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It was New Year already. The exams had just concluded, and the 'crying around' was ebbing out.
Antara and Armaan were sitting in the cafeteria enjoying the start of a new semester. It was a ritual. No classes were to be attended in the first month. If 'Exams were stressful' wasn't enough, they had another excuse. "I think these lecturers are already frustrated after checking the answer sheets. Why give them another dose right away?" Anyway, FYI, the results were not yet out, and self-analysis was a usual activity.
"Oh My God!" cried Antara, looking at the question paper. "How'll I pass? I didn't answer any of these questions!"
"What?" said Armaan, all worried. "Why?"
"I don't know!" exclaimed Antara and began to cry out loud.
Sunidhi, Rishab and Kanishk had just reached college, and cafeteria was the first stop. When they reached near cafeteria, on hearing the loud crying Sunidhi said, "Did they sell the cafeteria building to Maternity home?" Kanishk and Rishab did smile, but were more concerned about what this crying was about.
When they entered, they saw how a girl was crying very loud. Naah! It was just not Antara.
"O-M-G!" exclaimed Sunidhi."Antara!! Why did you-uh- Oh God! What have you done to her hair? What happened, Antara? Why did you beat this girl?" A fat girl was standing there crying like a baby, and her hair all messed up.
"I was jealous!" bluntly replied Antara.
"I think you'll have to think really fast to give a satisfactory explanation" giggled Armaan. However, he immediately got serious when Rishab gave an angry look.
"Uhm.. So you're jealous!!" said Sunidhi looking carefully at the fat girl from head to toe, and then turned to Antara with a "Is any of your explanations valid and understandable? If yes, give it!" expression..
"Arrgghh! Who am I kidding! I was just upset about my exam and this bi*** showed up!" explained Antara.
"Wohoo!! Now that gives us two questions to ask.." said Sunidhi, here hands waving gently on both sides.
"I choose exams!" said Armaan so quickly that it seemed to have been shot right with the question.
"Hey!!" said Kanishk. "There's this", whispered "fat, clumsy, and horrible", and continued with the normal volume "girl sitting 'and crying'!"
"Dude, didn't you hear? She's a bi***. She'll go!!" said Rishab and went to hear Antara's story.
[In the Chemistry Lab]
"How can I be getting such a low score?!" complained Smiti to Mrs.Kaushik, who had given her unbelievably low scores for Internal Assessment!
Clever as fox, Mrs.Kaushik replied "Just the way they did who made an effort to attend my lectures and pay attention to the lady standing in front, that was me!"
"Yeah!" said Anish, agreeing with Mrs.Kaushik to flatter her. "Just the way I did. I remember how you'd explain each topic so well"
Tough as a stone, Mrs.Kaushik blew Anish's castle of cards down too.
"Do you, by any chance, remember anything from the topics I taught?" snapped Mrs.Kaushik. There was silence for a minute and for all this while Mrs.Kaushik was staring at Anish as if he was the only leaving creature there, and he had asked Mrs.Kaushik to give her kidney to Anish for eating! Finally the silence was broken by Anish. But after what he said, hell broke loose on Smiti.
"She calls you Caustic!" he said pointing towards Smiti and Mrs.Kaushik couldn't understand what next to say!
[Minutes later, in cafeteria]
"Hey! I have something to tell." said Kanishk.
"Is it interesting and not out of this world? Because after solving Antara's problem I am not left with much energy to waste" said Sunidhi. Words were hardly audible but clearly conveyed how exhausted she was already.
"Yeah!" said Rishab, who btdubs had been talking on the phone to the OOP instructor during the time Sunidhi, was trying to decide what to do about Antara's problem.
"Well it really is!" insisted Kanishk.
"But how did you solve Antara's problem?" said Rishab who, although, was interested in knowing Kanishk's problem, but things had not been going well between them ever since the 'divorce', and he wanted to exhibit how Kanishk's issues just didn't matter to him.
"Pratigya is coming today" Kanishk said and stared at Rishab angrily.
"Oh! Nice. Did you ask her if she was the one who got shut up by us?" said Armaan. Clearly, he was very excited.
Kanishk stared at Armaan for a while, and then with nothing meaningful to say, he replied with "Yeah! That is how I plan to introduce her to you guys!"
"But make sure to be here when she comes this time. You see, we can't afford another out of the world story about you!" said Sunidhi. At this Armaan got up with a lot of force, and again sat down, and then explained why he did this, to Rishab. "Her story was nice. She was telling about the kids of my secret society!"
[Meanwhile, Antara was in Ms.Deepti's room to tell her about the issues she had with the Digital Circuits questions]
"So!!" said Antara. That's it! She stopped after this. Ms.Deepti looked at her for a while, and with absolutely no meaningful expression or statement coming out of her, Ms.Deepti got back to her work.
"I hate this attitude! Do you want me to report you?" said Antara very angrily.
"Huh?" exclaimed Ms.Deepti. She couldn't believe her ears. She put her pen into her ears to clear it.
"Why?" said Ms.Deepti.
"Why? Do you remember that it was 'my' exam on the 24th of December?" said Antara in a voice as firm as she could make it, before starting to sound operatic.
"Yeah! And did someone else take the test?" said Ms.Deepti sarcastically.
For a moment, Antara got confused by her weird reactions. (They were weird from where Antara was watching.)
"Nooooooooooo!" said Antara. "I took the test. But who told you to show how good you are at Algorithm Analysis? Not one question from Digital Circuits!"
After this Ms.Deepti only stared at Antara, and nothing was said by either of them for the next 5 minutes. All they did was changing expressions!
[On the backside of the building their class was in, Vineet, Smiti and Anish were sitting on the stairs]
"Guys!" said Vineet looking at Smiti and Anish sitting on two opposite sides. "You have to speak something. It's really very abnormal of you two to not be speaking."
"What do I say? I have a friend who does not like me. I have been loved by my family throughout the last" started Anish and began counting on his fingers.
"500 years?" snapped Vineet. "Stop acting like Grandma. It's not about someone liking or disliking you. But what you did was not right"
"I was under pressure!" said Anish to justify his act. Meanwhile Antara arrived, eating her mango candy.
"Oh my God. Stop flaunting. Are you talking about that story again?" shrieked Antara.
"I can't believe I don't wanna hear it right now, but I think we'll have to wait for some time to hear 'that' story" said Vineet, pointing at Antara. "Right now, it's not about that" he continued and looked at Anish for explanation. "So, you said Pressure. Did Caustic sit on you and told you to tell about her nickname?"
"Well, she was looking at me" replied Anish immediately.
Vineet and Antara were looking at Anish with a 'So you think she rarely looks at people?' Infact, never ever in her history had Antara ever stopped eating her mango candy before it was all eaten. She didn't do that on this either, but her speed reduced slightly. Anish looked at them and understood nothing was working.
"Oh my God!! See that is what I mean. Nobody loves me. You guys just keeping questioning me" Anish started wailing.
Vineet tried to control this. "No No!" he began.
"I know! You think I am always wrong. Each one of you has someone. And Smiti? She has like a Combo pack. Neither of Kanishk and Rishab ever says a word to her. But you all are always after my life." he cried and cried on like a jobless Nanny sitting in her chair crying over the cat ruining the sweater she knit fifteen years back. Finally Smiti's burst opened her mouth.
"ENOUGH! You think there's no one for you? Sunidhi! Sunidhi likes you, you jerk! Sunidhi.. Now tell me who likes me. Do you have a reason to cry? You have none! And you still cry!"
The next thing she could really understand was Anish and Vineet standing there were there jaws dropped.
"What?" they said, with different expressions however.
While Anish didn't know how to hide his excitement about all of it, Vineet's world had just been struck by a meteor, and all his dreams had suddenly been shattered.
So this is how their brains were speaking.
"Decide! Decide! Decide! Do you wanna cry more? Or should I rather talk to Sunidhi about it? Dude, finally someone falls for you. Go for it before she changes her mind!" said Anish's, well, brain.
Vineet's brain however could stop crying. It took him a couple of minutes to talk in an understandable language.
"Wwhaaafaauu... No! He deserves no better than.." it began, and Mahesh, the 'any guy will do for me' canteen boy, passed by and winked at Vineet. ".. Thanks God! He deserves no better than 'him'. And he gets Sunidhi!!!"
[Unaware of this 'bigger than world war 3 beginning' revelation, Sunidhi was still trying to deal with Kanishk's excitement about Pratigya coming to meet everyone.]
"See! You gotta stop this. You have started acting really crazy" said Sunidhi, trying to stop Kanishk from laughing and running around their table singing 'Pratigya is coming'.
"Really? Acting? Believe me this is not acting. He's a very bad actor. He really is crazy!" said Rishab, stared at Kanishk and then started looking elsewhere.
"Suddenly, I can see a little of me in him" whispered Armaan, looking at Kanishk.
"So, are you going to parallel-date Zarine, and piss two girls off again?" said Sunidhi as she took a sip of the shake Armaan had got custom made from the cafeteria. With just one little sip, she almost felt like puking.
"Armaan got it made for himself. You should have known" commented Rishab, as he came forward to help, clueless about how to do that. Armaan too helped. He took the shake away from Sunidhi... Alright, he took it away because he did not want Sunidhi to waste another sip.
Kanishk finally stopped running around and came to Sunidhi. "I don't know if it will help in any way, but please take care of yourself. Pratigya will be here any minute. I don't she'd appreciate to see a girl puking on her date."
It was right then that Sunidhi officially threw up. "Good!" taunted Rishab, looking at Kanishk. "So she was hanging well in there. She was about to, but we brought things in control. And you pushed her over the edge"
Kanishk didn't know what to be upset about; that he was getting scolding or that Rishab thought talking about Pratigya caused Sunidhi to puke.
[At the backside of the building]
At last, Smiti got up and stormed out of the place. She did stop for a while to warn Anish from following her. Anyway, she reached the Chemistry lab. Mrs. Caustic was in her chair, looking in the other direction. Smiti was really upset, and by now, tired too. She saw Mrs. Caustic’s hair, and somewhere inside her a tune was playing. "Ta tara rara.. Pull those hair... She will scream, but I don't care..."
