Friday, February 25, 2005

Ek phool do maali

The following lines are purely fictitious and are not written with anyone dead or remotely alive in mind. Any resemblance to any person is absolutely a coincidence. Though these lines are not intended to cause any inconvenience to anyone, though if eventually something happens, it is regretted.

It was a strange kind of friendship we shared. Both of us in “love” as some would say with the same girl. Not only to make this complex story simple but also to emphasize on the first paragraph , I would not like to use names. I will henceforth for convenience be using pronouns. So the three most important people in the story will be “him” and “her” and “me”

As I told you, both of us were in love with “her”. For me it happened very much in a filmy istyle……. I was walking down the corridor in college and happened to bump into her. It’ll be nice if you could imagine this happening in super slow motion and since most of you are engineers I am sure its not difficult to imagine [imaginary numbers and all the crap related to them………c/o M1 M2 M3 M4 remember]. Her books fell off her hands and I bent down to pick them up for her and that’s when our eyes met and that one sight was enough to make me fall in love with her. It was not that we started staring at each other, it was more like a quick glance but that was enough to make me go crazy……. bonkers is the right word. Then what followed was the usual, sleepless nights, the sight of “her” in every female you come across and all, which I am sure all of you have experienced and if you haven’t, get a life bozo.

It was through a friend I came to know that I had competition in pursuit of what had now become my ultimate goal in life. The first thing that came out of my mouth when I heard this was …. “ I’ll kill that *** of a ***** ” though I regret having said that now. We happened to meet one day. Our first meeting was quiet an unpleasant one. He was with a group of friends, I was with mine and we exchanged angry stares at each other…… much like a bollywood film, only thing that prevented world war III was that we lacked was a few hockey sticks and a few cycle chains. But as time moved on…… as it was inevitable for us to meet each other since we were in the same college, we often met near the canteen. We started getting speaking to each other and in course of time had become real close friends. We started shareing our experiences with her. Now we started discussing “her” every time we met. The hatred never seemed to arise when we both talked. We seemed to be liking helping each other. Infact, between us we had so much information about her that we were in a position to write her biography [ which by the way we wanted to name as “Life of an Angel” cos both of us believed that she looked like Meg Ryan, the lead actress in a movie called “City of Angels”].

Both of us had even decided that we wouldn’t mind if she went for either of us but that’s where her choice ended………we didn’t want her to go for any one else. Not that either of us did a great deal of talking to her to let her know all this. And by now lot of people in college came to know about this and found it funny that both of us were friends. According to most of them, she wasn’t very good looking and they used a term which both of us refused to subscribe to. I thought that she was the cutest person in the world, and he said that anyone who was 10% as good looking as her was good enough for anyone.

Both of us had our own strong points and weak ones. He being a classmate of hers was a clear cut advantage for him. He had more chances of getting in touch with her. But I was a senior, and I have heard that girls like “men”. And on top of that I hadn’t had any other encounter with her except those glances at me [and now if I remember, I don’t think she even looked at me…….. I guess she abused me and went away]. But I knew a lot of her friends, which I thought was a way towards her [ and now if I look back…….i feel I shouldn’t have taken their help at all………. they in fact screwed up what ever that could have happened]

All of a sudden this story became very one sided. The two of them eventually ended up together but I would like to say that that happened only because of my absence. But from up here I feel happy for him cos I find her happy too. Up where you must be wondering………heaven I would like to say but hell it actually is. Damn the bike which led me to my death.



a. “love is not only blind, it is also deaf, dumb and stupid” great saying

b. “once you are dead, its difficult to see, of hear of speak” great saying

putting a and b together,

“fall in love and die” tejas krishnamoorthy

The bike, the fem, the looser and me

65 cubic centimeters of engine capacity, full automatic transmission, 7 horses of brutal power, aerodynamic designed and tested for least air resistance, amazing looks, jet-black………..just the things, which could make a bike fanatic, go crazy. Though I was a person who could do anything for speed, it wasn’t the bike that impressed me. Or was it…..?

