Half of chennai's population crowded on a 200m strip of sand 5 km long - the marina beach - on the morning of saturday at 10 am to stand witness to the dexterity of the IAF - the airshow .
The worst thing that could happed to it was the traffic jam in getting there - in which even VIP's faced trouble, and the police conveniently blamed it on the people saying that " we didnt expect this many people to come" - :)
As i was saying in the last mail - only one other person agreed to come. We left at 8:30 -pretty early considering the late hours the previous nite- and were waiting at CLRI bus stop to go to the marina beach. The buses that came were as packed as Jews in a gas chamber (which is usually the case in peak hours)(pardon me for that simile). Then came along 2 other junta from my hostel and we decided to take an auto. That was at 9 am.
The entire stretch to marina was a traffic jam - vehicles were forced to go on the wrong side of the road. Finaly we got to foreshore estate at around 9:30 (when the show was scheduled to start). So we decided to walk - and we went faster than the vehicles. We finally reached the place - actually Elliots beach and there were lots of ppl - just like Ranganathan street on a Saturday - it was just a mass of humans.
Note - The next part can be read in any sunday edition of chennai's newspaper
The show started prompt at 10 - thats true folks - military requires punctuality, unlike us. It started with Chetak choppers carrying the Indian Flag and the Air Force insignia. Then there were flybys by HPT32 trainer aircraft, AN32 carrier, dorniers, Iskaras, Jaguars. Then came the Sukhois- One of them did several vertical and horizontal loops, the cobra and the charlies loop. Another 2 simulated a dogfight. Two Migs then came and conducted an air raid. After that came the Surya Kiran aircraft - they too did the vertical loop ( all 9 of them ) and then some other acrobatics. There was also a Pear's heart. The show concluded at around 11 by parachute jumping.
Coming back to the hostel was another nitemare.

After coming back. I realised that i have my exams starting on thursday. I started to seriously study for it. On sunday i wrote a Mock CAT test - I am CATting for fun - I got an abysmally low score - 44
I continued studying - i am wondering when this will end