drama..a BORING one at that

I was walking with one of my friends in the hostel garden when suddenly my eyes stopped at a peculiar looking bee sitting on a very pretty red rose. The bee had a very small face and a very huge butt (body or whatever you call it) and it looked awfully ugly on that beautiful rose. No I don’t hate bees but I don’t love them either and this bee wasn’t even flying out of my sight. It was relaxing but not exactly the way we relax, bees have a strange and irritating habit of rubbing their feet against each other. Most people say that’s how they transfer pollen grains but in my opinion, it looks really bad especially when people are staring at you. I wondered if the bee would look cool if it could lie down on its back on the rose , stretch a little bit and place one leg over the other and gulp ginger beer while listening to bee rock music! The bee, I thought , looked at me for a second and asked me to fuck off. Shit! I could actually ‘get lost’ in bee dreams?!

The beep on my mobile brought me back to reality, rather senses. I don’t know how I keep losing myself to things like this, out of all things this time it was a BEE! I could see Jaanvi’s name flash on the screen. The message read- Bitch! Where are you? Are you in the hostel? Come to room 265... YOU CANNOT MISS THIS… Did Jaanvi actually type this? She never said things like ‘bitch’. Focus. I had to stop thinking about stupid things for some time now and rush towards room 265; something was definitely brewing in there.

I, along with this friend of mine who could never stop chewing her nails, in spite of politely asking her not to more than a thousand times, refusing food from her and umpteen number of things that constantly hinted at the disgust that one feels when someone chews their nails . Whatever, some people can never change. I walked towards the second floor maintaining distance from this female. No I am not a hygiene freak but it’s repelling when someone does something even remotely related to chewing nails, picking their nose etc. etc.

I saw atleast 30 girls standing in a group and whispering to each other outside 265. Moving closer, I could see that someone had locked the room from inside. Standing on the door were Jaanvi and Shonali kicking hard at it. I could see the tension building on Jaanvi’s face but as soon as Shonali looked at me she grinned widely; instantly I knew that the text was sent by her and Shonali did not care if Kamini killed herself inside. Kamini!! Ahh Kamini, the ‘hostel BITCH’ had locked herself up. But why? Apparently, the eighth guy that she was ‘supposedly’ dating in the third week of the second semester had developed feelings for another girl in his class! Lol big deal! I had not seen this other girl but I could bet on my life that she was far better to look at than Kamini. This female was certainly testing everyone’s patience…okay if not everyone’s Jaanvi’s. She was bloody cajoling her to get out of the room and all that we could hear were sobs and filmy dialogues. Main mar jaungi…nai jeena.. kaise rahungi main uske bina… Shonali and I were looking blankly at a crow perched on a skirt hanging loosely from an elastic rope. Shonali could no longer take this shit. She got up and started hurling abusive words at Kamini. I was stunned at the choicest of the gaalis that flowed incessantly from her mouth. She could actually own the urban dictionary! Within 5 minutes, Kamini stepped out with her make-up flowing from her cheeks. Yuck! She looked pathetic (not that sympathetic pathetic, it was that sad pathetic) rather dangerous. She had an all-out in one hand and a thin and sharp looking thing in the other. Someone told me that it was a pencil ‘cutter’. Lol who on earth used pencil ‘cutter’ anymore and could a pencil cutter kill anyone? Well, we were yet to discover.

Kamini threatened that she would kill herself and people were trying to stop her. She opened the nozzle of all-out ,put it to her lips and from the corner of her eyes checked if someone was advancing towards her. Fuck ! Why isn’t she drinking. I wanted to see what happens when someone drinks all-out, the first reaction on their face when they taste that liquid…

Jaanvi, great jaanvi , steeped forward slapped her and threw the bottle away from her hands. Kamini held her and started weeping and the usual bolly stuff continued. I lost interest and walked away. Eh! I wanted real drama and Jaanvi had to end it like this? Shonali knew what I was thinking and grinned at me again. I still would like to know what happens when someone drinks all the contents of an all-out bottle in one go and can you kill people with a pencil cutter….?!

