Jingle Bells

Bro calls up and tells he wants to head for the midnight mass at St Patricks, and so we jump on the bike and head to Pune. Like he puts it, "What is Xmas without the Midnight mass at a big church and since we go to the church only for Xmas and Easter, lets celebrate them in style".

And then the long ride of 30 km to the church which was a testing time for the speed limit in the low night traffic. Took my karizma to a 128km/hr and with a pillion rider daz pretty fast.
After the 30 km ride,me and bro in our spiffy look, enter the St Patricks church and were welcome by the buzzing sounds of people before the midnight mass, the lights, theXmas carols and the scent of Xmas.

Its Christmas, I had to tell that again, the festive season, the holiday season, the seaon of love and gifts, and after a long time it felt magical to be at the church, singing the hymns and the prayers, and the Christmas feeling started sinking in. The mass lasted over an hour and i enjoyed every minute of it. I am not a religious person but I still cherished the one hour, it took me to a different world for a while, or perhaps the peaceful ambience was overwhelming and even seducing to an extent. The mass concluded, and me and my bro wished each other merry christmas, and since we did not know any body else in the church that was all the wishing that had to be done. And then we headed back, i dropped him at his place and then went home and had a good xmas snooze.

The Pastor had a good message in his sermon, "In the midst of the entire celebration fever, the expensive gifts, shopping and the parties at Xmas, let us not forget why we celebrate Xmas."

It was a really good message, christmas and diwali and eid and the other festivals have more or less become occassions for good marketing campaigns and nothing else.