Chocos Surprise

    Birthdays are always special for many reasons. Most important of all is, it gives us a reason to come together in this big bad busy world. And when it’s your friend’s birthday it’s a crazy day out.

    As our country celebrated it's 68th Independence Day one known devil also celebrated her birthday. Vaishu and my friendship is something different, apart from the world. We sometimes fight, have heated arguments but are always their in the times of need.. I can share everything with her without having to think twice. Our ship has sailed through many storms to reach till this day. And the best part is we are still together even after those storms. So doing anything for her is always a pleasure.(In case you are reading it Vaishu, keep in mind I can write good fiction)

    It's been a surprise season for me since the start of July. First Vanessa's greeting card than Vinay's surprise party, after that Mane's video recording and now Vaishu. I was thinking what to gift her. I always have one simple intention when I think about a gift and it's the person in front should know we tried our best to give you something to let you know that you are a special person. So the usual suspects, an album. But I had already done it for 2 people earlier. Then greeting card, which again recently made it for one. Then thought about a photo frame. There was a reason for finalising it immediately. Actually I wanted to give a similar frame to Vaishu on her spinster party But I couldn't make it as it was during exam season. Then I wanted to gift her on her marriage but again exams. So now finally I was going to give it her.

    Like the earlier greeting card I wanted it to be home made without much of capital involved. It helps in keeping our personal touch. So I started exploring various ideas. Just googled that thought to get some concrete solution. While surfing for ideas, I cam across one frame which was prepared from a cereal box. Immediately a thought struck my head. We had a Kelloggs Chocos box which was empty and ready to thrown away. So I retained its possession and kept it safely in the wardrobe.

    Now what next? was the biggest question in front of me. Since my school days neither the craft work nor the drawing work was done by me. Someone else used to fill those books for my grades. So I had all the ideas, I had the content, I had various themes. But the biggest hurdle was how to implement these ideas on the canvas. I lacked the creativity. Plus it should have been a group work, but can't expect time from others as each of them have work commitments of 10-12 hours.

    So I had to go ahead alone. First things first. I needed to sort out atleast 20 pics from the vast collection of over 1200. I used to keep one theme in my mind and sort out 20 pics from the lot. Then if the theme wasn't feasible then again sort 20 as per another theme from the ocean. And this drill went on.

Themes

Vinay came to my place on Sunday afternoon to decide about the themes. Since my MS-Office was not working, I had not option but to develop individual pics and then stick them according to our theme pattern. So I called upon him to do the selection work.

First I had thought about including pictures of her friends from college till her marriage. So it will be like a journey or timeline since college days and will end with her marriage pic. Pictures will be like some specific moments or memories. But then since college the one group is now split into many small factions. So including everyone was getting a bit crowded plus will be unnecessary as not all of them are interested. And we can't include their pictures without their consent. So had to drop that idea.

Second we thought about including pictures of each and everyone with vaishu. So I found pics of the entire college group. But again, here also the same issues. Getting crowded as well as all our not in touch.

Third we thought about including a group picture in the middle and some memorable pictures surrounding it. So again the same drill. Dig in the ocean for a group pic. Her marriage photo was a good one, but I believed there were some people in that pic whose permission I didn't have, to include them in the frame voluntarily. So I started to search her engagement pic as it was less controversial, for me. Unfortunately I couldn't find it in my archives. So while talking with shweta I asked her to lend me the pic if she has. There she suggested check her FB a/c, she had uploaded that pic. Now I had all the pics but again their were problems. The box was small. If we have include a group pic in the middle then it has to be big, so that everyone's faces are visible. And because of that size other pictures will have to be adjusted in smaller areas. It would have been injustice on them. So had to drop the idea of group pic.

Fourth, we thought about going the same way I did for pravin. In his collage I had included his name in the middle which was apparently written on the sand in a beach. Vinay found one pic of vaishu's name on the sand from her facebook account. So we had that theme working but again the image was on the lighter side. Plus I wanted this gift to be something new and not similar to someone else's. So my inner voice was not allowing me to go ahead with this & hence, again, cancelled.