KGOY

Decades ago David Ogilvy preached that “the customer is not a moron, she is your wife”. Today, looking at millions of Indian customers one is tempted to rewrite the ad legend’s ode to, ‘the customer is not a moron, she is your kid!’ I so wish I was born 20 years later. I never had a room dedicated to dolls and games of all kinds, my niece has and whenever I see that I go green with envy. My four year old niece has a bevy of barbies, hanna montanna look-alike dolls, huggables in her doll-house and yet she wants more! Her favorite place to hang-out with her parents is the mall, to be specific the Zara store and the Barbie store which now sells shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers and a whole range of cosmetics for kids! Saaaaaaad, I didn’t know the difference between a conditioner and a moisturizer till…mmm…not that early at least. Okay, so this kid like many other kids that we see these days will not return from any store empty handed. Is she stubborn? Hell, yes she is (doesn’t look like a monster though) and she will not take a NO for an answer! Kids are so smart these days; they are maturing fast and it doesn’t take them very long to get in tune with the world around them. They aren’t confused about their likes, dislikes and preferences and don’t turn to anyone but google for advice. They are well informed and can apply all the tactics under the sun to make their parents buy the latest gizmos or innumerable pairs of footwear or clothes or a whole range of consumer durables. While all this might not come as good news for parents, marketers around the world cannot help but rub their hands with glee. And, why not? It is a $100 billion market, which if tapped rightly could easily ensure their profitability for another century. Making kids act in ads isn’t a very new concept in India. They were mostly used as props to connect emotionally with the customers. All time favorites like Dhara oil’s ‘Jalebi’, Bajaj’s ‘jab main chota baccha tha’, UBI’s ‘Sone ka daant’ and the others of the sort have been replaced by ads that are desperate to sell their products to the kids, kids and kids alone. L’oreal whose primary target market was the adults’ segment, is now marketing Garnier kids to the tykes to boost its revenues. The children’s segment is a big and serious biz for brands of all hues. Kellogs, Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Mars International, Zara, Burberry Kids, Nautica Kids, Lilliput, Tommy Hilfiger, Chicco, Hamleys and a host of other brands (would you believe if I told you that this includes the paint, furniture and sanitary ware sellers too? ) are eyeing the great Indian baby consumer market. What led to this buying frenzy on the first hand? ‘India is a growing economy, things are changing …’ has probably become very clichéd; nevertheless this is the fact that has changed the way Indians think and most importantly, manage their lives. People’s outlook towards their jobs, money management, family ties has all undergone a massive change. The gen-new parents earn a lot and do not have much time to spend with their kids. The maximum that they can do for them is give them whatever they demand for and this is a trend that is catching up very fast. Kids do not have to fight with their parents to get anything these days; they know how to pester their parents and still not make themselves look like trouble-mongers. At the moment this market is definitely growing and it is the right time for the marketers to seed their brand and logo in the minds of the children who would become customers of the product’s adult lines in the future. After this, brand recall is everything that would matter. “Kellog’s Chocos “is the first thing that my niece says in the morning and that’s the only thing that she would have for breakfast. That’s brand loyalty! Imagine when these kids grow up it would just have to be a pull, no push required. Yeah I know I am being over optimistic. After all, these kids are growing older younger ( kgyo) and we never know what opportunities they would open for us when they enter 'adulthood'. Till then let’s make sure that our products are off the shelf before they turn back and start marketing their products to us.

Hats off to you Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan

"Woods are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...and miles to go before I sleep..."

‘Brave heart of Mumbai’, a comic book with an iPhone application(one of its kind in India), that chronicles a real life hero, Major Sandeep Unni Krishnan is one among many attempts by the people of this country to keep Major Sandeep alive amongst us. He laid down his life for each one of us fighting terrorists in Mumbai’s 26/11 attack and we must not forget that it has been two years since then and Ajmal Kasab, the main accused is still alive. Mumbaikars can never forget that deadly November when the city was held to ransom by terrorists who created havoc and took as many as 173 lives and injured 308 people. The attacks began on November 26, 2008 and lasted till November 29, 2008. This was one of the ghastliest episodes of terrorism that India had ever seen. This is a tribute to the brave son of the soil, Major Sandeep Unni Krishnan.

