Praying for the rains

My sweet friend Ahalya yesterday sent me this sms:

Goodmorning!How,u?Mass,prayer,movement,for,rains@9.Remeber2be,stark,naked

I replied:

Can I at least wear my sun screen lotion?

She wrote:

Now,now,are,we,2,chickened,out,4,some,innocent,praying?Oh,and,get,the,vodkas,will,ya?Let’s,do,it,right:who,has,the,men,with,drums?

I wrote:

I’ll be there with bells on!

I found the whole thing really funny, so I decided to forward it to a few friends. Now Ahalya for some reason puts commas instead of spaces in her smses. Perhaps she abhors vacuum like nature does. Forwarding it as is might make reading difficult, or even scare off some people. So I modified her sms a bit and sent the following to my friends:

Good evening! How are you? Mass prayer movement for rains @ 9. Remember to be stark naked

Following are some of the replies I got:

Tamanna: Hehehe… hope to spot you among all that raw flesh

Kurt: I’ll try to be there… grin

Premi: Oh, sure, sure. My whole family will be supporting. Taking a half day especially for that :)

And Santosh is the best: Are we praying or protesting?

I wrote: Do whatever you want to. As long as everyone is naked, doesn’t matter

Santosh: Kahaan pe aana hai?

I wrote: The same place you started the marathon. Ambani too will be there wearing nothing but a cap

Today Santosh called up at 9 and said, “I am waiting here for you. All of us are. Hurry up.”

The whole thing is probably not a big deal, just a silly thing. But once in a while doing something crazy like this and involving your friends in it too kind of puts a zing into the days. Otherwise it is the usual, “How r u? I m gr8” types going back and forth.