06: About the Proposal

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The grocer was giving the last Home-made candy to the fat girl. Antara had been dreaming about that candy all night, and now she just couldn't afford to let it go. She ran to the counter, grabbed the candy and slapped a 50 (which is 40 bucks more than the candy's cost) on the desk and then screamed at the fat girl. "You don't deserve any more candies. You have already consumed half of the World's candies into that horribly inflated bag of fat and crap!" While the others went all numb and were staring at Antara, the fat girl took another 'different' candy, gave the grocer some change and left, looking at Antara as if nothing happened.

[At college]
While on one hand the 'WE-HATE-SUNIDHI' club was on with all its activities, there were guys spread all over who said 'Crazy people! Thanks for hating Sunidhi. You reduced the competition'. A guy in the basket-ball court would always forget about the ball on seeing Sunidhi. Once he started patting on stray dog's head (stray dogs were an important part of the College's Academic Society, remember?) which the dog did appreciate for a while but then he showed the sharpest of its teeth to warn thid guy of a lethal attack if he didn't stop the patting.
Anyway, it was a pleasant weather, and so the students were not willing to attend the lectures (basically for this day this was the reason). So the classes had all swapped their rooms. Antara was unwillingly sitting with the others.
"I can't believe you guys are such jerks. You can't attend your lectures, what will you do in your life?" she was mumbling.
"Antara, has someone ever told you how dumb you are?" said Anish, giving angry stares to Antara.
"No!" Antara replied. She got very serious. "Why? Did that fatso bitch say that to you? She's such a-"
"Who?" Smiti and Anish said in unison, which made Antara realise they were not talking about that fat girl.
"Oh my God! Was I sleep talking again? Why don't you wake me up when I sleep?" said Antara trying to cover it up.
"Because, we are not in a habit of meeting people sleep with eyes open and hands moving around in full swing!" replied Smiti.

[A little later, Sunidhi and Smiti had left for a routine face maintenance]
Antara came with a book and sat between Rishab and Kanishk.
"So?" said Rishab to Kanishk trying to break the ice and start discussing about his date the previous evening. He could not digest the fact that Kanishk was not sharing about his date with anyone. Kanishk however ignored it and continued with accessing Facebook on his phone.
Rishab spoke again. "May be you wanna tell us what happened!?"
Antara raised her eyes. Her eyes were wide open and face all terrified as if she just received a threat call.
"May be you wanna tell us what all she said to you!?" continued Rishab, to which he finally got the response from, uh, Antara.
"NO! NO! NO! Why would anyone wanna tell you anything? It's all personal.." And then she pointed at everyone and screamed. "It's all personal. You don't have any right to question what is happening in people's personal domain! And eating a candy is not that big an issue."
"Antara! I'm sorry. I just thought it would be nice to know how Kanishk's date was." explained Rishab.
"Oh!" said Antara suddenly cooling down. "Yes! I know you were talking about Kanishk." she said justifying her anger. "And I still maintain my stand. And I can't see someone mercilessly breaking into someone else's personal area which.. I li-ke to call as a.. as a candy. So I- I am going. Commit this sin behind my back, you- ba- you weirdo!"
Antara left, and Rishab did not speak a word after this.
"Yeah dude, it's really not right talking to people about their candy" giggled Anish.

[Sunidhi and Smiti were in the Girls' restroom]
"So, for how long are you gonna keep doing this?" said Sunidhi talking about Smiti and Rishab's strained relation.
"Uhh... You spend not less than an hour painting your cheeks even when they are screamingly red already, putting eye-liner even when your eyes are less visible than the liner, and rubbing the lipstick around your lips even after your lips have become a lip color factory. And five minutes for me are unbearable, huh?" snapped Smiti.
Sunidhi was all blank for a while
"Wha- What? I take-" she began to explain, but then she realised that she wanted to talk about the Rishab and Smiti issue.
"That's not what I meant! I am talking about Rishab"
"What about him?" she said and after a little thought she continued, "Oh! Hasn't he stopped staring at that blonde librarian yet?"
"Nooo!" Sunidhi said, now a little irritated. "You are not behaving normally with him. I have noticed that you aren't really talking to him much."
"C'mon! I am. I can't just go to him and talk about anything. You see, he needs no good reason to start off with his Super-smart geek talk, even if what I say isn't even remotely related to 'technology'" she said, making the quote mark gesture.
"Yeah, I know that." Sunidhi agreed, recalling the 'travelling in time' event (Remember when Sunidhi was taunting Rishab at telling Smiti about his feelings, and Rishab began to explain how it will not be possible for Sunidhi to travel back in time and see that proposal thing happen?)
"Anyway," Sunidhi said as she opened the door. "I am outside. As soon your five minutes, that by the way started 15 minutes ago, get over, please come out."
When Sunidhi left, a girl came out of one of the doors behind Smiti and while washing her hands, she told Smiti to rather go for a blind date with that "Weirdo Nerdo" (in her words) so that she could finally tell herself that it was a blind date and so she was not responsible for the mistake.

