for 6 pm.”

An hour at the lake side beach, another layer of BK veggie burger and we were on our way to Fox Lake.

And the first drops hit the windshield.

And I controlled my joy and gave this one liner –

“If you really want it, the whole universe will conspire to help you get it.”

Fox Lake was a smaller and quieter lake. The “Fun Sports” rental company had no problems renting in the rains. Our guys were very excited. They filled out a few forms, became a little poorer and off they went.

I had begun to worry whether we would make it to the downtown in time for fireworks. The fireworks were scheduled for 9 pm and even if we left on time we would just make it.

Jet-skiing was done and we raced towards downtown hoping to make it. But none of us had taken it into consideration that the whole of Chicago would be going to downtown. We reached about a mile from Navy Pier and the traffic just stopped on a bridge. All guys except me started walking towards Navy Pier, the fireworks place. I sat in the car listening to some country music on full volume knowing very well that the traffic jam was not going to end soon.

It was 9pm and I could see the fireworks in the sky from the bridge. I realized that not all things are meant to be perfect and that’s what makes them memorable.

I hoped that the others would have reached in time. But they didn’t.

All sad faces returned to a restaurant for a nice dinner which was followed by the tequila shots and the dance.

In high spirits it took us an hour to find the car in the parking lot. Thank God, he/she sent us Martin. We had no one else to drive.