There is something fascinating about females and automobiles. I have always been impressed with girls driving or riding, cos these are among others considered a male’s tart according to me. I don’t know what makes me believe that males are born with the uncanny knack of driving, comes in the blood the time a man is born, and females are gods at subtle arts like cooking and cleaning……they are meant for gentle things and they are great at another art, the art of getting anything done by what are called “tears”. [ And guys who don’t know how to ride a bike or drive a car or look at a profession that keeps them in the kitchen, must look for a crash course in “The most painful ways of killing oneself”, a compilation of 5001 ways of killing self in the cruelest and painful ways]

So here was a bike every real guy would kill for, and I was some how not looking at the bike, it was the rider that impressed me. It was very unlike me to do such a thing….. I agree that girls, I used to look at, but given a choice between a gorgeous girl and a awesome automobile, it was the automobile for me. I couldn’t help it, I was a MAN. But there was something about this rider, something I had never seen in a girl, something I had never seen in a bike. I had fallen in love, and this time it wasn’t a Ferrari or a Hyabusa.[For the guys who haven’t heard these names, please work on the killing yourselves part, the world could do without guys like you]

She wasn’t the “ drop dead looks ” kind of a girl. She was no Jennifer Anniston nor was a Meg Ryan. Actually not many people agreed that she was good looking. Infact as far as I can remember, there was only one other guy who agreed with me. I could reveal his name but currently he is busy with a book called “The most painful ways of killing oneself”, apparently he didn’t satisfy one of the rules of being a Real Man. Anyway, both of us could go on about her and her looks and her attitude and her likes and her dislikes all day long. There was something that both of us had seen that the others hadn’t.

When she sat on her bike, Man, could she make it fly? She would release the throttle and her bike would zip past. And I, being a male chauvinist couldn’t imagine my bike being any less then hers. I had to buy a better bike…….something that could at least save my face in front of her. Actually I got a new bike, 134.7cc, 12 horses, 4 speed manual transmission, jet black…….but it was no match for hers. The only thing in my bike, which could get as close to hers was the colour. Now everyone knew that I had got the bike for her. Though it was true, I always disagreed with them. I didn’t want anyone to think of me as one of those guys who do everything for girls. It was not good, for, I had built an image of being anti love, anti female and anti god. Now it was god alone who could save me from all of this. Irony L

All the attitude I had about life, was out of the window. She made me realize a lot of things. It was not that I had a number of baseless conversations in the millions of coffee bars and restaurants spending my money for me to attain the nirvana. Infact I hadn’t even spoken to her. [The “me not speaking to her” holds good as on the day this matter was written. For updates, contact can be made with the author]. It was just the sight of her that made me more literate, not a b c literate, but life literate. Her one glance was enough for me to write a “bhagavd gita”. Not that I didn’t want to speak to her. I would say that an opportunity had not come up but it actually is that I hadn’t been able to muster the courage to go and have my first words with her, the words which would make my life worth while.

Well, all stories have to end….generally all stories have a fairy tail ending. Well that’s not true in my life, it never has been. I was good, but never the best, in anything….sports, intelligence, riding, studies [ please note that I have mentioned studies because though not very logical, the world demands you to do extremely well academically. Its okay if you mug up the stuff and throw up all the crap in the three hour testing space the people have designed]. It was the same case with her. I don’t know how he made it work but the guy whose name I refused to mention earlier, the guy working on the book, ended up with her. Well that also brought an end to our acquaintance. I could not be nice to a man who stole my life….. my love. And I am hoping that the don’t live happily “ever after”. If I cant be happy, no one should be….it’s a dog eat dog world. Well I deserve it though, remember I am not the best.

NOT A TRUE STORY

I was an engineering student at last. Having worked so hard for my board exams, it was such a great feeling when the hard work had paid off. And entering an under graduate college is such a great feeling. There is that feeling of “nothing can beat you”. But in my case, this feeling was short lived. I cannot believe that I had changed so drastically and that too for a girl.

I was like any other teenager, with the same old problems like pimples and shortage of allowance and two absolutely unreasonable people in life called “parents”. I used to consider the feminine gender as the worthless half of earth, the root cause of all problems and as a metal fanatic, considered pop equivalent to “nursery rhymes” and Ferrari the only car worth my amazing driving skills. I was leading a normal life when out of the blue, this happened.

Like always, I was “chilling out” with the usual “gang” of friends in the canteen when I saw her. She was the most beautiful girl I had seen. Absolutely my type, tall and absolutely gorgeous. She had such beautiful eyes, that she must have stolen millions of hearts like mine [I could go on and on about her other features, but its not nice mentioning about her nose and all that…..it sounds really weird]. She came in with some of her friends, had a coke or something [ I don’t know exactly cos I could not take my eyes of her eyes] and left, it all took some 5 minutes and this was enough for me to fall for her and those 5 minutes seemed like eternity to me. As she left, she took along with her, my heart….. I had fallen in love with her.[from hear on I will refer to her as “my babe” to make things easier]

