A “happening” New Year’s Eve — 2013

“So what’s the plan for New Years Macha?”
“This time we should definitely go for the Fort kochi carnival”
“Great. Done”.

Fort Kochi is the old part of Cochin that has a significant influence from the Portuguese, Dutch and British culture and are frequented by foreigners. It has a beach as well and this year had a special attraction “Bienalle” a contemporary art festival which was all over the news. Before New Years, we had set off for the art festival twice but ended up getting drunk while “getting prepared” to appreciate creativity. But Fort Kochi had never felt as such an integral part of my vacation until this time around.

So when we decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve there, I was excited. A few years ago there was a cult Mohanlal movie “Chhota Mumbai” which revolved around the new year Carnival.

Everything was perfect. There were five of us — one non-drinker who could drive us back. We set of for the epic welcome of the year of the snake (or what ever). When we reached there, this is what we saw.

Yes, an illuminated tree with a lot of ice cream and Bhajji vendors around it. Wtf? Where do they burn “Michael Ashan’s” huge Santa Claus statue? Not anymore it seems. Undeterred, we headed to the beach pretty sure that there must be something happening there … More ice cream vendors. Bloody.

Then we headed to “Mammas” our good old bar and later to the legendary Lovedale club where some other group was celebrating the evening with a guy on the mike singing 80s party anthems like “mere sapnon ke rani ….”. It was fantastic. They even burst firecrackers at midnight. Yay.

All in all, a very happening new year. Boom.