 Fifth we thought about a two way frame. On one side we will have decent pics and on the other side we will have some hilarious moments. One ofcourse was shortlisted was vaishu's epic pic from a restaurant while returning from our IV. Then one was of me sleeping on a bench in essel world. For pravin it was his pic captured while falling from the adventure sports in essel world. Vinay decided to caption it "Pawanputra". For vinay it was he holding a bottle and eating mirchis. It would have been too much fun but then that poster will always be in a deep locker coz of all the crazy stuff. So we dropped that idea though it was fun while sorting all those crazy pics.

Then finally me and vinay agreed upon one theme. To include 4 individual pics of vaishu from 2005 till her marriage. And 6 pics with all of us together. It felt proper and will not be messy. There was enough space to arrange all of them. For the individual pics of vaishu we got 2 each of her engagement and marriage. The good thing about them was they both were facing each other. The 2005 pic was also facing on the proper side but we couldn't locate a pic where she is looking in the desired direction. So we had to settle for one which was taken in Pind Baluchi. In case of other pics the biggest difficulty was finding a picture of rohan with vaishu. We scrolled like hell and finally vinay got one from the essel world collection where we all were getting down from a ride and fortunately rohan was besides vasihu. So we okayed that theme and now I had to start preparation of the frame.

The main problem in selecting themes or pics was that we had to be careful of excluding some people. And that was the difficult task as in most of them they were also a part. Second problem we faced was selecting pics of vaishu in which she is not sleeping, which is very rare.

 Frame
Before giving any border to the frame I had to ensure the box is stable. The portion where the box closes is foldable. So I had to make that concrete first. Took small portions of cardboard and inserted it between them so that those layers are strong and won't bend when the borders are made.

Now the big guns. After surfing the net, many images of hand made frames had a huge border and very less space for the pics. I wanted it the other way. I had to allocate 10 pics comfortably in that frame. So I decided to keep the border small with cardboard.

First I gave it background with pitch black colour chart paper. The black colour was suggested by payal as I had asked her for suggestion since her's is a more creative mind in these things. Then after the background I made a border with White cardboard. The intention was to have contrasting colour as the background of the frame is dark in colour. So that time I thought to make some desgins on the cardboard to make it more presentable. Now comes the back side. I was not in a mood to do anything on the back side and keep the Chocos cartoon as it is. Thought of telling vaishu, incase you get bored by our faces attach this cartoon as your frame. But then the box was on the weaker side. So I decided to stick the chart paper as border, with the thinking that it might give her a strong base.

After the main work was done now came the difficult part, the creative stuff. Where I am intellectually disabled. So it took lot of brain washing, consultations to finalise the frame. First I decided to do some sketch pen work like I did it in the recent greeting card. But it will look very dull considering the pictures in the frame which are very much lively. My handwriting is not at all good to experiment here, so thought about going the old school way. Cutting alphabets from newspaper in random manner and sticking them together which will read "Happy Birthday Vaishu". Intitally we had also dropped the idea of writing any captions on the pic as there were more picture so it wont look that much cool. Now after the main wished what next to decorate the remaining part? Fortunately their was one butterfly in Sunday Loksatta in two spearate parts on the front page. So I did a decent paper cutting and joined the 2 parts of butterfly while sticking it. Also there was some advertisement of some brand. What caught my eye in that Ad was the two small elephants. Thought it will be good addition. So included them also. So after putting them together it was looking something like this.