Then what followed was absolutely normal, sleepless nights and loss of appetite and direct impact on the internal marks. I had to tell somebody about it and so confessed it to a friend of mine. He happened to give me this amazing advice -to go talk to her and tell her how I felt [ like I hadn’t thought about it] but it seemed an Herculean task to make that journey to my babe and to talk to her. By now it was certain that I couldn’t live without her and I had to do something about it. This is when it stuck to me that if I wanted things to progress, I had got to get in touch to one of her friends. I had heard form one of my friends that to impress a girl, you had to impress her friend first. And this helped me to get to know lots about her. Now I started listening to the corrs and westlife and bryan adams and now even metallica was noise to me. I was totally lost and all I did was to think about my babe all the time, in class, at home, while studying and in everything I did. I had dreamt of us getting married and living together in a small cozy house close to a beach and had gone to an extent of thinking of names for our kids. All this about a girl whom I hadn’t even spoken to. My desperation resulted in her friend setting us up and seeing that we met. She asked me to meet my babe near ******** at 5 in the evening. I was there about 2.45 and had planned a lot for her. I had picked up the greatest bunch of white roses [ white cos I had come to know that she adored white roses] I had seen and I had rehearsed the words I was going to speak to her tonnes of times. But those words weren’t fated to be heard by her. I was never able to speak to her ever. Fate it seems always comes with a sense of irony.

It struck me as if a million spears were trying to stuff their way into my heart. It seemed to be the end of the world for me. Everything has been still for me since then. The last I heard of her was that she had met with an accident on her way to meet me and was killed………… I wish this was not a true story……