Major Sandeep was born on March 15, 1977 in a place called Cerruvannur, a small village in Kozhikode District of Kerela , India. He was the only son of Mr. Unnikrishnan, a retired officer of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Mrs. Dhanalakshmi. It has been two years since his son’s martyrdom. Mr. K. Unnikrishnan, the proud father of Major Sandeep was on a month long cycle- rally commencing from Gateway of India on November 26, 2010, across the country reminding people of the sacrifice that Sandeep and the other soldiers had made for the country in that horrifying terror attack.
Sandeep did his schooling at Frank Anthony Public School (FAPS), Bangalore. He was not only an outstanding student but also a remarkable sports person. He dreamt to join the Army and he fulfilled this dream of his. After graduation, he joined the Nationl Defence Academy (NDA) and passed out with flying colors. He was commissioned as Lieutenant on 12/07/1999 in the 7th Battalion of Bihar Regiment of Infantry services. In the regiment he served in various locations like Jammu Kashmir and Rajasthan. He is described as an energetic, jovial and a very jolly person by the officers of his regiment. Needless to mention, he was popular with his juniors too.
The Ghatak course is one of the most difficult courses of the Commando wing of the Infantry. Sandeep topped this course and was graded as Instructor in the Commando wing. His performance and competency in the regiment was identified by his superiors and his name was recommended to the National Security Guards (NSG), the elite commandos of the nation. After the strenuous training he was assigned to the Special Action Group (SAG) of NSG.

November 26, 2008 was a black day in the annals of Indian history. The terrorists were armed to teeth, had weaponry and stamina enhancing doses to last for four days. The terrorists were trained to work in pairs. Two of them reached Chatrapati Shivaji Terminal (CST) and open fired at the passengers waiting to board trains. Atleast 52 people were killed and 109 others were injured in this awful mass butchery. The Leopold Café in South Mumbai was among the first sites to be attacked after CST. Again, two attackers open fired and killed 10 people. It was a well coordinated ‘shooting-bombing’ exercise by the perpetrators of violence. There were explosions at Mazagaon and a taxi stand at Vile Parle. Two hotels, the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the Oberoi Trident, were amongst the four locations targeted. Six explosions were reported at the Taj hotel and one at the Oberoi Trident. At the Taj Mahal, firefighters rescued 200 hostages from windows using ladders during the first night. Meanwhile, 32 hostages were killed in the Oberoi. The NSG were flown to Mumbai to bring this situation under control. Hence, started the Operation Black Tornado. Major Sandeep was the team commander and led the 51 SAG deployed at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. He engaged the terrorists in fierce gun battle and died when a terrorist shot him from behind, while Sandeep was rescuing Commando Sunil Yadav who was hit in the leg by a bullet.

Sandeep stood by his friend and his countrymen when they needed him. He is an epitome of courage and a role model for the youth today. This is our pay-back time to the martyrs. We, as a nation cannot afford to be fragile anymore. Breeding insects like Ajmal Kasab will bring us nothing but guilt of denying justice to people like Major Sandeep, Vijay Salaskar, Hemant Karkare and hundreds of others who lost their lives for no fault of theirs. Security personnel in India are n times less equipped when compared to the terrorists who have the latest technology to bring a nation to its knees. Complacency and inertia has made us hollow from within. May be someday this will change. Maybe someday people like Sandeep will live heroic lives than die heroic deaths. Amen.