The Vaishu part was on the left side for a reason. I didn't get a carboard of full size of the frame so there was an attachement. And since I had not decided upon the background so I kept it on the left side so that the 'V' can hide the attachment. The big question was still pending. The huge part was still white and though the colour was contrasting black and white but still I was getting a feeling as it is naked. So started digging again on the net about ways to decorate it. But majority of them where high fundo craft work which is clearly not my cup of tea. Finally  my brother showed me the path. He is normally good at colour combinations. So he told to give the entire background a pink colour or stick pink chart paper. It will go good with the colage. And on that I can stick the letters and butterfly and elephants. Didn't spare a thought and went ahead with it and finally after lot of R & D the frame was ready.

Collage 
I was going to make a powerpoint slide of all pictures and get a printout in glossy paper. But unfortunately my MS-Office betrayed me. So I called up pravin and asked him if I can come to his place for some laptop work. Good news was that he was coming to Bhandup for Raksha Bandhan so he said he'll bring laptop along with him. Then vinay gave a different idea. That he will develop individual pictures then we can cut them in random sizes and stick them. But he failed to give them for developing as he couldn't make it coz of his hectic office timings. So I had to take the final resort, the photo studio near my house. I was avoiding him coz he is normally costly. But now that we had so much ahead we couldn't back out. So I told him to make the collage which he gave me in the same evening. The product was quite nice.

Scroll
We had dropped the idea of captions on the frame. So only HBD was involved in it. Though a picture is worth more than thousand words still I wanted something to written. But there was no scope on the frame. So we had to give it separately. While sorting pics vinay had given the idea of scroll, but that time we didn't took it much seriously. Now I thought why shouldn't we give it a try. Again my beloved YouTube, learning the techniques of how to make it. Cloth was not available so I decided to make it with paper. The most important part in this was the wood which we have to attach on the ends. I couldn't find any hard thing around at my place. Was thinking about getting wood sticks from some where when a thought struck in  my head. The easiest mode, pencil. In the pencil upper part is already black so I covered the below part also with black marble paper making it even on the both sides. Applying some gum I just rolled the pencil on the paper. Pink and black combination was already used in frame so repeated the same in the scroll. It took time to hold onto the pencil. So as precautionary I made marking on both sides to notify that it won't open beyond that point. The content I thought to ask small messages from everyone. But there was space constraint. So I searched lot of marathi cards as I wanted it to be in our mother tongue. Finally got 2 poems which were quite nice and also small. So I merged those 2 poems and made one of own. Now my writing in english is horrible so Marathi it's been long time since I have written anything in our Devnagri Script. So I gave this task to Vinay.

Final Presentation
 After all our research and experiments these were the two gifts which we gave vaishu on her birthday. The only change was we couldn't write our names in the scroll coz of space constraints. Else plans were to write them in different patterns.

Party
The day our people reach on time will be the day sun won't rise. We were supposed to reach at 630 at vaishu's place. But thanks to pravin, vinay & shweta and their confusion we ended up reaching at 815.  It also had it's own fun. Vinay asked pravin to get down at Rcity as shweta was also coming down who was their with her family. Vinay and shweta met at the bus stop near Rcity while pravin was still stuck in traffic. Suddenly these 2 guys took a rick and directly went ahead. Pravin calls me up and asks what should I do now. I told then continue in the same bus, till last stop. I'll board it at bhandup. Suddenly shweta calls me says we are at bhandup waiting for you. On the other side rohan had already reached Teen Haath Naka. So he went home to change and joined us in some time. After all the mix up we finally managed to reach at 815. After the Hi's Hello's we wished the birthday girl and were about to give her the gift. But suddenly Chirag said she is yet to take the cake so we snatched it away from her. Her face was classic at that moment. Vrushali brought a superb cake which made the evening. After some snacks, talks, photo session we decided to take a leave as it was already late. Shweta left for the day while we 4 went to Zaffran at Korum Mall. Just food as it was dry day and some ice cream in the end. The day ended at 1145 and everyone reaching home by 1240.

   It was long due that we all came together under one roof. Full on masti, lively. May be that's the magic of friendship. You can get angry on them, you can fight with them but you just can't live without them.


Happy Birthday Vaishu.


SR.