09: About the Fun Trip - Part 2

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[Continued…]
The girl had just offered a Twenty and a Five out of her purse. These seven were watching everything without uttering a word.
“I hope you are not checking her out, because you know who she is” whispered Sunidhi to the guys.
“Yeah!” replied all of them in unison, and staring at the girl like four drunkards. Rishab, ofcourse, managed to keep his expressions in control, but there was some change in the way he was behaving and it was apparent.
Meanwhile the girl was still talking to the guy. When she offered him twenty five bucks, the boy got really happy. His shake was just worth a Fifteen, and he had made a profit of Ten.
“Excuse me!” said the girl stopping him. “Actually I came here asking for a donation for the Homeless and Starving kids. You seem to belong to a well-to-do family. I hope you won’t mind making a donation for those kids.” She had said it loud enough so that others could hear it and the guy would be forced to make the donation to save his image.
“Sure!” he said. “How much do you need?”
“50 bucks is a minimum, if you don’t mind!” she said, further gripping the guy.
“Sure, take 75” said the guy, trying to be the hero not giving the exact minimum amount. The girl made the receipt and gave it to the guy, and thanked him for his generous contribution.
“Hey! The minimum mentioned here is just 10 bucks” complained the guy on reading the receipt.
“Oh!” said the girl, aware of what she had done. “I am sorry. But you were not going to pay the minimum amount anyway, were you?” Everyone smiled, and the guy left without uttering another word. The girl looked around and came to these guys’ table. Interestingly, they had not been able to hear any part of the conversation that took place at the cafeteria gate.
“Hi!” the girl greeted. “I am-“ she started to introduce herself.
“We know!” Sunidhi interrupted, trying to be friendly.
“Would you like to have something?” offered Rishab.
“No thanks!” the girl replied.
“Stop hitting on her! You know who she is, don’t you?” said Antara to Rishab and also to the other guys, hardly moving her lips. Yeah, they were sure that the girl was Pratigya.
“So…” Sunidhi said to start a conversation.
“Yeah, I was here to talk about-“ began the girl.
“We know..” Sunidhi interrupted again. The girl looked at everyone. She was astonished.
“So how did this all start?” said Sunidhi, her voice all chirpy. They wanted to hear how Kanishk and Pratigya’s story began.
“Uh, I saw a kid on the roadside one evening. He was beating his mother for food!” the girl replied.
“Oh My God!” everyone exclaimed. They were shocked and looked at each other. They couldn’t believe they were hearing how a love story started, but they somehow made an effort to.
“Kanishk never told us about his past, did he?” whispered Armaan to Rishab.

[Meanwhile, at a Café at Rajiv Chowk]
A girl with beautiful hair was sitting with her back facing the main door. Her hair were extremely beautiful, as if God had taken the best of the Silk and textured her hair with them. She brushed through her hair with her hands that were so pretty that she seemed to be the ultimate creation of God that He had been trying to create for all these years. She turned her face a little to look around. Only the corner of her eyes could be seen. She was definitely the most beautiful girl Kanishk had ever seen. He had forgotten everything. He stood right there on the gate looking at the girl.
“Look dude! We do not have a vision as good as you. We need to go closer to the menu to see what is there to eat. Would you mind getting out of our way?” said the guy standing right behind Kanishk on the gate. Kanishk turned around to respond, but saw many people gathered behind him waiting for him to leave the gate. He moved away immediately.
Kanishk didn’t know what to do. He had come for a breakup, but the girl had already made him forget the World, even when he had not seen her face. Now comes the bad part. Only to irritate her, so that she would dump him, he had changed the venue for this date thrice. Not that the changes were enough to irritate her, he made these changes only after she reached each venue. If that wasn’t enough, he also made her wait for 3 hours before finally showing up. And now he was shouting at himself in his mind “Am I the biggest Idiot? What have I done?”
He ran to the girl to greet her, and finally saw her bright face. She stood up with a smile that was so divine that Kanishk forgot what he was there for. Anyway, a slap on his arm helped.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting?” said Zarine angrily.
“I’m so sorry! I was an idiot.” Said Kanishk not sure of what to say.
“Forget that. Where are we sitting? I don’t have much time” said Zarine, expressing her discomfort in sitting there.
“Yeah! Sure” said Kanishk agreeing to ‘God knows what’.
Zarine looked at him and passed a smile that was more of an expression of confusion and discomfort. They said nothing for a while. Zarine broke the jinx. “That was a Question.”
“What? What was the question?” said Kanishk, all blank. He could not understand anything. He was lost in her bewitching beauty.
“Where are we sitting? Here?” she repeated, this time screwing her nose to make it obvious that this place was just not right.
“Where do you want to go? I don’t know many places out here” said Kanishk. Her beauty had begun to take Kanishk’s mind over.
“Interesting! It is when you don’t know many places out here that you made me sit in three different restaurants in this place. And strangely, no two of them were any close to each other” taunted Zarine. This brought Kanishk to his senses.
“Oh Yeah!” he said, as if just been jolted out of his dream. “I know some places. I do, I do!”
“And you won’t mind taking me there, would you?”
“Ofcourse not! Let’s go…”