Bitch-on-high heels

"Wth!? Why doesn’t my inbox get auto-deleted just for a day...it’s bloody flooded with tasks! ", I was looking at the endless list of tasks that I had to do and was blabbering something…mmm to no one in particular… I do this sometimes, talking to myself and I don’t know why people find this strange. No m not crazy, but I often find people staring at me and sniggering for reason(s) that only they can tell you. I quickly made a mental note of the tasks that I was supposed to complete on that day. I dunno what mental notes I make but I end up forgetting everything so I stuck some post-it notes too. Shit. My workstation looked messy. I had to clean it up but I could do that later, I had to first finish my tasks. There were at least half a dozen things lined up and I did not know which one to complete first. Prioritize. I kept repeating it to myself . But it made no sense to me coz every mail had a ‘note’ at the end saying: urgent/ asap/ to be given by eod and scores of other ugly words that made me curse the person who had first used the word prioritize. Yeah and that’s because when you know that there is something called prioritize, your boss keeps repeating it to you again and again and you are unable to prioritize (coz for some reason you were not born as superman) and you don’t want to blame yourself for anything since you are working your ass off, you blame the person who came up with this word prioritize. Anyway, to avoid confusion and wastage of time (one of the favorite things that my boss loves saying), I did that inky-pinky-pinky-ponky thing and started working on the first task.
Generally, it so happens that once I start working I leave my seat only if I have to take a lunch or snack break or have to attend some boring meeting or go to the loo but this day was definitely different. “shh…Ca…” Did someone just speak to me? I turned around and looking at me was this woman from the other side of my cubicle. She was a disaster to look at. No, she was pretty but she wore a pink flowery dress (not the baby pink that one would like it to be, it was that bubble gum pink that hurts your eyes when you see a full grown woman wear it, instead of a four year old) and you don’t really expect people to wear such clothes to the office and Fridays are no exceptions. She spoke something again “shhh ( it sounded like the isssshhh that Ash makes in Devdas . No she had a strange way of saying that, she sucked all the air in and then made that sound)…how could you do this? I feel so bad. This isn’t right; I never thought that it would turn out to be like this”. I did not understand a single word that she said. Did she have a break-up recently? It sounded like those cheesy break up lines that she had picked up from somewhere and didn’t know where and whom to say to. I felt sorry for her, she had lost it. While I was mulling over the reasons as to why this random woman had chosen me to say something so random like this, she shoved a print-out of something on my table, the fake sweetness in her voice had all melted and she was constantly making an irritating noise with her heels. I looked at the paper, it was some stupid creative for their dept and she had some problem with it. I explained to her the concept and stuff (it wasn’t really necessary) but I stopped coz she was talking incoherently, didn’t know what she was asking me for and most importantly was wasting MY time. I resumed my work while she stomped away making that squeaky irritating noise with her heels again. Her heels… something was definitely wrong with the pencil heels that she was wearing. None of my business.

This woman, let’s name her Pinky, made her way to my boss’s office and naturally the next moment I got a call to go to the meeting room. There was Ms. Pinky sitting cross legged, playing with her permed hair and my boss, typing something very fast on her laptop (later when I got back to work I got to know that these were mails being typed to me… some more tasks lined up nothing new but for a change let’s blame this on Pinky). She looked menacingly at me and asked for an explanation. Ms Pinky had reported about my rough behavior with her, to my boss. Ridiculous, I hardly spoke. I might look hideous but I do I look like a ruffian? Before I could say anything Pinky got a call on her pink phone and rushed out of the room. Dunno what happened in a split second but we heard Pinky scream and we rushed out of the room. I had never seen anything more hilarious. Pinky was lying on the floor, her phone had fallen somewhere else and most importantly her half broken pencil heels were right in front of our eyes. LOL. Bitch! she deserved this. The meeting was obviously cancelled, my boss couldn’t help laughing and Ms. Delicate had to seek assistance to get up and go to her cubicle. Ha ha I was happy. I can’t help but call myself a bitch … sometime back I was cribbing about the mountain load of work that I had and now I had time to enjoy the scene and call my friends and make this into a week’s office gossip. No wonder I hate prioritizing stuff.

PACHKA!!!

“And… there goes my money down the drain” cribbed my fussy sister. She was going through her income statement and according to her a chunk of her hard-earned money had been ‘snatched’ in the name of Income –tax. Did she say snatched away? Why the hell was she cribbing so much? Be it direct or indirect, every citizen of the country pays tax. He/she is morally and legally bound to do so. Nothing comes free. We cannot afford for the services that we need individually and hence, we pay taxes to the government so that it can provide us with services that we can use as a society. For example, travelling from one place to the other would require roads and every person cannot afford to build a road of his own. So,the government does it by pooling OUR money. But, is it written anywhere that the roads have to be well built and maintained? Our ‘able’ politicians say naaah!
The requirement of a strong infrastructural base in the development of the nation has been grossly under-estimated by the Indian government. Adding to the dismal economic planning of the government are corruption and nepotism which together have gnawed into the fundamental development of the country. The foundations of our economy are shaky and so is our growth rate. The growth of our nation is primarily driven by the services sector. And, this in turn has led to an increased number of commuters and the nation’s infrastructure refuses to take their load. A glimpse of the muddled and chaotic traffic in Mumbai should put us to shame. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, dogs and cows push around for every inch of the road as horns make a racket and brakes screech. Pukka roads have become kuccha because they were neither built nor maintained properly by the authorities and there is no new effort towards improving the miserable kuccha roads. The pachka roads (almost all roads in the cities are a blend of pukka-kuccha roads) bear crater sized pot holes which get worsened during the rainy season. All these add to the woes of the commuters and make travelling to and fro from work a nightmare. On an average, a person in a metro commutes for more than 6 hours a day due to traffic and the situation isn’t getting any better.
The inertia of the government has forced the citizens to take steps to make the roads better. A couple of days back, the Mumbai traffic police along with a few people around tried to mend the pot-holes with mud and sand! The authorities are happy with the patch-work and have not done anything to repair the roads even after knowing that the citizens have now started doing their job. The residents of a particular locality gathered their resources and cleaned the garbage littered along the roads in the vicinity of their residential area. People in smaller towns and villages are building their own roads in order to connect to the world outside. Such incidents and many more have become very common in India today and this is not something to be very proud of.
The government should realize that it's on the verge of crossing the threshold of our patience. The day is not far when people will start taking law into their hands and everything will turn upside down. It should wake up from it s slumber and start putting all its ‘thoughts’ (the plans that it has chalked out over the years) to action lest the world mock at it s inability to fulfill Vision-2020 and disappoint the children of the nation who have grown up with the dreams of an honest and developed India.