Thursday, February 24, 2005

another monday morning in my life

Another normal Monday morning at college. I was as usual, sitting in the cycle stand as we called it [wonder why, as no one was using bicycles to college anymore, guess it is considered “uncool”] as that was the place all of us ended up when we bunked classes. Actually recovering from the hangover from some strangers treat, the head was aching a little too much to attend any class. Sitting and doing the normal things, either hunting for a junior to rag the shit out of him or hoping, from out of no where, a beautiful chick blesses our college. Please note that I have no liking to poultry or anything, but again, the usage of “chick” as an alias for a pretty girl is considered “cool” and who wouldn’t want to be “cool” in college?
Actually there was something planned for the week end in my life. It usually is not, and so was kinda excited about it. There was going to be a reunion of some old friends from school. It was actually a 10th standard reunion and I had attend that particular school only till 2nd. I was like a special invitee for the occasion. Was very eager to attend it, cos my first love was from that particular school. This chick and I were class monitors of sorts and I had even at one point of time given her half my eraser cos she didn’t have one. And how I broke that eraser?? I bit it into two halves.
That on the back of my head, and the bloody hang over taking its toll, me and a couple of guys decided that we had to have liquids to get over it, the hang over I mean. So we decided to skip lunch and go to this place which was famous for cold coffees. So famous that it was called cold coffee, though it had a weird muslim name. This place was about 12 kilometers from college and with one bike, the 3 of us made our long journey to this place evading the cops in the afternoon sun. terrible ride I tell you.
Finally we got there and ordered the cold coffees we had come for. And as usual, lit up our cigarettes and started our usual college talk. While I was in the middle of my second fag [ used fag to sound “cool”] I noticed another group that had come to the same place. They were sitting in the adjacent table[ I cant say table as it usually is a circle of chairs there without tables] and one of them was staring at me. Now this was pretty unusual, cos I am not usually used to pretty babes looking at me. I think these girls have some set of rules on whom to talk to and who to go out with and all. Cant believe they discriminate guys on the basis of their looks and the looks of his bike. I have never done injustice, looked at every girl with the same amount of intensity, same about of love.
But now I was getting tensed that some female, that too a pretty one was looking at me. Was very scary infact. Was there something on my face? Was my shirt torn? Was my fly open? These are the things that popped in my head. Being nervous, I slowly but surely checked my fly and asked my friends if anything was wrong with me. Confirming that I was normal [as in how ever abnormal I usually am] I complained to them about this chick. Now it was big news that a chick was looking at ME, so even they looked and I guess that made her conscious. She just turned away and never looked back at me. Was sad in a way but was relieved. Thank god no one was looking at me again.
It was 7’o clock on the Saturday morning. I don’t think I had ever seen a watch at that hour, unless a clock appeared in my dreams. But that day I was up, all set for the party. And before I left home I had one thing I had to do. There happened to be an old cell phone handset at home. It was not being used by anyone at that time. Now, at a point of time when cell phones were not very popular, it would help my luck if I had a cell phone. I just had to fool my parents into giving that phone to me. And it was not very difficult to do that. Actually, after 19 years of staying with them, you eventually know them too well, and its easy to get it your way, especially if it has some thing to do with modern day gadgets. I just had to tell them that the battery in the phone would die if it was not charged regularly and since I had saved enough money, I would buy a sim card and use it. They readily agreed. Wonder why they didn’t think of the fact that all these days, the cell used to stink in the cupboard without getting charged and all of a sudden I got to know its presence and had asked for it. Anyway, I knew no questions would come in this front, and even if it did, it was easy to dodge them.
Now I was all set for the party. It was in the evening, and I got into the only pair of denims I had. Not that my father was financially uncompetitive to buy me more but I have always hated shopping and so I have never gone out and bought myself another pair. And for a guy, one pair of jeans was more than sufficient. The older and dirtier it got, the better it looked, even better if it tore at a few places. Then wore that cool sweat shirt I had got form one of the relatives from the US. Dark blue shirt which bore in large red letters “pro penn classic”.
Now, as I had told you, I was like a special guest at this party. That was cos, everyone else there knew each other for more than 10 years. I had been a part of their lives only for the first 2 years of their social life. So, it was kinda suffocating at first. Only person I knew there, who had actually found out that I was form that school had nominated himself as the master of the ceremony. So he was generally on the stage. Slowly but steadily I started talking to people, or actually it was the other way round. I am basically a shy person and talking to strangers I am not good at, and if this stranger happens to be a female, chick, no chick, irrespective, I go blank. Anyway, I had made a little progress, was talking to couple of people, and was getting more and more comfortable. I was a little more confidant than usual cos now I had an electronic gadget in my had as well, I was cool.
Anyway, one chick caught my attention. She was damn good looking I must admit. There was something about her, either it was her looks or it was that I had seen her somewhere. Having seen her somewhere was out of the way for me, so it definitely had to be the looks. God was she pretty!!! Now of the people I had made friends in the party, I got pretty close to one female and now had to get introduced to the goddess. We started moving towards her, when we found she was sitting alone in a corner when suddenly the MC of the day announced some crazy party game. I was so f$#%^@ frustrated and irritated that given a choice, I would have liked all of them to freeze and only me and my goddess to be there in the room.
Well game it was for the time being. Such a looser I am that I lost to a girl in the first round and went and sat in the corner. Was actually enjoying this game that was happening. Looked around a couple of times for my goddess but she was no where in sight. Last I had seen her was when she took her cell phone and exited the room.
Slowly but surely I was too engrossed in the game that was being played. It is nice to see people smiling and not worrying about the rest of the world once in a while. Too lost in the game I was when I heard a faint voice.
“Excuse me…”
The train of thoughts was interrupted suddenly. I turned around. There she was standing, the goddess.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I had no words for what she said. I just shook my head, mouth wide open and eyes not blinking. I guess she took that as a yes. She sat beside me. She then started introducing herself. She said that we were classmates when we were young. I didn’t remember having seen her, cos if I did, I would have never forgotten her ever. I didn’t hear much of what she said. All I could gather was her name. I was too lost looking at her.
“You were at cold coffee on Monday weren’t you?”
Now how did she know this, I wondered. “Yes I was, but how do you know?”
“Were you not smoking there?”
“Yes, but …”
“You know smoking is bad for health don’t you?”
Well everyone knows that smoking is bad. It ever says so on the carton. I didn’t have an answer to such redundant questions.
“Aaaaa yes, I am trying to quit, but how do you….”
Quit I knew I never would. But I didn’t have anything else to say. But before I could finish, she added to her psychic statements….
“And were you and your friends if I can call them that staring at a couple of girls sitting at the next table there?”
I most definitely was staring at that chick, but my friends, I don’t remember. I don’t think so actually. Now how can you answer this question.
“Well, actually….a a ….”“Well actually that girl you were staring at is me. You guys with those cigarettes looked so cheap you know” she declared.
That hit me real bad. Here right in front of me was an angel, talking to me which in itself was pretty big. And now she called me cheap cos I stare at girls and I smoke. I didn’t know what to do. I wished at that instant that I would have a spontaneous human combustion right away. Or I would vanish into thin air. But all that would not happen. I had to get out of this awkward situation by myself, sans miracles.
“But I told you no, I am trying to quit” I said “what is your cell number?”
Wonder where that come from but it did come. And I thought my cheeks were in for a treat, from the soft well painted hands of the goddess. How stupid could I get, here was a chick who was insulting me and I ignore all this and ask her number. I felt like slapping myself.
“988………” she said, “give me a missed call”
Now what was surprising.