Anyway, she finally broke the ice. "See, I have had enough of it. I go through the books sincerely even when you say your notes are enough, I solve all the assignments even though you give better marks to those who just solve them namesake, I perform all the practicals in lab sessions..", after this she whispered "that I attend" so as to be honest on record, and returned to her tone "with all sincerity. Just because I refuse to take all the torture in your worthless, far from facts lectures, you are taking all my marks!?"
Her face was red with anger. And it was then that she showed the characteristics of a chameleon for the first time as her face suddenly turned pale. The chair rotated and the lady in the chair was the Head of the Chemistry Department staring at Smiti.
[In the cafeteria]
"Damn you!" screamed Antara as she toppled over the stack of pamphlets kept next to the door. "'Who' kept these here?" she said and looked around.
No one said a word. The canteen was filled with silence.
"What is she upto?" whispered Anish.
"I don't know! Does she think someone will jump out of his seat and say 'I did'?" said Rishab.
Antara looked around, changed her expressions to smiling one, and continued. "I just love this club printed in the pamphlet. Who's are these pamphlets? I would like to ask the hunk out for a date!"
The next thing they saw was guys jumping out of their seats and screaming "Me! Me! It was me", "Take me. It's mine", "My club, my date", etc.
"Alright, alright!" smiled Antara. "So each one of you" she continued and then screamed "PICK YOUR BLOODY CRAP UP AND THROW IT AWAY!"
Antara proudly walked to their table and sat.
"Hey! Nice one, Antara!"
"Good one, Sweetie!"
Everyone greeted her on her huge success at the door.
"Oh Come on" said Antara and started reading the new book she had just bought.
"What are you reading, Antara?" said Sunidhi.
"Nothing, just a story about a girl who kills every guy she thinks could be related to her mother's murderer in anyway. In this particular chapter she is finding this guy, who by the way happens to be a girl disguised as a guy. She comes to know that she , uhh he, is sitting in a bar. So she reaches the bar, is stopped by the guys on the door, and she kicks one of them so hard that he.."
Right then they all looked at the gate where a guy had just fallen. He was holding three glasses of shake, and he still had the glasses. The shake was all over him. It was the same guy who had lost his shake when the 'donation' girl crashed into him.
"Oh my God. The story is coming true. The man downstairs was right. The girl is here. And if my intuition is right as always she is after me" screamed Antara and gathered her belongings.
"I'm sorry!" said the girl and helped the guy get up. She was the nicest human being that had ever been to the campus.
Everyone was looking at her. Antara by the way was staring at her with her jaws dropped. "So true! She'll be nice and then she'll come to her prey absolutely unaware of her presence. She thinks she's smart!"
"She's Pratigya" said Kanishk in a low, but exalted voice.
[A few minutes later]
"Isn't she beautiful?" said Kanishk, looking at Pratigya, who was chatting with Sunidhi and Smiti. Antara was taking her time.
"Yeah baby!" said Armaan checking Pratigya out. Kanishk realised this a few seconds later, but before he could scream at Armaan, he was gone with his order. Kanishk had to carry it for the rest of them.
Kanishk finally reached the table with all the orders, looking like a waiter. But as if that was not enough. An even more embarrassing situation was all set to blow off.
"Kanishk, I just heard a story you never told me" said Pratigya and looked at Kanishk. It looked like she was not speaking but asking Kanishk to tell her if there was something she was supposed to know.
"Uhh.. Story?"
Kanishk had sensed trouble. Argh! Who would not. He would have been a dim-wit if he had not.
"So Pratigya, your Burger!" said Kanishk and gave Pratigya's order to her.
"When did you and I date?" said Pratigya, strongly pushing the burger away.
"Neve.. Actually" said Kanishk, and used an 'embarrassed' smile as fillers.
"And I asked you out?" screamed Pratigya. No one uttered a word.
[Hours later]
The rest of them had never been hearing one person talk for so long. Kanishk had been on with his 'sad-story' for hours. Smiti got and left for lab to check her marks.
"See, I never thought I could be good for any girl. So I decided to date you" cried Kanishk.
"So is he telling her she's good or that she was best of the bad ones that he could get?" whispered Smiti to Sunidhi, who was woken up by it.
"WHO? WHAT?" she said in confusion.
"Pratigya! Love" answered Armaan with dull expressions.
Finally Anish decided to change the topic.
"So," he began. "This conversation reminds me of something. Sunidhi, did you have a crush on me?"
Suddenly all eyes were wide open. Sunidhi looked at Smiti, and then coldly said "Sure!"
This was the weirdest response to the question. But no one went further on the topic. Kanishk took the opportunity and began crying about the dating business with Pratigya again.
At this Pratigya screamed, "Listen! I am committed, and I was just your friend. Had I known this was where you were trying to reach I would have never even talked to you." And then, she left. Following this they all got up to leave for the day. Kanishk was really quiet. Weirdly, Sunidhi was absolutely fine and was talking to Anish normally. Smiti was not fine. She couldn't believe Sunidhi and Anish were talking so normally after the revelation. Rishab and Armaan were looking at Kanishk and that was it. No smile, no concern. That was the end of the day. Nothing was solved, and life had worsened for some, and was all the same for the rest.
Showing posts with label Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fun. Show all posts
Friday, May 6, 2011
Monday, December 27, 2010
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]
[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]
Thursday, December 23, 2010
08: About the Fun Trip
<Prev | Next>
It was now confirmed. Class ND06C, or in simpler words, our buddies' class had a quiz. And the interesting part is that the quiz winners were to be taken for a 'fun' trip. Though initially everyone hesitated to participate, because they had not been told where they were going to be taken. But then as the hype built up, many of them took part.
"What?" exclaimed Antara, expressing her shock through every part of her body she could use for that purpose.
"Uh, I didn't know when I was saying that 'either all of us go, or none of us does', I was mentioning about the ghost of the dead cleaning boy on the third floor." joked Rishab.
"WHATTTT?" screamed Antara and stood up, now using every 'cell' of her body to express her shock.
Smiti agreed (not with Rishab; with what he said, as she clearly expressed).
So it was official. Either all of them were going or none of them was. And to keep their standards at the same level, they all went to the Library, and Rishab and Armaan were told to keep out. Yeah, he did talk like an idiot, but Armaan sure was an Encyclopedia.
Anyway, so our wise men (and girls, dare we call them women, even in a joke!) were busy with their wonderful studying in the library. Let's cut to their Library session.
[In the library]
"Now what made them conclude that matter is made of atom?" Sunidhi raised her doubt.
"They saw it... Under 'microscopes'!" bluntly replied Kanishk.
"What are you? A geek?" said Sunidhi.
"Try Nerd!" taunted Smiti, and went back to her reading.
"Anyway, I don't understand why they should conclude that if we somehow see around the time dimension, we could see our future? Future obviously depends on the present, and the present is changing every nanosecond. See, it changed.. It changed... Again.. Again.." Everyone stared with a "Yes! We got it. Do murder us with any further of it". That helped. Kanishk left this and started with the next statement which had some semantic significance.
"So the future should be all messed up when seen from the present!" Kanishk said, coming out of the book that he had virtually entered before he began with this unusually abnormal doubt.
"Kanishk!" said Smiti, keeping her hand on his shoulder, as though stopping him from something. "Today, it will be just questions from the books that 'Normal' people read-"
"Well, normal people do read these-" started Kanishk with a shrug.
"-and" continued Smiti, "for definition of my 'Normal' refer to the 'Normal' Oxford Dictionary. I don't care how 'Normal' is defined in your dictionary"
Kanishk didn't appreciate that, but he had no choice. He smiled and shut up.
Finally Antara spoke up, and she had real big news.
"Hey guys! Does it mean something if you have just found a major flaw in a research work?"
"Ofcourse!" everyone said.
"What did you find a flaw in?" said Anish, coming from his seat, where by the way under one Science book, a number of "Fashion and Trends" magazines were piled up for his reading.
"Look, they have mentioned the timings, but they did not use their brains." said Antara, pointing at her head with her index finger. "Now, how would I know whether it is morning or evening?"
When they read what she was talking about they did not know whether to kill her or kill themselves. All logic had suddenly disappeared from this Universe and they forgot all about the Life and Death. Gaining some consciousness, Anish replied. "I understand it is a lot of complex mathematics, but if you subtract 12 from any value of time going beyond 12, you will get the time in regular values we studied in Elementary school."
As if she had not butchered the whole concept already, she blasted everybody's heads off with her doubt unaffected by the explanations.
"So how did that solve the problem? You just changed the numbers. I still don't know whether it was morning or evening! Crazy people...!"
[Outside the library]
"So how was your date?" said Armaan, trying to pull Rishab's leg.
"Yeah, it was good. We ended up kissing!" said Rishab, blushed and took a sip of his coffee.
"Ohkay!" said Armaan, pretending to feel happy for him. He was feeling jealous, however, which he expressed when he turned his head away from Rishab.
Rishab was smiling and celebrating inside. "This works! This works!"
"So when do you have 'your' date?" asked Rishab, cunningly smiling.
"Oh, me? I have already had two dates. We 'started' with a kiss." replied Armaan and went to the food counter.
Rishab's eyes (and his mouth) were wide open. And Armaan was standing at a distance with the same expressions. Poor guys! They were getting jealous for a reason that they had both just made up.
[Time lapse. It was finally the time. The quiz was beginning]
"So, Andecians ('NDEC'ians), today is the quiz which will give the few lucky ones of you a chance to go for the so much sought after 'Fun trip'!" declared an enthusiastic anchor, and the crowd applauded for no reason. Apparently they were just clapping because of the way the anchor declared the beginning. It was pretty obvious that applaud should follow.
"HU HU HU HU HU" Armaan celebrated.
"Did someone tell him the trip is to the African jungles?" whispered Sunidhi to Smiti and Antara.
Antara giggled. Smiti, however, didn't find it entertaining. "Competition.. is.. a.. COMPETITION! And Competition spirit should not be made fun of!"