Invisible....Visible....Invisible

2:28 am - Me: Hi! found something interesting to show.. mail me back asap
2:29 am- K: What is it?
Me: I found the link for that video...
K: Thats great.
Me: What's so great. You havenot even seen it.
K: Send the link. Don't waste my time.
Now i was wasting his time. Guys can be so rude at times!
Me: Okay check your mail. Btw r u online? Why aren't you there in my chat list? did you delete me from yours?
K: Not yet. I am invisible.
Me:Oh! Are u "busy"?
K:Yes I am. Goodnight.
Me:Okay. Goodnight.
What do you call a guy who is something more than your best-friend? Ya I know that the answer lies in the question. When i say "something more" it makes everything clear. The problem was that this phrase was complicating everything; a stranger-turned-best friend turned into a stranger again and I was to blame for it. I was cross with myself. Why on earth did I have to mail him at this hour when he was busy with someone else? But I had to share it with him, I always shared everything with him . I had to tell him when I made my first rangoli, when i got my semester results, when i bought that pink kurti , when i ate all those alloo ka paratha and green chutney and that poor fellow was starving in his hostel, I made my first corriander roti which was half burnt but lied to him that everyone at home loved my rotis, when i got my disappointing cat results and he was among the toppers, when i received my call letter from the placement cell,when kareena dumped shaheed; everything that mattered and didnot matter . He was a part of my life, a very vital part. Any decision that i took had to pass through him first. Damn it! I had become so dependent on him for everthing!

By now, you must have guessed that this guy was a friend(was because he now no more considers me one) and we had always spoken to each other only on chat sites or over the phone.
He found me on a social networking site and introduced himself as a friend from school. At first i could neither recognize the name nor the person, but i thought that since there were some 50 odd mutual friends from the same school so maybe i knew this guy and accepted him. I didnot know that he would start sending me love mails,e-cards etc; in short start hitting on me from day one! Okay, kidding. He was not one of those regular guys.
K and I chatted for the first time on facebook and we stopped chatting because he went offline within ten minutes. Was i so bad at talking to people? No. Guys luuuuuurve talking to me. As usual, I was indulging in pointless self-praise and i quickly made a list of guys who were bent upon getting 'married' to me. LOL. Atleast they said so. Yes you are right. Girls think a lot and unnecessarily conjure things that donot even have remote chances of happening .

"Facebook chat sucks!" screamed one of my chat windows and K was back. "quick! Give me your gtalk id". We shifted from Fb to gtalk and so did our statuses, from available to busy. Quite obvious. He showed me all the class photographs. "We were tiny little creatures ...very cute na?" he asked. Ya right! we were tiny little monsters and I looked like one too. I was standing right next to him. He looked like those kids whose moms never failed to make thier kids look impeccable. Neatly done hair,spotless uniform,sparkling shoes and i looked like a complete loser standing next to him with soiled uniform and dirty shoes. I knew he was lying when he said that i looked really cute... I had this boy-cut and looked like that shy kid who always cried and held on to mom's pallu. Chi! that girl in the picture cannot be me.
We chatted at length about almost everything, our college lives being the focus of our conversations most of the times. We had a lot in common and it was easy to talk to him about things that i could otherwise not even share with my mom. He was a nice guy. Nice meaning he was witty and funny and never flirted like the others did; not that i hate guys who flirt with me but with the kind of desperate flirting techniques that guys have resorted to these days, it is obvious that girls start getting suspicious of everything that any guy says. Anyway, probably he was too much of an introvert to flirt, though he likes saying that he was subtly flirting, whatever it was i never got to know. He was a book-worm and a pervert; all nerdy guys are. But he never went overboard when talking to me. Most of the times he was invisible on chat and i wondered if he did this to all the girls he was speaking to. SILLY! guys have this habit of being invisible on chat and make all the girls they speak to, feel "special" . Three months had passed and we hadnot exchanged our phone numbers yet. I knew that he would never ask for it unless i initiated. No pun intended. I finally found an excuse to ask for his number.