[Few hours later, while the others were attending a lecture, Armaan, Anish and Vineet were out]
Armaan had just entered the cafeteria, when he saw Divya at the counter. Before she could even realise that it was Armaan, his face had gone red with blushing. He slowly drifted towards Divya. Finally with her food, Divya came to him and took him to his table where other friends of Divya were waiting.
"What is with this girl?" said Vineet.
"Don't you ever watch channel Zoom? It's public. Armaan has this girl drooling over him." Anish replied, following the angry look he gave to Vineet when he tried to approach the chips Anish had brought for himself.
"Armaan? Where did that girl get her Pre-University Certificate from? Blind School?" said Vineet.
"Shut up, Loser! He has a girl, and you have only these lame comments. Go get a girl if you are good enough." casually commented Anish. Vineet just couldn't take this. He went right away to the group of all the girls where Divya was standing and said, "You know what, I have many girls drooling over me, but I don't just blush like a girl and stand with them. I am going to get the girl of my destiny today. Just see what happens this evening."
Strangely, while all of the girls just smiled, the girl who was trying to stop Divya from shouting at Vineet (in that fight at the cafeteria gate) didn't really feel happy or even amused at this.

[Later that evening]
Sunidhi was trying to explain to Smiti, how bad it is to stop talking to a person when he expresses his feelings. Actually, since Smiti, Sunidhi and Anish were walking along, she was also trying to let Anish know that doing it was bad. Psst.. Really, reaally big news, and I know it is too big to be revealed this way. But can't help it, because Sunidhi was almost about to propose Anish. Yeah, she had a crush on him.
"You don't understand, Sunidhi!" said Smiti.
"I don't? C'mon. When someone loves you so much, there is no point behaving like that. Believe me, only a true lover has the courage to propose you in front of so many people." said Sunidhi, and started thinking of a way to propose Anish. She had just turned towards Anish, when she heard her name cried out loud.
"VINEEEEEEEEET??" they all exclaimed. Vineet was sitting right in the middle of the big open area near the main gate. People who were all leaving for the day stopped. Everything was at a standstill. Weirdly, even the dogs had stopped barking.
"Sunidhi, this may look like the weirdest way, but I couldn't think of anything better." said Vineet and beckoned someone. Naresh, the canteen guy came rubbing his tears, holding a banner with some more guys. The banner read
'Sunidhi, I don't know how many enemies I'll make after this. Everybody's saying WE HATE SUNIDHI. But in front of all of them I wanna admit that I LOVE SUNIDHI. I LOVE YOU, SUNIDHI!'
"O-M-G! O-M-G!" Sunidhi said, almost fainting. "Everyone come back, go back to where you were, go back!" she said gesturing everyone to return to where they were a little while ago. "Let's take the time back, for Heaven's sake. This is not supposed to happen. Let's undo this, pleaaase!"
"What? Why? It's so beautiful!" said Anish. "He proposed you in front of the whole college. The 'courage' thing, right?"
Sunidhi didn't say anything and just went out.
The girl was standing right there with the crowd. When the crowd again started to move and began to go out of the gate, she came to Vineet and told him that he's a nice guy and he deserves a lot of respect.
"Don't disrespect yourself, please! It hurts me." she softly said and left brushing his hair with her beautiful hands.
[The day concluded]