"Ohkay! Goddess of Competing." taunted Antara.
"Dude!" said Anish, trying to stop Armaan. "We are still waiting for the competition to start. Are you with us?"
Armaan brushed Anish's hand off his shoulder and firmly replied, with index finger raised upright like a hero, "If we are here, we'll clear the rounds, and then we'll be the winners too."
"Are you playing Blindfold? Or you are pretending to be unable to see so many competitors sitting with us in this hall?" taunted Vineet. Rishab was busy with an eBook he had secretly downloaded, because he had been commanded to not touch any book at all.
"Touching an eBook is virtually touching a book!" loudly said Kanishk. Well, it was loud, but with the noisy crowd in the hall, only the eight of these and probably some others sitting nearby could hear it. The others looked at Kanishk, gave him a "Don't keep proving that you're jerk" look, and got back to their talking. Rishab immediately closed the eBook, and started looking at the book in a guy's hand, who was sitting in the next row.
"And reading a book in someone else's hand is-" began Vineet.
"No! That clause had not been mentioned!" interrupted Rishab, smiled and got back to reading that book.
"Shame on you! Now you don't even read a book that a 'girl' is holding!" giggled Armaan. This finally stopped Rishab.
[Few minutes later, in that hall]
"So, all our contestants have been eliminated! One round to go. Sunidhi and Antara, are you ready?" said the anchor. They nodded in affirmation.
"Now, since atleast one of you 'has' to clear this round, we have greatly reduced the difficulty level of questions." said the anchor very seriously, but clearly he was telling them that they were idiots.
"Do anything! We won't win." whispered Antara to herself and Sunidhi.
"So," started the anchor. "if you were standing under Eiffel Tower, where would you be?"
"FR-FR-French" shouted Antara.
"You mean 'France'?" corrected Sunidhi.
"Absolutely!" celebrated the anchor. "You said it! It's France. Sunidhi, you get the ticket to the Herbert Park. Have a 'fun' trip!" he said and handed the ticket over to Sunidhi. All of them were dumbstruck. No one moved. Well, actually the rest of the crowd did.
"How could you do that?" screamed Smiti.
"I DON'T KNOW!" replied Sunidhi, holding her head, as if this was her worst loss.
"None of us is going!" drawled Rishab.
"THAT I KNOW!" said Sunidhi, angrily repeating Rishab's tone.
[That afternoon, they were all sitting in the cafeteria]
Kanishk had left for some work. He had told them that a girl would come to that table. That would be 'Pratigya' and that they should keep her engaged till he returns.
"He told Pratigya how we look. Would it have been wiser had he told her the table where we invariably, 'always', sit?" commented Vineet.
Anish put his bag on the table (trying to show everyone the new designer bag he had just got, err, just been gifted). Rishab replied to Vineet, "Yes! But then everyone has a signature style. This is his."
Everyone became quiet. Anish wanted people to see his bag, and so he started tapping on it.
"Stop it!" screamed Smiti. Anish stopped at once.
"May be you guys wanna have something?" said Sunidhi, trying to cheer everyone up.
"NAW NEY NO NAY NANNA NAY NONTHIN" angrily gibbered Smiti.
"Come on! Don't be rude." said Antara. "When you are with us, speak in our language only!"
Unknowingly, Antara had cracked a real joke. 'Unknowingly' because she thought Smiti was actually using a language.
"What's the matter? You guys don't think it was my mistake, do you?" said Sunidhi, smiling, but clearly aware that everybody was upset with her.
"Yeah!" loudly agreed Antara.
"Hadn't we decided that we won't give the right answer?" said Armaan in a little break he took from drinking the third glass of Milk. He had been drinking milk like a heart-broken lover consumes alcohol in a bar.
Sunidhi began with her explanation. “What? I was out of my mind, I admit. I was not even thinking at that time. And that was the plan. I was not going to think, so the answer would never come to my mind. But then Antara said French, and since I was NOT thinking, I didn't know that I was actually answering the question. I just tried to correct her."
"Have you forgotten the rule? Never correct her!" shouted Smiti, and immediately turned to Antara and said "No offence intended!"
"Oh, okay!" replied Antara.
"Yeah! You answered the question right over there, do you know? Eiffel tower is in France and nothing can change the fact now unless continental drifts speed up and take Eiffel Tower out of France before the End of Day!" complained Rishab.
Armaan smiled and said, "You and Kanishk never let people realize the absence of each other!" Rishab stared at him, and started to read the pamphlet he had just got from a junior.
"France was the RIGHT ANSWER? Oh My God!" said Antara, and covered her face as if she had just been declared the Miss Universe for the rest of the years of existence of the Universe.
[At the gate]
A girl with big glasses and messed up hair had just entered the cafeteria. She had hit a guy and was apologizing to him for causing him the trouble.
"Oh, I am so sorry!" she said.
"You just caused me a loss of Twenty Five bucks!" screamed the guy.
"Here" she said, gently pulling a Twenty and a five out of her purse. "I did not want to cause any kind of loss."
While this was all happening, these seven could not hear the discussion. They could see a girl and a guy discussing something, and the guy screaming at the girl.
"Is that-" started Armaan.
"Let's wait! Don't jinx the moment!" said Antara. They were all waiting for the girl to move expecting her to reach their table.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
It was now confirmed. Class ND06C, or in simpler words, our buddies' class had a quiz. And the interesting part is that the quiz winners were to be taken for a 'fun' trip. Though initially everyone hesitated to participate, because they had not been told where they were going to be taken. But then as the hype built up, many of them took part.
"What?" exclaimed Antara, expressing her shock through every part of her body she could use for that purpose.
"Uh, I didn't know when I was saying that 'either all of us go, or none of us does', I was mentioning about the ghost of the dead cleaning boy on the third floor." joked Rishab.
"WHATTTT?" screamed Antara and stood up, now using every 'cell' of her body to express her shock.
Smiti agreed (not with Rishab; with what he said, as she clearly expressed).
So it was official. Either all of them were going or none of them was. And to keep their standards at the same level, they all went to the Library, and Rishab and Armaan were told to keep out. Yeah, he did talk like an idiot, but Armaan sure was an Encyclopedia.
Anyway, so our wise men (and girls, dare we call them women, even in a joke!) were busy with their wonderful studying in the library. Let's cut to their Library session.
[In the library]
"Now what made them conclude that matter is made of atom?" Sunidhi raised her doubt.
"They saw it... Under 'microscopes'!" bluntly replied Kanishk.
"What are you? A geek?" said Sunidhi.
"Try Nerd!" taunted Smiti, and went back to her reading.
"Anyway, I don't understand why they should conclude that if we somehow see around the time dimension, we could see our future? Future obviously depends on the present, and the present is changing every nanosecond. See, it changed.. It changed... Again.. Again.." Everyone stared with a "Yes! We got it. Do murder us with any further of it". That helped. Kanishk left this and started with the next statement which had some semantic significance.
"So the future should be all messed up when seen from the present!" Kanishk said, coming out of the book that he had virtually entered before he began with this unusually abnormal doubt.
"Kanishk!" said Smiti, keeping her hand on his shoulder, as though stopping him from something. "Today, it will be just questions from the books that 'Normal' people read-"
"Well, normal people do read these-" started Kanishk with a shrug.
"-and" continued Smiti, "for definition of my 'Normal' refer to the 'Normal' Oxford Dictionary. I don't care how 'Normal' is defined in your dictionary"
Kanishk didn't appreciate that, but he had no choice. He smiled and shut up.
Finally Antara spoke up, and she had real big news.
"Hey guys! Does it mean something if you have just found a major flaw in a research work?"
"Ofcourse!" everyone said.
"What did you find a flaw in?" said Anish, coming from his seat, where by the way under one Science book, a number of "Fashion and Trends" magazines were piled up for his reading.
"Look, they have mentioned the timings, but they did not use their brains." said Antara, pointing at her head with her index finger. "Now, how would I know whether it is morning or evening?"
When they read what she was talking about they did not know whether to kill her or kill themselves. All logic had suddenly disappeared from this Universe and they forgot all about the Life and Death. Gaining some consciousness, Anish replied. "I understand it is a lot of complex mathematics, but if you subtract 12 from any value of time going beyond 12, you will get the time in regular values we studied in Elementary school."
As if she had not butchered the whole concept already, she blasted everybody's heads off with her doubt unaffected by the explanations.
"So how did that solve the problem? You just changed the numbers. I still don't know whether it was morning or evening! Crazy people...!"
[Outside the library]
"So how was your date?" said Armaan, trying to pull Rishab's leg.
"Yeah, it was good. We ended up kissing!" said Rishab, blushed and took a sip of his coffee.
"Ohkay!" said Armaan, pretending to feel happy for him. He was feeling jealous, however, which he expressed when he turned his head away from Rishab.
Rishab was smiling and celebrating inside. "This works! This works!"
"So when do you have 'your' date?" asked Rishab, cunningly smiling.
"Oh, me? I have already had two dates. We 'started' with a kiss." replied Armaan and went to the food counter.
Rishab's eyes (and his mouth) were wide open. And Armaan was standing at a distance with the same expressions. Poor guys! They were getting jealous for a reason that they had both just made up.
[Time lapse. It was finally the time. The quiz was beginning]
"So, Andecians ('NDEC'ians), today is the quiz which will give the few lucky ones of you a chance to go for the so much sought after 'Fun trip'!" declared an enthusiastic anchor, and the crowd applauded for no reason. Apparently they were just clapping because of the way the anchor declared the beginning. It was pretty obvious that applaud should follow.
"HU HU HU HU HU" Armaan celebrated.
"Did someone tell him the trip is to the African jungles?" whispered Sunidhi to Smiti and Antara.
Antara giggled. Smiti, however, didn't find it entertaining. "Competition.. is.. a.. COMPETITION! And Competition spirit should not be made fun of!"
"Ohkay! Goddess of Competing." taunted Antara.
"Dude!" said Anish, trying to stop Armaan. "We are still waiting for the competition to start. Are you with us?"