It was New Year and i called him to wish. He was in some crowded place, i could hear dozens of horns hooting together and numerous voices in the background.Was he in some mela? He knew nothing about phone etiqutee. He was half eating, half speaking and in between speaking to his friends and ordering kebabs too, while i held the phone close to my ears to listen to any word that he spoke lest i lose track of the conversation. Sad, there was no conversation. I decided to politely hang-up on him and never ever call him back again. I regretted for calling him and even decided to block him from my account. I was clearly over reacting. An hour later he called and apologised for not being able to talk properly. Hello! were you even talking to me? I was annoyed but somehow he managed to change the topic. After the customary stuff that every guy and girl talk when they 'speak' to each other for the first time we started speaking on our general chat stuff . Not so surprisingly, we spoke for almost an hour everyday and then almost every hour after a week. Months passed by.We knew everything about each other and he, I knew had developed feelings for me but he never brought it in our conversation. Somewhere deep inside i knew that I didnot want him to, becaue i wasnot really sure of my feelings. I liked him and it was good to talk to him and stuff plus he was a nice guy but i wasnt sure if i was "the nice girl" for him. Turned out that i wasnot.

He proposed and i said yes. I still don't know what made me say yes but as thought it fell apart in couple of weeks and i was responsible for it. It got messed up and how much ever he tried i couldnot switch on my 'love mode' anymore. I tried to but couldnot fall in love with him. He asked me to stop trying and let it come naturally. It never did. I donot know if it ever will but i miss him and without him everything around me feels empty and incomplete. "You live in denial" he pointed out to me, i wish i understood what he meant by this.

Abandoned.....My foot!

"And when you go I will remember to send a thank you note to that girl, I see she's holding you so tender...Well I just wanna say...I never really loved you anyway....No I didn't love you anyway..I never really loved you anyway...I'm so glad you're moving away".... i could hear myself half mumbling and half singing this song and repeatedly playing it on my mp3. This was one of my desperate attempts to convince myself that i was too good for him, i didnot love him and hence didnot have to make an issue out of the whole dumping thing. FUCK! Did this have to happen now? My hostel was beaming with happy faces all around; it was end of the semester and as usual it was party time,i could see girls in their skimpiest clothes with burly guys holding them by waist walking out of the campus gates. And I, in my lousy pajamas and a dheela dhala tee which looked liked it had passed on to me from my dad, was standing at the window of my hostel, sulking and listing out all the reasons why my life had turned topsy- turvy on that bloody day. I thought maybe God was punishing me because i had turned down so many other guys in the past or maybe he wasn't meant to be with me, he was just a phase of my life...a very bad phase or maybe we weren't the rab ne bana di jodi types... It had to be something! I had never imagined that it would all crumble down like this and I out of all people would be left in the midst of nowhere waiting to be rescued. I was unnecessarily getting senti. I had to understand that it was all over and nothing could be done about it now. It was high time that I stopped behaving like a zombie and started living a normal life. Easier said than done.



I tried to bring in all possible changes in my schedule so that i could focus on other things. I woke up at five in the morning (my mom tried convincing me to do this for the last 21 years...sadly i let that cheat ex of mine win!). I changed into my tracks and went for jogging everyday, this , I had read somewhere could bring down my stress levels. Don't know about the stress levels but the cramps in my legs because of the over enthusiastic run for one and half hour around the campus playground on the very first day left me brooding for the whole day. Sad.. I had to find something worthwhile to do! I tried immersing myself into books which was very stupid beacuse the exams were over and i was opening them after the exams. Shit! i had wasted so much of time on that guy and ruined my exams too. I tried watching movies but my over filmy room-mate had stored all romantic movies in the hard disk and watching those things in the break-up period was suicide and to top it all my best friend Ved was out of station. He was my crying-shoulder when i had fights with him but he too had to leave me and go and attend some stupid marriage of his cousin 1700 km away from the city.