[In the College Cafeteria, the conversation with the new girl had grown very interesting]
“So you are saying that this all is happening for the welfare of the society!” confirmed Sunidhi, and the girl nodded in affirmation.
“I love her. She thinks so much about the society” said Antara to Vineet, feeling very happy for, eh, the World.
“Yeah! She’s amazing. She chose ‘Kanishk’ just for the welfare of the society. And people say the Freedom Fighters made the greatest sacrifices for the country!” agreed Armaan.
“Amazing! So when are you guys planning to take it further?” said Sunidhi.
“We are making every effort to make it move further faster. We already have adopted some kids” replied the girl.
“WHATT?” everyone exclaimed.
“How will you take care of them?” said Antara. Now she was worried. Anish pulled her back. He calmed her down before she could get violent.
“That is what I am collecting money for!” answered the girl. “I can’t. But together we all can” she continued very proudly.
“You guys started this all and thought we would keep contributing to make life easier for you?” said Vineet. He was more of confused than irritated. He had already gone blank, but as he always used to do, he didn’t let people know that. Eh, actually, he thought he didn’t. The girl didn’t know what to say. She had never seen such a reaction to her appeal for donation before. She had no idea that she was actually discussing with them about her relationship with Kanishk, which did not exist because she was not Pratigya.
“So they let you adopt kids without knowing that you can’t take care of them?” finally enquired Smiti.
“No, they didn’t. So we had to pick up kids from the streets. Kids who had no clothes and nothing to eat” replied the girl, her eyes stuck on the wall behind. She was thinking about those kids and how she found them.
“Uhh, don’t you think, you should have lived some life of your own first?” said Anish. His face had become tensed and concern clearly showed.
“Oh shut up! May be she also adopted some kids of my secret society, who had been kicked out of their families because they were not like you all!” screamed Armaan. The girl certainly became uncomfortable, but now that she had invested so much of her time in this group of weirdos she was not ready to give it up.
“May be we should talk money!” said the girl.
“Hey, let Kanishk come. Till then tell us more. Where do you wanna go for Honeymoon?” said Sunidhi, showing a lot of interest in this topic, and the three girls giggled. The girl was all confused.
“Girls! That was so inappropriate” said Anish. The girl felt relieved. Poor she! Relief ended with the next statement.
“Where was your first date?” continued Anish.
“Ehh, will that decide the amount of your contribution?” asked the girl with a little hesitation.
“May be!” joked Rishab. They all thought the girl was joking too.
“Actually it was in an orphanage” answered the girl. Out of a shock, everyone stopped laughing and became still.

[In another restaurant at Rajiv Chowk]
The date was not really going well. Kanishk did like Zarine’s beautiful face, but he just could not handle the tantrums.
“So if this place is not good, which place is?” Kanishk complained. He was already irritated with the toffee-nosed daddy’s princess.
“I love this restaurant in Grosvenor House called.. uhh..” Zarine started, fanning her face as if she had been made to sit in the midst of a hot desert. This was so when the temperature was regulated by an Air Conditioner to make it ‘absolutely’ comfortable to the people.
“Where is Grosvenor House?” said Kanishk.
“Oh! That’s in Dubai” casually replied Zarine, and went on with her description as Kanishk gradually grew deaf. “So that’s Mezzanine, and it serves the best ‘blah bley blah bley..'” Actually finally none of what she said made sense to Kanishk, and the gibbering was all he could hear.

[An hour later, Kanishk reached the cafeteria]
Kanishk dragged himself to the table and stood there staring at everyone listening to a stranger’s (girl) weird stories.
“Hey guys!” he greeted.
“Shhhhhhh” they all said, signalling him to quietly take a chair and listen to the story.
“Atleast an introduction would be good for me to be able to join in!” said Kanishk.
“Introduction?” exclaimed Smiti, as everyone shifted attention to Kanishk.
“Uhmm.. Is that too much to ask for?” said Kanishk, already exhausted because of the date.
“Dude, why would you need an introduction to Pratigya?” said Anish. This, finally, cleared the mess up.
“Who’s Pratigya?” said the girl as she got up from her chair.
“If you’re not Pratigya, then who the hell are you?” shouted Sunidhi.
“Yeah!” said Smiti in the same tone.
“I am Ann, and I came to collect some Charity donations from you. But believe me I don’t want anything from you now. Please let me go” cried the girl and left. They didn’t say anything, as they knew what had happened was not good. Armaan broke the silence.
“What happened? She was gonna tell me where those of my secret society are!”
“Where’s Pratigya?” asked Kanishk, all vexed up by now.
They all picked their stuff up and left the cafeteria. On their way, Armaan whispered “I think the girl we told to shut up and get lost was Pratigya then!” Kanishk didn’t know how to react because no one was looking at him so that he could express his anger. He did stare at Smiti for a while, but she began to talk about something to Vineet. When he gave the same look to Rishab, he responded in his 'Code expression language' with "Dude! We're divorced. No expectations from me." After this Kanishk didn't give that look to anyone and just walked towards the gate.
On their way to gate, Antara and Sunidhi were busy discussing something.
“So you really plan to go?” said Antara. Her voice sounded sad. “You know if I were you I would have kicked this opportunity off for my friends. Sunidhi felt that Antara’s right. She immediately pulled the ‘Ticket’ to Fun trip out of her bag and threw it aside.
“Hey! Good job” celebrated everyone.
Antara ran and grabbed the ticket, and thanked Sunidhi.
“Hey! That’s not fair. You said you would have never taken the opportunity” complained Sunidhi.
“Yeah!” responded Antara immediately. “If I were you!” she continued and left.
[The day concluded]