Armaan brushed Anish's hand off his shoulder and firmly replied, with index finger raised upright like a hero, "If we are here, we'll clear the rounds, and then we'll be the winners too."
"Are you playing Blindfold? Or you are pretending to be unable to see so many competitors sitting with us in this hall?" taunted Vineet. Rishab was busy with an eBook he had secretly downloaded, because he had been commanded to not touch any book at all.
"Touching an eBook is virtually touching a book!" loudly said Kanishk. Well, it was loud, but with the noisy crowd in the hall, only the eight of these and probably some others sitting nearby could hear it. The others looked at Kanishk, gave him a "Don't keep proving that you're jerk" look, and got back to their talking. Rishab immediately closed the eBook, and started looking at the book in a guy's hand, who was sitting in the next row.
"And reading a book in someone else's hand is-" began Vineet.
"No! That clause had not been mentioned!" interrupted Rishab, smiled and got back to reading that book.
"Shame on you! Now you don't even read a book that a 'girl' is holding!" giggled Armaan. This finally stopped Rishab.
[Few minutes later, in that hall]
"So, all our contestants have been eliminated! One round to go. Sunidhi and Antara, are you ready?" said the anchor. They nodded in affirmation.
"Now, since atleast one of you 'has' to clear this round, we have greatly reduced the difficulty level of questions." said the anchor very seriously, but clearly he was telling them that they were idiots.
"Do anything! We won't win." whispered Antara to herself and Sunidhi.
"So," started the anchor. "if you were standing under Eiffel Tower, where would you be?"
"FR-FR-French" shouted Antara.
"You mean 'France'?" corrected Sunidhi.
"Absolutely!" celebrated the anchor. "You said it! It's France. Sunidhi, you get the ticket to the Herbert Park. Have a 'fun' trip!" he said and handed the ticket over to Sunidhi. All of them were dumbstruck. No one moved. Well, actually the rest of the crowd did.
"How could you do that?" screamed Smiti.
"I DON'T KNOW!" replied Sunidhi, holding her head, as if this was her worst loss.
"None of us is going!" drawled Rishab.
"THAT I KNOW!" said Sunidhi, angrily repeating Rishab's tone.
[That afternoon, they were all sitting in the cafeteria]
Kanishk had left for some work. He had told them that a girl would come to that table. That would be 'Pratigya' and that they should keep her engaged till he returns.
"He told Pratigya how we look. Would it have been wiser had he told her the table where we invariably, 'always', sit?" commented Vineet.
Anish put his bag on the table (trying to show everyone the new designer bag he had just got, err, just been gifted). Rishab replied to Vineet, "Yes! But then everyone has a signature style. This is his."
Everyone became quiet. Anish wanted people to see his bag, and so he started tapping on it.
"Stop it!" screamed Smiti. Anish stopped at once.
"May be you guys wanna have something?" said Sunidhi, trying to cheer everyone up.
"NAW NEY NO NAY NANNA NAY NONTHIN" angrily gibbered Smiti.
"Come on! Don't be rude." said Antara. "When you are with us, speak in our language only!"
Unknowingly, Antara had cracked a real joke. 'Unknowingly' because she thought Smiti was actually using a language.
"What's the matter? You guys don't think it was my mistake, do you?" said Sunidhi, smiling, but clearly aware that everybody was upset with her.
"Yeah!" loudly agreed Antara.
"Hadn't we decided that we won't give the right answer?" said Armaan in a little break he took from drinking the third glass of Milk. He had been drinking milk like a heart-broken lover consumes alcohol in a bar.
Sunidhi began with her explanation. “What? I was out of my mind, I admit. I was not even thinking at that time. And that was the plan. I was not going to think, so the answer would never come to my mind. But then Antara said French, and since I was NOT thinking, I didn't know that I was actually answering the question. I just tried to correct her."
"Have you forgotten the rule? Never correct her!" shouted Smiti, and immediately turned to Antara and said "No offence intended!"
"Oh, okay!" replied Antara.
"Yeah! You answered the question right over there, do you know? Eiffel tower is in France and nothing can change the fact now unless continental drifts speed up and take Eiffel Tower out of France before the End of Day!" complained Rishab.
Armaan smiled and said, "You and Kanishk never let people realize the absence of each other!" Rishab stared at him, and started to read the pamphlet he had just got from a junior.
"France was the RIGHT ANSWER? Oh My God!" said Antara, and covered her face as if she had just been declared the Miss Universe for the rest of the years of existence of the Universe.
[At the gate]
A girl with big glasses and messed up hair had just entered the cafeteria. She had hit a guy and was apologizing to him for causing him the trouble.
"Oh, I am so sorry!" she said.
"You just caused me a loss of Twenty Five bucks!" screamed the guy.
"Here" she said, gently pulling a Twenty and a five out of her purse. "I did not want to cause any kind of loss."
While this was all happening, these seven could not hear the discussion. They could see a girl and a guy discussing something, and the guy screaming at the girl.
"Is that-" started Armaan.
"Let's wait! Don't jinx the moment!" said Antara. They were all waiting for the girl to move expecting her to reach their table.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
Friday, December 17, 2010
07: About all the Dates
<Prev | Next>
Smiti and Antara were sitting with Armaan, listening to his GI Joe stories.
"You know, once my GI Joe punched Puntoo's" said Armaan. (Yeah, Puntoo was his childhood buddy's name)
Smiti and Antara appreciated with half open eyes.
"I tried to give his GI Joe a-" he went on.
"Hey guys!" Kanishk greeted. "Wassup?"
"Heeyyyy!" celebrated both Antara and Smiti.
"You got some story, eh? C'mon, c'mon! Tell us..." Smiti said.
"Uh, if you want me to.." said Kanishk and began. "Last night, I called up Pratigya. She was with her sisters. She told me how much she liked my new song. You know, the one I wrote about how love changes life? She really liked the lyrics. What do you think about the song?"
There was a silence for a minute. Finally Smiti said "Yeah! So you were saying that his GI Joe could just not take the blow, right? Carry on!"
Taking the hint, Kanishk turned to Antara. "You heard the song, did you?"
"Ofcourse huney, I did! I really loved the part where you used 'Love' very, uhmm- you know, the word you used uh, 'Love'-"
"The song was all about 'Love'. You didn't hear it either, right?" Kanishk said.
"Yeah!" Antara affirmed and left.
[Vineet and Rishab were sitting in the Library, hunting for entirely different objects]
Both of them found something out and together started with
"Hey! Check this book out." (This was Rishab) and
"Hey! Check that chick out." (This was Vineet)
"I cannot have said that." said Rishab, repeating pronouncing "Book" to confirm he said "Book". "You said that? No, you can't!" he added.
"I know! But I think I need to change. Look at Armaan!" said Vineet brushing his hair with his fingers.
"And how about me? Why don't you look at me?" said Rishab.
"I do 'that' too. Whenever I'm feeling low and need some confidence, I compare myself to you!" mercilessly replied Vineet.
Rishab angrily stared at Vineet with a "How dare you? You mean I am dumber than you?", and Vineet looked back with a "Duh!".
"See, in their early twenties, guys rather check the girls out. What do 'you' do? Check the 'books' out-" said Vineet and grabbed the book from Rishab's hand, looked at the second page and continued. "-that have not even been written by a girl."
"That's not true. I did check a girl out." Rishab replied, implying Smiti.
"And from what I remember, you've not received any confirmation to your girlfriend registration with Smiti as yet!" said Vineet, his eyes moving around searching for some eye-candies.
"Dude!" exclaimed Rishab. He didn't like Smiti being referred to as 'girlfriend'.
"C'mon! You have to move on. See, I did! Girl's don't need so much time. And if they take it, you take the hint.. You're just not on her mind." explained Vineet. "I proposed Sunidhi, she ran away. The other girl proposed me, I ran.. uh rejected. I moved on. Now I'm checking new girls out." Suddenly his phone rang up.
"Call from home. Listen, you just find yourself a date for this evening. Party hard, or keep reading these highly distasteful books like a loser." Vineet said and left.
Rishab gave it a thought and decided to find himself a date for the evening.
Outside, Vineet was apologizing on the phone. Psst.. The call wasn't from home. Read on.
"Sorry, sorry! I'm very sorry. I promise, from next time, I'll take a book and keep reading it. No more checking girls out anymore. Love you! But where did you see me from?" he said, paused for her reply and then continued, "Yeah, ofcourse, that doesn't matter. Such an idiot I am." and concluded with a "Muaaaah, miss you too, Barbie!"
And then the smile disappeared and he went away mumbling swear-words.
[Antara, Smiti and Sunidhi were sitting in the cafeteria]
"So, I think you took Vineet's proposal really well!" taunted Smiti.
"I-WAS-NOT-READY!" angrily replied Sunidhi.
"Yeah, my lip-color was fainting out, my eyes were sleepy, my heels were an inch shorter, my nose was an inch longer, darararaaah, tarararaah! You girls and your tantrums!" 'Grandma'ishly commented Antara throwing her hands in the air. Smiti and Sunidhi stared at her. They were confused whether to give an angry look or confused look. Antara looked at their faces and said "Fine! I just thought of taking part in your discussion. I'm sorry if you don't like my participation!"
She went back to reading the notes that she had stolen from the 'secret notes repository' near the cafeteria, as she called it. Yeah, when Sunidhi came to know that Antara called it "Secret Notes Repository", she tried to explain to her that it was rather public. But before she could tell her that, Antara warned her of getting jinxed if she said anything bad about the "secret Notes Repository".
"So what does it really take to get ready?" asked Smiti, looking at Sunidhi.
"See, if he did it in a better way I would have accepted his proposal. By the way, now that you are talking about Love, why did you break that poor guy's heart? And if you really don't like him, tell Rishab that you don't." said Sunidhi.
"Uhh, I- I- It's not about me, and you're not good!" cried Smiti. Tears were as if ready for the command, and began to drip on the first complaining sound coming out of Smiti's mouth.
"O-M-G, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Don't cry. Please don't." said Sunidhi giving her the shake she had and grabbed a tissue paper kept on that table for her.