Frooti was looking at me with menacing eyes. I knew the next thing that she would do was take that cigarette from me and fling it out of the window. I had turned into a near chain smoker and she didnot want me to get "spoilt".Ha! I wasnt an angel anyway; she was unaware of the fact that half of my nights were spent out of the hostel and I already was puffing my lungs out long before she found out. Frooti and I were among few others in the final year who had to stay back for a few more days before going back home to make arrangements for some conference in the college. Good i thought, lots of time to revive before showing my haggard face to mom.Lots of time meaning just one more week. Frooti's drama (she was better than my mom at this) to convince me to stop smoking didnot end for days. On one hand I never wanted that one week to end and on the other hand Frooti was making it increasingly difficult for me to live, she constantly spied on me,followed me to the loo too! Finally i had to relent and promised her that i would never touch the cigarettes and would throw them right away. Well promises are made to be broken. Whoelse knew this better than me?

The crappy programme scheduling and anchoring was handed over to me, Frooti was taking care of the interiors and "guest management" i still don't know what that means, perhaps Frooti does. The programme started with the usual vandana and continued into a slumber with boring bald-headed speakers talking about their school days,kids, trying to crack stupid jokes and making the audience feel even more fed up. I had atleast twenty minutes before introducing the last speaker and then the show would be wrapped up. I handed over the script and schedule to Frooti on the pretext of going to the waiting room and adjusting my saree (yes..we were supposed to put on maroon sarees on boring events like this) and escaped to a secluded place near the auditorium to take a few puffs.



As i lighted my cigarette i could hear something moving between bushes i thought it was a dog or a cat or a snake or maybe some other animal a tiger maybe, considering that our college was near a zoo. Ok i was imagining too much but i was scared! I turned to run away from that place,my saree and high heels werent of much help. As i started moving away from the bushes i could hear someone speak but i couldnot hear much so i went nearer. There were two voices and both, familiar. I regretted going further because after what i saw there i thought I had passed out for a second. Two bodies entangled under the moonlight,sweet talking and kissing each other unabashed. This could have made a very good gossip story for the next few days if the two unbeleivably shameless people were not my ex and ved's present girlfriend. She was two-timing! My ex was better he atleast had the guts to tell me. fck! why the hell was I supporting him? I did not have the slightest idea that he was going around with my best friend's girl-friend damn it!

I hadnot spoken to him after the break up but now I had to gather all the courage in me and ask them for an explanation. My friend's life was getting ruined. My life was getting ruined.

They were shell-shocked to find me( me out of all people) staring at them when they were too busy thinking of a place to make out. Before confronting them i had thought of a thousand things to yell at them but when i faced them i thought it was useless. Here were two people who didnot even think once before cheating on us so why should i even bother to talk to them, anything i said would fall on deaf ears anyway. I stepped forward called-up ved infront of them and told him about the whole thing. That bitch had the guts to try to stop me from doing so! She was sorry she didnot mean to hurt us.Bull-shit. Ved was heart-broken and so was I. Talk about crying shoulders. And I finally had to take one single step to get over that guy ...i stepped forward and slapped him tight. I felt something very heavy lifting off my body. I felt releived and finally i knew that i was over him. He deserved it. He deserved it for ruining all those years of my life,ruining my friend's life....and ....ruining my programme! Shit I left it half-way. How could i? This conference was 'important' for the coffers of the college and i had to leave it for this non-sense?

I rushed back to the hall and found people standing in attention for the national anthem which meant that the programme had come to an end. I looked at Frooti from the corner of my eye; she was looking at me menacingly, yet again! She always gives me that look...nothing new...maybe she picked this from my mom . Well,after the anthem she rushed towards me and i started searching for places to hide because she would now start with her hour long lecture. "Fuck you! where were you? I had to cover that section for you. Thank god i left the script for her .She had anchored in my place and forgotten things here and there like 'thanking' the chief guest..huh! big deal. I got rebuked for this later though. Well i guess all is well that ends well and it did end really well with me getting over this guy within days ;) Plain lucky.