S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E

Life is composed of many simple things, and the pleasure of spending time on them takes you to an unexplainable high. Sometimes, on the spur of the moment, you envision something out of the blue, and you realize that you have to do it at that instant. I have this tendency to visit these online shopping sites often - Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders, and try to catch up with the latest offerings in the book world. So, last week, as I was casually browsing through B & N, I happened to see the Scrabble Deluxe Edition game advertised on the main page at half the normal price. Word games are fun to play, and Scrabble, according to me, is one of the best word games ever. As soon as the nicely displayed advertisement caught my eye, there was no looking back. I did not even think twice in deciding to buy it. Again, this was a decision based purely on instinct, just like many other things that I have done throughout.

I gloated over my new found acquisition in front of who else, but the duo of the trio Sameer and Chetan. I was holding the board as if I had made the biggest deal of my life. Come on, the packaging was just brilliant. Sameer was not too enthusiastic on the prospect of playing a word game when I explained the rules to him initially. Sounds like fun, GK, he said. The way he conveyed the message to me, I was more than convinced that it sounded anything but fun to him. I was thinking, "Looks like I have to play the game alone!". But, Chetan sounded a lot more optimistic, though I never felt that he would be the kind of a guy to take the initiative to play Scrabble. But, that's exactly what happened, when one fine evening, Chetan barged into the house, and voiced out excitedly, "Come on guys, let's play Scrabble".

I was happy that finally I will be using the board. After all, I had bought it and it was imperative that my investment came to good use. So, the three of us sat in the middle of the hall, with the board spread out nicely in the middle, each of us having a marker to place the letters. All of us took seven letters each, and based on the initial rule, I opened the game with a neatly worded P-E-A-R much to the annoyance of the other two. I am sure GK has done some foul play, screamed the two. But, I coolly updated the points against my name. As the game rolled on, somehow or the other, we were able to keep the scoreboard ticking, thanks to the "brilliant" vocabulary that is embedded in me (I mean us!!!). Sameer scored twenty points on more than one occasion. I am sure even he will agree how he got those points! Is P-I-T-A a valid word? Can I use Z-E-N? Are proper nouns allowed? How can you use plural forms? We played around negating all the doubts, and fixing rules according to our needs and whims.

It was 8 in the evening, and we had to get ready for dinner. So, I decided to prepare the most native dish of Karnataka - slurp! slurp! Bisibele bath! You just have to ask the other guys how well it had come out. Three of us had a good time figuring out the words with a plate of steaming Bisibele bath in our hands. The final score read thus: Chetan - 111, me - 116 and Sameer emerging the clear winner with 130 points. Overall, it was a great way to end the evening.