"That's alright" said Smiti still crying.
"No! No! I'm really sorry. Here, wipe your tears. Please don't cry."
Smiti pushed the tissue paper and the shake away.
"I said I'm sorry! C'mon. Please" said Sunidhi, when Smiti did not accept this friendly gesture.
"No, it's not thaaaaat." Smiti explained, her words hardly understandable in those cries. "I have just cried, I don't wanna puke around, and can't you see, that's Chocolate Shake made in our Cafeteria?"
"Oh! I'm sorry" gently said Sunidhi and kept the shake away, and brought the tissue paper near her face and tried to wipe her tears. Smiti bounced out of her seat and stood up a little away.
"Don't bring that near my face." Smiti warned, putting her crying on a temporary halt.
"Why?" said Sunidhi calmly.
"Because Naresh has cold, and he sneezed multiple times into it." replied Smiti.
"Yeah! He left it here to dry. Didn't it feel wet?" Antara said casually, still reading her notes.
"It did. But I thought it is just water. Ewwwwwwwwwwwww" cried Sunidhi and threw the tissue paper away. Coincidentally, the other end of the projectile was a secret admirer's drink.
"Hey Naresh!" he said.
"Yes?" Naresh replied and blushed.
"There's a tissue paper in my drink."
"Oh, I'll remove it" said Naresh. He planned to keep that tissue paper with him as something coming out of that guy's drink.
"No no! Can you just throw the drink away and give it to me?" the guy said.
After a few minutes he received the tissue. He looked at it with his eyes filled with love, kissed it and kept it in his breast-pocket.
This time, really guys, even I would say 'Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww'!
[Two hours later. Kanishk was on a call outside the classroom, while inside the class only a few students were sitting]
"Guys, don't you think Kanishk has started to spend too much of his time on phone?" said Smiti, feeling concerned (about the people on phone).
"Atleast he is doing something! It's better for the World's safety than waiting to be doomed by his unstoppably producing 'Musical' compositions" commented Antara.
"That's rude, Antara!" said Sunidhi.
"Why? You want me to start talking about your unreasonable complaints?" bluntly replied Antara.
"O-M-G!" began Sunidhi.
"Yeah! Nujifew!!" replied Antara pronouncing it as 'NOO-ji-FIU'.
"What?" Sunidhi and Smiti said all confused.
"So you don't get this, but you understand her 'O-M-G' everytime. I said 'Now Use Just Initials For Every Word'." explained Antara.
"Bravo, Kanishk! Bravo!" celebrated Kanishk as he entered the class after completing his call.
"Great! Everyone's doing that." Antara said pointing at Kanishk with her hand.
"That's a word! Bravo means-" started Sunidhi.
"Ofcourse it is. You will obviously support your like." grumbled Antara and then said to herself. "Phhhua.. Now bravo is also a word. Wonder what it means... 'Because Rebirth's Are Very Obvious?'" and then her eyes got all bright.
"Why? What happened?" said Smiti talking about Kanishk's celebration.
"Pratigya said she's coming to meet us all tomorrow." declared Kanishk.
"What?" Sunidhi said. It was just not clear whether she was happy about it or this was a tragic news to her.
"Kanishk, are you sure you wanna do this?" Smiti said.
"Hell yeah! Give me one reason I should not date this girl." challenged Kanishk.
"One-Exams are nearing. You can't afford to spend time-" began Smiti, and Kanishk began to give looks which conveyed 'Oh Come on! Not that exam stuff again.'
"I knew that won't work for you." snapped Smiti. "Two-Have you really told Zarine about your break up?"
"Uhh.. Wh-Why do I-Why should I be the one to tell her? Why can't she break up?" argued Kanishk, fumbling a couple of times. Smiti and Sunidhi kept looking at him.
"Why don't I think before I speak?" grizzled Kanishk and went away.
[In a few minutes the news had spread around]
As if "WE-HATE-SUNIDHI" wasn't enough, girls had come up with a "WE-HATE-KANISHK" group too. Guys wanted to make a "WE-LOVE-KANISHK" group but then they how the "Pervert & Co." would interpret this, and dropped the idea.
"How can he do that? Who leaves a girl and never tells her?" said a girl to another.
"That is a real 'Guy' thing. Date her, Leave her, Date next, Leave the next..." giggled a guy to another.
"He's such a jerk and an idiot. Every guy is after Zarine, and he's leaving her!" complained another girl.
"He's such a jerk and an idiot! He's leaving Zarine." celebrated another guy.
"For God's sake, leave me alone. I never dated her. I have only met her online. We have never seen each other!" explained Kanishk.
"And soooooooooo, you can just stop calling her and think that the matter is solved!" snapped Anish.
"Then what do I do?" said Kanishk. No one said anything. "Question mark!" continued Kanishk.
Everyone remained quiet. Nobody had an answer. Antara broke the silence.
"Exclaimation mark, Ampersand, Pound sign, Asterik, Question mark!"
They understood what she meant and started to find a solution.
Rishab got a call.
"Shhhhhhhhhhh. Not everyone's blank as you, Rishab! People are thinking." shouted Smiti.
"I am sorry!" apologized Rishab and went out to take the call.
After five minutes, he came back celebrating. "Woho! Yehe!"
"Everyone's like that! Omg, Bravo, Woho. You guys are-" complained Antara.
"What happened? The reason has to be good enough to justify disturbing the thinking session.. in which 'Armaan' is participating too!" said Sunidhi. Armaan was still busy thinking.
Rishab looked with a "Really! He is." in amazement, but then he returned to his celebration.
"I have a date this evening." he declared. Everyone remained quiet waiting for the name. ".. with the blonde Librarian."
Everyone gave the 'It was expected out of you' look.
"Cool! Where? In the library?" taunted Smiti. Rishab looked at everyone, and then cried.
"What can I do if she feels comfortable only in the presence of books?"
Rishab went away.
"I got it!" said Armaan. Everyone looked at him expecting some words of wisdom. Duh!
"Some plan?" said Vineet.
"Yes! A Plan. The ants had already planned that. I saw them hitting each other with the tentacles under my sweet box. I hate ants! GRRR.."
"O-M.. I mean Oh My God!" said Sunidhi.
Finally Kanishk came up with something. "I know what I have to do."
"What?" said Smiti. She knew it was not good. She could read Kanishk's expressions.
"Don't worry. You just take care of Pratigya till I return tomorrow." Kanishk said with an evil smile.
"Let's go!" Kanishk said and they all started to leave for the day. Smiti was still wondering where Kanishk was going, but she had already had enough for the day.
"Now you do it all the time" mumbled Antara. People didn't care. They didn't even stare at her and left.
[The day concluded]
Smiti and Antara were sitting with Armaan, listening to his GI Joe stories.
"You know, once my GI Joe punched Puntoo's" said Armaan. (Yeah, Puntoo was his childhood buddy's name)
Smiti and Antara appreciated with half open eyes.
"I tried to give his GI Joe a-" he went on.
"Hey guys!" Kanishk greeted. "Wassup?"
"Heeyyyy!" celebrated both Antara and Smiti.
"You got some story, eh? C'mon, c'mon! Tell us..." Smiti said.
"Uh, if you want me to.." said Kanishk and began. "Last night, I called up Pratigya. She was with her sisters. She told me how much she liked my new song. You know, the one I wrote about how love changes life? She really liked the lyrics. What do you think about the song?"
There was a silence for a minute. Finally Smiti said "Yeah! So you were saying that his GI Joe could just not take the blow, right? Carry on!"
Taking the hint, Kanishk turned to Antara. "You heard the song, did you?"
"Ofcourse huney, I did! I really loved the part where you used 'Love' very, uhmm- you know, the word you used uh, 'Love'-"
"The song was all about 'Love'. You didn't hear it either, right?" Kanishk said.
"Yeah!" Antara affirmed and left.
[Vineet and Rishab were sitting in the Library, hunting for entirely different objects]
Both of them found something out and together started with
"Hey! Check this book out." (This was Rishab) and
"Hey! Check that chick out." (This was Vineet)
"I cannot have said that." said Rishab, repeating pronouncing "Book" to confirm he said "Book". "You said that? No, you can't!" he added.
"I know! But I think I need to change. Look at Armaan!" said Vineet brushing his hair with his fingers.
"And how about me? Why don't you look at me?" said Rishab.
"I do 'that' too. Whenever I'm feeling low and need some confidence, I compare myself to you!" mercilessly replied Vineet.
Rishab angrily stared at Vineet with a "How dare you? You mean I am dumber than you?", and Vineet looked back with a "Duh!".
"See, in their early twenties, guys rather check the girls out. What do 'you' do? Check the 'books' out-" said Vineet and grabbed the book from Rishab's hand, looked at the second page and continued. "-that have not even been written by a girl."
"That's not true. I did check a girl out." Rishab replied, implying Smiti.
"And from what I remember, you've not received any confirmation to your girlfriend registration with Smiti as yet!" said Vineet, his eyes moving around searching for some eye-candies.
"Dude!" exclaimed Rishab. He didn't like Smiti being referred to as 'girlfriend'.
"C'mon! You have to move on. See, I did! Girl's don't need so much time. And if they take it, you take the hint.. You're just not on her mind." explained Vineet. "I proposed Sunidhi, she ran away. The other girl proposed me, I ran.. uh rejected. I moved on. Now I'm checking new girls out." Suddenly his phone rang up.
"Call from home. Listen, you just find yourself a date for this evening. Party hard, or keep reading these highly distasteful books like a loser." Vineet said and left.
Rishab gave it a thought and decided to find himself a date for the evening.
Outside, Vineet was apologizing on the phone. Psst.. The call wasn't from home. Read on.
"Sorry, sorry! I'm very sorry. I promise, from next time, I'll take a book and keep reading it. No more checking girls out anymore. Love you! But where did you see me from?" he said, paused for her reply and then continued, "Yeah, ofcourse, that doesn't matter. Such an idiot I am." and concluded with a "Muaaaah, miss you too, Barbie!"
And then the smile disappeared and he went away mumbling swear-words.
[Antara, Smiti and Sunidhi were sitting in the cafeteria]
"So, I think you took Vineet's proposal really well!" taunted Smiti.
"I-WAS-NOT-READY!" angrily replied Sunidhi.
"Yeah, my lip-color was fainting out, my eyes were sleepy, my heels were an inch shorter, my nose was an inch longer, darararaaah, tarararaah! You girls and your tantrums!" 'Grandma'ishly commented Antara throwing her hands in the air. Smiti and Sunidhi stared at her. They were confused whether to give an angry look or confused look. Antara looked at their faces and said "Fine! I just thought of taking part in your discussion. I'm sorry if you don't like my participation!"
She went back to reading the notes that she had stolen from the 'secret notes repository' near the cafeteria, as she called it. Yeah, when Sunidhi came to know that Antara called it "Secret Notes Repository", she tried to explain to her that it was rather public. But before she could tell her that, Antara warned her of getting jinxed if she said anything bad about the "secret Notes Repository".
"So what does it really take to get ready?" asked Smiti, looking at Sunidhi.
"See, if he did it in a better way I would have accepted his proposal. By the way, now that you are talking about Love, why did you break that poor guy's heart? And if you really don't like him, tell Rishab that you don't." said Sunidhi.
"Uhh, I- I- It's not about me, and you're not good!" cried Smiti. Tears were as if ready for the command, and began to drip on the first complaining sound coming out of Smiti's mouth.
"O-M-G, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Don't cry. Please don't." said Sunidhi giving her the shake she had and grabbed a tissue paper kept on that table for her.
"That's alright" said Smiti still crying.
"No! No! I'm really sorry. Here, wipe your tears. Please don't cry."
Smiti pushed the tissue paper and the shake away.
"I said I'm sorry! C'mon. Please" said Sunidhi, when Smiti did not accept this friendly gesture.
"No, it's not thaaaaat." Smiti explained, her words hardly understandable in those cries. "I have just cried, I don't wanna puke around, and can't you see, that's Chocolate Shake made in our Cafeteria?"
"Oh! I'm sorry" gently said Sunidhi and kept the shake away, and brought the tissue paper near her face and tried to wipe her tears. Smiti bounced out of her seat and stood up a little away.
"Don't bring that near my face." Smiti warned, putting her crying on a temporary halt.
"Why?" said Sunidhi calmly.
"Because Naresh has cold, and he sneezed multiple times into it." replied Smiti.
"Yeah! He left it here to dry. Didn't it feel wet?" Antara said casually, still reading her notes.
"It did. But I thought it is just water. Ewwwwwwwwwwwww" cried Sunidhi and threw the tissue paper away. Coincidentally, the other end of the projectile was a secret admirer's drink.
"Hey Naresh!" he said.
"Yes?" Naresh replied and blushed.
"There's a tissue paper in my drink."
"Oh, I'll remove it" said Naresh. He planned to keep that tissue paper with him as something coming out of that guy's drink.
"No no! Can you just throw the drink away and give it to me?" the guy said.
After a few minutes he received the tissue. He looked at it with his eyes filled with love, kissed it and kept it in his breast-pocket.
This time, really guys, even I would say 'Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww'!
[Two hours later. Kanishk was on a call outside the classroom, while inside the class only a few students were sitting]
"Guys, don't you think Kanishk has started to spend too much of his time on phone?" said Smiti, feeling concerned (about the people on phone).
"Atleast he is doing something! It's better for the World's safety than waiting to be doomed by his unstoppably producing 'Musical' compositions" commented Antara.
"That's rude, Antara!" said Sunidhi.
"Why? You want me to start talking about your unreasonable complaints?" bluntly replied Antara.
"O-M-G!" began Sunidhi.
"Yeah! Nujifew!!" replied Antara pronouncing it as 'NOO-ji-FIU'.
"What?" Sunidhi and Smiti said all confused.
"So you don't get this, but you understand her 'O-M-G' everytime. I said 'Now Use Just Initials For Every Word'." explained Antara.
"Bravo, Kanishk! Bravo!" celebrated Kanishk as he entered the class after completing his call.
"Great! Everyone's doing that." Antara said pointing at Kanishk with her hand.
"That's a word! Bravo means-" started Sunidhi.
"Ofcourse it is. You will obviously support your like." grumbled Antara and then said to herself. "Phhhua.. Now bravo is also a word. Wonder what it means... 'Because Rebirth's Are Very Obvious?'" and then her eyes got all bright.
"Why? What happened?" said Smiti talking about Kanishk's celebration.
"Pratigya said she's coming to meet us all tomorrow." declared Kanishk.
"What?" Sunidhi said. It was just not clear whether she was happy about it or this was a tragic news to her.
"Kanishk, are you sure you wanna do this?" Smiti said.
"Hell yeah! Give me one reason I should not date this girl." challenged Kanishk.
"One-Exams are nearing. You can't afford to spend time-" began Smiti, and Kanishk began to give looks which conveyed 'Oh Come on! Not that exam stuff again.'
"I knew that won't work for you." snapped Smiti. "Two-Have you really told Zarine about your break up?"
"Uhh.. Wh-Why do I-Why should I be the one to tell her? Why can't she break up?" argued Kanishk, fumbling a couple of times. Smiti and Sunidhi kept looking at him.
"Why don't I think before I speak?" grizzled Kanishk and went away.
[In a few minutes the news had spread around]
As if "WE-HATE-SUNIDHI" wasn't enough, girls had come up with a "WE-HATE-KANISHK" group too. Guys wanted to make a "WE-LOVE-KANISHK" group but then they how the "Pervert & Co." would interpret this, and dropped the idea.
"How can he do that? Who leaves a girl and never tells her?" said a girl to another.
"That is a real 'Guy' thing. Date her, Leave her, Date next, Leave the next..." giggled a guy to another.
"He's such a jerk and an idiot. Every guy is after Zarine, and he's leaving her!" complained another girl.
"He's such a jerk and an idiot! He's leaving Zarine." celebrated another guy.
"For God's sake, leave me alone. I never dated her. I have only met her online. We have never seen each other!" explained Kanishk.
"And soooooooooo, you can just stop calling her and think that the matter is solved!" snapped Anish.
"Then what do I do?" said Kanishk. No one said anything. "Question mark!" continued Kanishk.
Everyone remained quiet. Nobody had an answer. Antara broke the silence.
"Exclaimation mark, Ampersand, Pound sign, Asterik, Question mark!"
They understood what she meant and started to find a solution.
Rishab got a call.
"Shhhhhhhhhhh. Not everyone's blank as you, Rishab! People are thinking." shouted Smiti.
"I am sorry!" apologized Rishab and went out to take the call.
After five minutes, he came back celebrating. "Woho! Yehe!"
"Everyone's like that! Omg, Bravo, Woho. You guys are-" complained Antara.
"What happened? The reason has to be good enough to justify disturbing the thinking session.. in which 'Armaan' is participating too!" said Sunidhi. Armaan was still busy thinking.
Rishab looked with a "Really! He is." in amazement, but then he returned to his celebration.
"I have a date this evening." he declared. Everyone remained quiet waiting for the name. ".. with the blonde Librarian."
Everyone gave the 'It was expected out of you' look.
"Cool! Where? In the library?" taunted Smiti. Rishab looked at everyone, and then cried.
"What can I do if she feels comfortable only in the presence of books?"
Rishab went away.
"I got it!" said Armaan. Everyone looked at him expecting some words of wisdom. Duh!
"Some plan?" said Vineet.
"Yes! A Plan. The ants had already planned that. I saw them hitting each other with the tentacles under my sweet box. I hate ants! GRRR.."
"O-M.. I mean Oh My God!" said Sunidhi.
Finally Kanishk came up with something. "I know what I have to do."
"What?" said Smiti. She knew it was not good. She could read Kanishk's expressions.
"Don't worry. You just take care of Pratigya till I return tomorrow." Kanishk said with an evil smile.
"Let's go!" Kanishk said and they all started to leave for the day. Smiti was still wondering where Kanishk was going, but she had already had enough for the day.
"Now you do it all the time" mumbled Antara. People didn't care. They didn't even stare at her and left.
[The day concluded]
Monday, December 13, 2010
06: About the Proposal
<Prev | Next>
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]
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]
Saturday, June 12, 2010
02: About Another Bet Lost
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"I'm not getting up so earlyyyyy!!"
That was 10am, and the first lecture was about to begin. But who cares, when your attendance records are being taken care of!
"Kanishk" called out the Class Co-ordinator.
"Present" answered Rishab.
Antara's call was taken care of by Sunidhi. Smiti meanwhile was on call with Kanishk.
"C'mon, get up. This is no time to sleep! How will you learn things without attending the lectures?" said Smiti.
"Seriously, how do you do it by attending the lectures!!?? I am telling you, I am NOT GETTING UP SO EARLY! Now listen to the co-ordinator and let me doze off." said Kanishk and disconnected the call.
Smiti was surprised at something.
"What? Did he get up?" asked Sunidhi.
"No! But he wasn't screaming today. Wait, did he get high last night?" answered Smiti, her eyes filled to the brim with confusion.
"I wish I could believe that, but how would he ever buy any such thing?" giggled Anish. "Kids are not allowed to drink!!" Rishab and Vineet laughed along.
"That's not funny!" very seriously commented Armaan, and then turned to Smiti. "Really? Has he been drinkin for a while? Well, ofcourse not that I'll get company.. I don't drink, you know!!" he said with so much of modulation in his voice that noticing how false it was almost got impossible.
[After 45 minutes of lecture by Mrs. Kaushik (Caustic as the students called this Physical Chemistry lecturer)]
The activity in the class room had greatly reduced. Someone poked Smiti awake.
"What?" cried Smiti with a voice choked out of sleeping.
"Get up!! Lecture's about to be over" whispered Rishab, maintaining his "I-am-studying-guys" look.
Smiti replied with her eyes not opening to let even a single particle of air in, "See, this is for the last time I am warning you. I can't bear her blabbering. Let me sleep."
Before she could sleep again, another poke woke her up.
"Ohkay listen" she said, now a little more loudly, "This woman has been on with her useless crap for one hour, but I didn't stop her. Why do you stop 'me' from dozing off to save myself from listening to her big-time loser Chemical stories? I'd rather find talking to the test-tubes more interesting!"
"Well, sure you would! Let's go and see what else interests you!" said Mrs. Kaushik, as she stood right behind Smiti, staring at Smiti through her vintage glasses. Suddenly all drowsiness disappeared, and Smiti bounced up awake.
"What? NOoooooooooo.. I was not talking about you, Mrs. Caust.. Kaushik. It was Antara. She's been talking weird-" explained Smiti, and then Antara stopped nodding, 'actually' woke up and responded.
"Who?? Me? What did I do?"
She stood up, and Smiti followed. Mrs. Kaushik was quick to respond. She knew students were good at it, and so she didn't give them the time to make anything up.
"She says you've been talking to her. Weird stuff!"
"Yeah! Like I ever do. Infact, I was attentively listening to your lecture, till she made me realise how boring it was." said Antara, smiling like she had just returned after a long tiring day at work, completing a major task.
She only realised what she had done when Mrs. Kaushik told her the interpretation of what she had just said. "So, you've been sleeping through my lecture too?"
"Urrgg.. You're sucha bi-" Antara was going to complete it with Bitch for Mrs. Kaushik, if you're intrigued.
"Binderful teacher.." interrupted Rishab. "She has some pronounciation trouble. Last time she told me she had 'bin' (been) the competition. I said 'for how long?' And then I realised, she meant she had won." He laughed aloud at his own joke, his eyes begging Mrs. Kaushik for just one smile. But Mrs. Kaushik's expressions remained the same like she had been touched by Midas, after Midas changing his power from "turn-into-gold" to "just-stone-will-do".
"Oh! Now I get what this is all about" said Antara as she finally understood what was happening around her. "No, we were not sleeping."
"Yeah? Me neither, while you were making this whole story, which for your information was not entertaining, like my lecture, at all. So how do you like this? Let's go to the Dean's office and see if he gets amused by your little tale"
The three of them got up, and followed Mrs. Kaushik.
The class was silent only till the next weird response to this came in.
Followed by a yawn, a half-choked voice asked "What happened? Did Mrs. Kaushik just faint?" said Anish leaning sideways to see where Mrs.Kaushik stood.
"I don't think so" said Armaan, followed by another yawn, rubbing his eyes. "I think the people of my secret society were here.." Too much for Anish to remain sleepy after listening to.
Now you don't want to know how the rest of the people responded, right?
[An hour later, in the cafeteria]
Sunidhi and Anish were discussing something when Vineet interrupted. "Do you think that's a guy?"
Sunidhi made her eyes smaller and saw carefully in the direction Vineet was pointing. "NO!! Ofcourse that's a girl."
Anish casually slurped on the weird new shake they had just introduced. "Ewww.." he said, but then he looked around to see if anyone noticed. He didn't like to let people know that he made a wrong choice. The real punch is that people never let him realise that they knew it.
"Really? Why?" said Vineet, quite confident that it was still a guy.
"Well.. Look at how she's walking." Vineet gave an "Oh C'mon" look to Sunidhi.
"What? I'm telling you, she's a SHE!"
"Yehaah! And you really think I'd buy that?"
"Well!" said Sunidhi. "May be we can have a bet!"
Anish was still slurping, and listening to all this carefully.
"Ohkay! 100 bucks" said Vineet as he took the challenge.
"500!" strongly challenged Sunidhi. Vineet's expressions went from 10 to 3 on the meter of confidence.
Anish giggled, and was noticed. But nobody really said anything.
"Prove it to me that it's a girl!"
"For that," started Sunidhi, "you'll have to do a little something. Unbutton your shirt, and she'll hit on you. I can see that craving in her eyes."
"Huhhh No! I am not doing that." said Vineet. His eyes were back to open after a long interesting Challenge fight. But that did not happen with Sunidhi.
"Do I hear my purse telling me it's ready for a new family member? What? Did it just say, it's a 500 bucks note?" she said with a lot of excitement mixed with gravity.
Vineet thought for a while and then began to breathe like a Mad-bull. "You don't win, Sunidhi Manchandadi! I'm in"
Sunidhi boiled up. Well ofcourse, people had been making weird stuff out of her name lately. "Ohkay seriously, do you guys not like my name?"
But Vineet didn't hear a word. He took the shake from Anish. It was brave of him, because when Kanishk only shifted his food to the other side, he got punched in face.
Anyway, Vineet threw it on his shirt and then unbuttoned it and shouted "Oh My God! My shirt... The shake all over"
The girl came running. "Did I hear it right? I mean, you need help?" she said and then whispered into Vineet's ears, with a mild blush over her face, "May be I can make some free service. You seem to work out, by the way!"
Vineet was trembling. Sunidhi immediately got up and whispered into the girl's ears, "He likes you! Give him your number."
She smiled and gave Vineet her number and then went away saying "Here.. Call me. I am Naresh!"
Vineet and Sunidhi's eyes and hands were spread in shock.
And then Anish got up and said "You could have asked me, and saved yourselves a lot of embarassment. That's one of the cleaning-boys, new at cafeteria. But anyway, thanks for another story." He called up Kanishk. "Hey Kanishk, where are you? Funny story. Vineet just..." Spices were, ofcourse, added to make it wilder.
[Another lapse in time]
"I can't believe it!" exclaimed Smiti with a big smile.
"Yeah! He's such a nice man" agreed Antara.
"Ofcourse. Such a sweet, kind.. " began Rishab, but could hold it for long and said what had been ringing in his mind. "GIGOLO!"
"What? Why?" said Sunidhi. She was keenly interested in knowing the spicy story (for a gossip, ofcourse). But then she held her expressions back and looked more concerned.
"They were sleeping.. They were talking.. They were making stories up.." complained Rishab.
"Yeah, so?" said Sunidhi.
"He has been punished to sit outside his office in the place of peon for two days" said Smiti keeping herself from laughing, but then finally they all burst into laughter.
"Yeah, because apparently, he didn't like it much when I followed Antara and Smiti, and told him how stunning he looked in that 'tie'" slowly said Rishab, looking down at his feet.
"The 'TIE'?? You liked him in the tie?" exclaimed Armaan.
"Is it my fault that Smiti complimented on the 'Shirt' and Antara, on the 'Pants'?" wailed Rishab.
"Dude! But the 'Tie'? Think of his esteem. You could have combined it with his Underpants!" came the world's wisest advice from Armaan to numb everyone listening.
[A few minutes later]
Kanishk entered the cafeteria, and dragged himself down to their table.
"You don't seem fine!" said Smiti. Sunidhi, Vineet, Rishab and Anish got busy with the discussion of what had just happened with Vineet and Sunidhi.
"I am, I am! I just fell. Anyway, I met this girl -" Kanishk started.
"Fell in love, huh?" interrupted Smiti.
"No! Why would you bring that up?"
"It's written all over your face" said Antara, like she had just completed a study on Kanishk's face.
"Here!" pointed Smiti at Kanishk's left cheek and then on the forehead, "and here!"
"Just two? And that makes you say I am in love?"
"No actually, just one. The cheek one. Everywhere else, it's written that you are in Love!" said Smiti.
"No, I'm not! Guys, the girl is Pratigya, just another friend I made today. She's an amazing singer and is here to pursue it as a profession." said Kanishk justifying (atleast he believed he could) that he wasn't in love.
"Singer? Oh.. That's bad. These guys are so -" started Anish, as a girl's topic grabbed their attention.
"No! She's good. She's just great. Don't talk like that about her." argued Kanishk. Actually, nobody was really arguing back.
"You're welcome, guys!" said Anish as everyone smiled mischievously at Kanishk.
Kanishk's brows rose up. "You don't think I am really in love, do you?"
"Yes, we do!" said Sunidhi.
"And I don't agree at all" said Kanishk, forcing his body language into conveying that he didn't care.
"Don't challenge her, dude! She's evil" said Vineet still not able to come out of his trauma.
Armaan finally found an opportunity to be the hero. "I am with Kanishk. He's not in love. We are the Single bros."
"You know what, liars often get the punishment shared by their friends. So here's Armaan to share yours!" laughed Smiti at both of them. Strangely, her prediction went true. A girl came growling towards Armaan, gave him a tight-slap, swore at him, and then stormed out of the cafeteria. And then Sunidhi spoke. "You won the bet. And I won entertainment. This is the girl I kissed. I told her after the kiss that you had threatened me into kissing her or you would... You know what stories I can make up, don't you?"
"Aaahhggg.. The war is not over yet, Sunidhi Rajavansh Rai!" said Armaan. His left-cheek had gone all red.
"What's wrong with y'all?" cried Sunidhi.
"But I think now I like this girl more than the last one...!" said Armaan looking at the door she walked out of, with a lot of love in his eyes.
"Let's move.." said Rishab taking his bag up.
"Yeah!" said Vineet and everyone picked bags up and started moving. And then Armaan threw his last question to Sunidhi
"How good a kisser is she?"
[The day concluded]
"I'm not getting up so earlyyyyy!!"
That was 10am, and the first lecture was about to begin. But who cares, when your attendance records are being taken care of!
"Kanishk" called out the Class Co-ordinator.
"Present" answered Rishab.
Antara's call was taken care of by Sunidhi. Smiti meanwhile was on call with Kanishk.
"C'mon, get up. This is no time to sleep! How will you learn things without attending the lectures?" said Smiti.
"Seriously, how do you do it by attending the lectures!!?? I am telling you, I am NOT GETTING UP SO EARLY! Now listen to the co-ordinator and let me doze off." said Kanishk and disconnected the call.
Smiti was surprised at something.
"What? Did he get up?" asked Sunidhi.
"No! But he wasn't screaming today. Wait, did he get high last night?" answered Smiti, her eyes filled to the brim with confusion.
"I wish I could believe that, but how would he ever buy any such thing?" giggled Anish. "Kids are not allowed to drink!!" Rishab and Vineet laughed along.
"That's not funny!" very seriously commented Armaan, and then turned to Smiti. "Really? Has he been drinkin for a while? Well, ofcourse not that I'll get company.. I don't drink, you know!!" he said with so much of modulation in his voice that noticing how false it was almost got impossible.
[After 45 minutes of lecture by Mrs. Kaushik (Caustic as the students called this Physical Chemistry lecturer)]
The activity in the class room had greatly reduced. Someone poked Smiti awake.
"What?" cried Smiti with a voice choked out of sleeping.
"Get up!! Lecture's about to be over" whispered Rishab, maintaining his "I-am-studying-guys" look.
Smiti replied with her eyes not opening to let even a single particle of air in, "See, this is for the last time I am warning you. I can't bear her blabbering. Let me sleep."
Before she could sleep again, another poke woke her up.
"Ohkay listen" she said, now a little more loudly, "This woman has been on with her useless crap for one hour, but I didn't stop her. Why do you stop 'me' from dozing off to save myself from listening to her big-time loser Chemical stories? I'd rather find talking to the test-tubes more interesting!"
"Well, sure you would! Let's go and see what else interests you!" said Mrs. Kaushik, as she stood right behind Smiti, staring at Smiti through her vintage glasses. Suddenly all drowsiness disappeared, and Smiti bounced up awake.
"What? NOoooooooooo.. I was not talking about you, Mrs. Caust.. Kaushik. It was Antara. She's been talking weird-" explained Smiti, and then Antara stopped nodding, 'actually' woke up and responded.
"Who?? Me? What did I do?"
She stood up, and Smiti followed. Mrs. Kaushik was quick to respond. She knew students were good at it, and so she didn't give them the time to make anything up.
"She says you've been talking to her. Weird stuff!"
"Yeah! Like I ever do. Infact, I was attentively listening to your lecture, till she made me realise how boring it was." said Antara, smiling like she had just returned after a long tiring day at work, completing a major task.
She only realised what she had done when Mrs. Kaushik told her the interpretation of what she had just said. "So, you've been sleeping through my lecture too?"
"Urrgg.. You're sucha bi-" Antara was going to complete it with Bitch for Mrs. Kaushik, if you're intrigued.
"Binderful teacher.." interrupted Rishab. "She has some pronounciation trouble. Last time she told me she had 'bin' (been) the competition. I said 'for how long?' And then I realised, she meant she had won." He laughed aloud at his own joke, his eyes begging Mrs. Kaushik for just one smile. But Mrs. Kaushik's expressions remained the same like she had been touched by Midas, after Midas changing his power from "turn-into-gold" to "just-stone-will-do".
"Oh! Now I get what this is all about" said Antara as she finally understood what was happening around her. "No, we were not sleeping."
"Yeah? Me neither, while you were making this whole story, which for your information was not entertaining, like my lecture, at all. So how do you like this? Let's go to the Dean's office and see if he gets amused by your little tale"
The three of them got up, and followed Mrs. Kaushik.
The class was silent only till the next weird response to this came in.
Followed by a yawn, a half-choked voice asked "What happened? Did Mrs. Kaushik just faint?" said Anish leaning sideways to see where Mrs.Kaushik stood.
"I don't think so" said Armaan, followed by another yawn, rubbing his eyes. "I think the people of my secret society were here.." Too much for Anish to remain sleepy after listening to.
Now you don't want to know how the rest of the people responded, right?
[An hour later, in the cafeteria]
Sunidhi and Anish were discussing something when Vineet interrupted. "Do you think that's a guy?"
Sunidhi made her eyes smaller and saw carefully in the direction Vineet was pointing. "NO!! Ofcourse that's a girl."
Anish casually slurped on the weird new shake they had just introduced. "Ewww.." he said, but then he looked around to see if anyone noticed. He didn't like to let people know that he made a wrong choice. The real punch is that people never let him realise that they knew it.
"Really? Why?" said Vineet, quite confident that it was still a guy.
"Well.. Look at how she's walking." Vineet gave an "Oh C'mon" look to Sunidhi.
"What? I'm telling you, she's a SHE!"
"Yehaah! And you really think I'd buy that?"
"Well!" said Sunidhi. "May be we can have a bet!"
Anish was still slurping, and listening to all this carefully.
"Ohkay! 100 bucks" said Vineet as he took the challenge.
"500!" strongly challenged Sunidhi. Vineet's expressions went from 10 to 3 on the meter of confidence.
Anish giggled, and was noticed. But nobody really said anything.
"Prove it to me that it's a girl!"
"For that," started Sunidhi, "you'll have to do a little something. Unbutton your shirt, and she'll hit on you. I can see that craving in her eyes."
"Huhhh No! I am not doing that." said Vineet. His eyes were back to open after a long interesting Challenge fight. But that did not happen with Sunidhi.
"Do I hear my purse telling me it's ready for a new family member? What? Did it just say, it's a 500 bucks note?" she said with a lot of excitement mixed with gravity.
Vineet thought for a while and then began to breathe like a Mad-bull. "You don't win, Sunidhi Manchandadi! I'm in"
Sunidhi boiled up. Well ofcourse, people had been making weird stuff out of her name lately. "Ohkay seriously, do you guys not like my name?"
But Vineet didn't hear a word. He took the shake from Anish. It was brave of him, because when Kanishk only shifted his food to the other side, he got punched in face.
Anyway, Vineet threw it on his shirt and then unbuttoned it and shouted "Oh My God! My shirt... The shake all over"
The girl came running. "Did I hear it right? I mean, you need help?" she said and then whispered into Vineet's ears, with a mild blush over her face, "May be I can make some free service. You seem to work out, by the way!"
Vineet was trembling. Sunidhi immediately got up and whispered into the girl's ears, "He likes you! Give him your number."
She smiled and gave Vineet her number and then went away saying "Here.. Call me. I am Naresh!"
Vineet and Sunidhi's eyes and hands were spread in shock.
And then Anish got up and said "You could have asked me, and saved yourselves a lot of embarassment. That's one of the cleaning-boys, new at cafeteria. But anyway, thanks for another story." He called up Kanishk. "Hey Kanishk, where are you? Funny story. Vineet just..." Spices were, ofcourse, added to make it wilder.
[Another lapse in time]
"I can't believe it!" exclaimed Smiti with a big smile.
"Yeah! He's such a nice man" agreed Antara.
"Ofcourse. Such a sweet, kind.. " began Rishab, but could hold it for long and said what had been ringing in his mind. "GIGOLO!"
"What? Why?" said Sunidhi. She was keenly interested in knowing the spicy story (for a gossip, ofcourse). But then she held her expressions back and looked more concerned.
"They were sleeping.. They were talking.. They were making stories up.." complained Rishab.
"Yeah, so?" said Sunidhi.
"He has been punished to sit outside his office in the place of peon for two days" said Smiti keeping herself from laughing, but then finally they all burst into laughter.
"Yeah, because apparently, he didn't like it much when I followed Antara and Smiti, and told him how stunning he looked in that 'tie'" slowly said Rishab, looking down at his feet.
"The 'TIE'?? You liked him in the tie?" exclaimed Armaan.
"Is it my fault that Smiti complimented on the 'Shirt' and Antara, on the 'Pants'?" wailed Rishab.
"Dude! But the 'Tie'? Think of his esteem. You could have combined it with his Underpants!" came the world's wisest advice from Armaan to numb everyone listening.
[A few minutes later]
Kanishk entered the cafeteria, and dragged himself down to their table.
"You don't seem fine!" said Smiti. Sunidhi, Vineet, Rishab and Anish got busy with the discussion of what had just happened with Vineet and Sunidhi.
"I am, I am! I just fell. Anyway, I met this girl -" Kanishk started.
"Fell in love, huh?" interrupted Smiti.
"No! Why would you bring that up?"
"It's written all over your face" said Antara, like she had just completed a study on Kanishk's face.
"Here!" pointed Smiti at Kanishk's left cheek and then on the forehead, "and here!"
"Just two? And that makes you say I am in love?"
"No actually, just one. The cheek one. Everywhere else, it's written that you are in Love!" said Smiti.
"No, I'm not! Guys, the girl is Pratigya, just another friend I made today. She's an amazing singer and is here to pursue it as a profession." said Kanishk justifying (atleast he believed he could) that he wasn't in love.
"Singer? Oh.. That's bad. These guys are so -" started Anish, as a girl's topic grabbed their attention.
"No! She's good. She's just great. Don't talk like that about her." argued Kanishk. Actually, nobody was really arguing back.
"You're welcome, guys!" said Anish as everyone smiled mischievously at Kanishk.
Kanishk's brows rose up. "You don't think I am really in love, do you?"
"Yes, we do!" said Sunidhi.
"And I don't agree at all" said Kanishk, forcing his body language into conveying that he didn't care.
"Don't challenge her, dude! She's evil" said Vineet still not able to come out of his trauma.
Armaan finally found an opportunity to be the hero. "I am with Kanishk. He's not in love. We are the Single bros."
"You know what, liars often get the punishment shared by their friends. So here's Armaan to share yours!" laughed Smiti at both of them. Strangely, her prediction went true. A girl came growling towards Armaan, gave him a tight-slap, swore at him, and then stormed out of the cafeteria. And then Sunidhi spoke. "You won the bet. And I won entertainment. This is the girl I kissed. I told her after the kiss that you had threatened me into kissing her or you would... You know what stories I can make up, don't you?"
"Aaahhggg.. The war is not over yet, Sunidhi Rajavansh Rai!" said Armaan. His left-cheek had gone all red.
"What's wrong with y'all?" cried Sunidhi.
"But I think now I like this girl more than the last one...!" said Armaan looking at the door she walked out of, with a lot of love in his eyes.
"Let's move.." said Rishab taking his bag up.
"Yeah!" said Vineet and everyone picked bags up and started moving. And then Armaan threw his last question to Sunidhi
"How good a kisser is she?"
[The day concluded]
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