Preface - "Will Here"

Agreed, God gave us all (well...almost) a beautiful life, he did the best he could, with the CAD tools and Photoshop, to give us a well designed world system to live in. To make it better, he installed many soft wares to make living life a much easier thing to do. But then Satan is well...Satan (no other word describes him better)!! He planted his best viruses into God's database system, making our life confusing, abnormal and shitty. Moreover, he introduced new soft wares called "Guilty Pleasures" which were irresistible but, allegedly, bad for us.

God was all mad & furious...
We were unhappy too (but that's usual, plus, nobody cares if we are!).
This of course resulted in endless rounds of COUNTER-STRIKE between God an Satan.
We watch in awe, as mostly scores are levelled, hoping some day, one of them would win two consecutive rounds and will rule this whole world system (highly improbable, both of them take such great HEADSHOTS!).

Being the Great Indians, good values are instilled in us from day 1 of our lives, and so was with me. I went on living that values and rules driven life, hoping (as i was promised) one day everything would turn out to be just fine. They said, if you think straight and work without the lust of result in mind you will succeed. But 15 years (small time, but still) of battering that I got from life was enough to bring me out of that great dream that was stuck into my mind by my Great Indian Family.

One day, tired of thinking straight and working my ass of like an ass without any good result in sight, I saw Satan take that perfect headshot and suddenly it dawned on me. No matter which side you were on, life would remain the perfect bitch it is, taking digs at you, making you feel miserable. No matter whether you were a smart ass or an ass hole, you will get all kinds of sticks stuck up your you-know-what. As they say, nobody dies virgin, life fucks everyone!

Life hasn't been anymore rosy since then, but at least being on Satan's side helped me use that wonderful software of guilty pleasure. I know I will end up in hell, but then who wouldn't? Mark Twain said "I like heaven for climate and hell for company", I care two hoots about climate and would love some company any day. Guess that tells me my choice...

So here I am on my PC, typing away in MS Word, taking last few swigs left of my HAYWARD 5000 and puffing away last cigarette left in my pack, with nothing else to do (though I doubt I "CAN" do anything with a Patiala peg of vodka, almost two bottles of beer and 19 and a half cigarettes already inside me), 'coz I have finally decided to tell all about my life after that bloody headshot that Satan took. The journey I undertook with Satan on my side, with nowhere else to stop until my next stop...HELL..!!

Preface - "Allan Here"

Last night, I went to a bar for the first time in my life. I told my super-supervisor, a post-doctoral researcher about ten years older than me that her smile could be used to test radiation counters. And that was before I had started drinking...no wait, that’s not why I am writing this.

So before my back became hunched and my neck crooked and I became this soulless, lifeless nerd whose ultimate idea of revenge is to beat the bubble-words or text-twirl or any other face book app high-score of that guy who has been hitting on this girl he fancies from afar....before I had forgotten how to make friends without sending a request first or to smile without a colon (of course, there are other things you can’t do without a colon...but smiling?) and before I discovered the sheer joy of sitting alone in my room night after night and watching Southpark episodes for the tenth time, I had a life. It wasn’t a great life, it didn’t even seem like a good life, in fact I do remember wishing it would end a fair number of times (of course, it soon did), but it was a life.

I had friends on the same continent, I had hobbies; real hobbies, not stuff you’d do just to write on your resume or to be able to spend time in the same room as that girl you‘ve been fancying from afar, or to beat the high score of the guy who’s been...and, oh yes, chics dug me like mad (I know, I know. But hey...I have a right to improve my memories, right!). On the flip side, I also liked backstreet boys and thought McDonalds was the ultimate in fine dining. Anyway, this is the story of that marvellous life...

I’ve decided to call myself Allan, and all of my friends would be given random American names. And all the girls that I fancied at any point of time would be called Cynthia, mostly because that is unlikely to be the name of any girl who was in my school. All the girls that fancied me at any point of time would be called...ah well, I doubt I would ever need a name for that category. Most of the events take place in Delhi, the great Indian capital, or Gurgaon, its shining suburb that’s one growth spurt away from turning into the world’s most expensive slum, from about eight or ten years ago. Although it does seem like all of it happened a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away....

#1 - Maturity Dawns

It all starts on the day, when I and Allan technically went our separate ways. It wasn’t half as tragic as a Veeru-Jai separation, but it was supposed to be something given that he is my best friend. But knowing that we had no style or any sense of occasion back then, our farewell sucked big time (Let’s not talk about it, we didn’t even say a proper goodbye, that should say it all).

Now it was practically the last day of our secondary school and entering junior college was being considered as an exciting prospect. I had 3 simple reasons for being happy:

1.We were gonna get a 3 months break, with nothing to do but whatever we wanted, and tell you what, in any student’s life these 3 months is the only time in which he can have all the fun he wants (after this life screws you endlessly!).

2.Finally, I was gonna get different classmates... (if you had been stuck for 8 years in a class, where girls and boys never ever talked to each other, you might understand what I mean, I still cry sometimes remembering that!)

3.This was the point of time when we were having a false sense of maturity, we thought we were the next best things, and our mind was full of we-will-show-this-world-the-way kinda crap..!!

Agreed, I was quite unhappy, for my best friend was going away from me just ‘coz he wanted to be part of the “esteemed” family of a school with blown-out-of-proportions reputation (they claim to nurture and produce the best minds of our country, though all they produce are awesome MMS scandals, but that’s a different story now). I wanted us to end up in the same place in life, but the amount of talent he had, it would’ve been an awful coincidence (though the title should be enough to convey how we both ended up with same amount of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction... I don’t know!). So cribbing was all I could do at that time.

As Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spiderman) might tell you, any story worth telling is always about a girl, well, so is mine... Well it’s about a few more than "a" girl, but lets start with the one in my life at that time.

Loaded with tons of my new found false maturity I came back home and after getting the usual where-the-hell-are-you-going scolding I went to meet Raina. She was my semi-girlfriend, semi ‘coz with no one around she’d be all cozy and cuddly with me and claimed to be "my girl", but in proximity of any homo sapiens we were "just friends". I bought chocolates for her, and given my pocket money of 10 bucks per week it was really something.

Chocolates were good, they helped in getting "So sweet of you, you’re such a nice guy" out of her, plus she kissed me. Agreed, by Indian standards, this was big, but kisses on cheeks were regular between us. But that day was different, I was 15 and with hormones kicking and loads of free porn in my mind’s database, I had been contemplating to get something more out of her for past few weeks. Not my fault, given that she looked amazingly gorgeous and I always thought that she was the "love of my life" (believe me I was crazy about her). And thus, after doing the usual talking funny (believe me, girls would kill for a guy like that!), the moment of foolhardiness caught up, and I snuggled up to her and tried to touch her in a certain way that was enough for her to give me a stingy slap on my hand. Now, to tell the truth it hurt a lot, I nearly cried, and to top it, she started crying.

Now, her crying made me want to kill myself (or maybe it was the realization that even a girl’s slap was enough to make me cry). And being the asshole I was, I didn’t even try to calm her down. After crying out her full quota and telling me what a bad person I was, she ran away from there, promising she’d never see me again. When she was out of sight, I got up (stunned of course!) and made sure no one had watched the whole damned scene (with no idea of the status of my love life, I at least wanted to make sure my social reputation was intact).

Cursing my crappy life, I walked towards my regular place of having my daily dose of tobacco. So much for being mature enough...

#1 - The Fork

You know all those tele-serials and movies where the guy (the “hero”, so to speak) describes vivid details from his past with clarity, breathtaking precision and heart-rending emotion...well, it’s all a lie. I don’t even remember if it was March or April: I know it was March, but I am pretty sure I don’t remember that. Is that weird? If someone had told me then that someday I would forget when my 10^th boards¹ ended, I would have laughed. Well, I have forgotten. Anyway, the good thing about the boards was that the school year got over in December: practically an extra summer vacation smack in the middle of winter. Of course, since the genes that had allowed my father, and his father before that (and his father before that...), to have fun had somehow been lost to the brutality of random genetic recombination, I spent the time trying my best to reach the target of studying sixteen hours a day. What an effort it was...I would stay cooped up in my room all day, in front of the brand new study desk that my parents had bought me. Two evenings every week were spent watching WWE on the television (see, I told you I had a life back then!), and every night studying by the light of my (brand new) pelican-beak-shaped study lamp. It was a marvellous time...

All this effort was just to reach three small goals:

a) Achieve the highest score ever by a student of my school in the tenth boards (a.k.a my big ego).

b) Score 100% in mathematics (don’t ask me why...I think it was puberty or something.)

c) Beat (I think we agreed on this name) Cynthia’s score in English (refer to b above...this was supposed to be the grand climax of an year or so of romance)

As far as achieving these aims is concerned, a) was a partial success, I equalled the previous highest score, b) was a disaster, I scored 99 and became one of the crowd. I haven’t been able to decide about c) yet: I did score about five marks more than Cynthia, but surprisingly, she did not come running into my arms when the results were declared. Guess you can’t plan love after all...

I guess I’ve run ahead of the story. This is where the story was supposed to start: So it was March, the last day of the boards (I think it was the 27^th but I am pretty sure I am wrong). The exam had finished half an hour or so ago...and we were standing in a park. I am not sure I was wearing my sweater or not...you see, it must have been quite warm, but we were still expected to wear winter uniforms: full sleeved white shirts, grey trousers and an optional blue sweater (yes, no tie! Government school students did not have to be reminded that there was a noose around their necks...).

My sweater story is pretty interesting in itself. Back in 7^th standard, when I had first moved to Gurgaon from the hot tropical city of Kochi on the coast of Kerala, my mother had knit me a nice blue sweater. Now the sweater posed a number of problems. It was a slightly wrong shade of blue, not wrong enough to look trendy like all the rebels of my class but just wrong enough to make me feel oddly uncomfortable (of course I was self-conscious, refer to b above). It also looked distinctly home knit, and although I could never stop praising the comfort and durability of a home knit woollen, it did make me look a little rustic. Thirdly, and most importantly, I could never decide if my mother had knit it hoping that I would finally get that growth spurt we all had been waiting for or whether she was afraid I would get angry one day and blow up like The Hulk (to think of it, that shade of blue might have gone well with a green skin). Neither of these ever happened, and consequently, the sweater always remained three sizes too big. Till one day, in 9^th or 10^th standard, I could finally make my parents refer to b above and buy me a readymade one.

Coming back to whether I was wearing my sweater that day or not, I probably wasn’t. So we were standing in a park, I, Will, Adam and Peter. I am not sure if Rick was there, he was a weird creature anyway. All of us knew it was my last day with the group: I had decided to change schools next year. That’s what bright students unfortunate enough to be stuck in Indian government schools were supposed to do: get to a nice Public School² and actually make something of themselves. More on that later...I had wanted our last group hang-out to be somewhere better...a Nirula’s³ maybe (I don’t think I had heard of McDonald’s then), but all of us were broke. Not just ordinary end-of-the-month broke, but I-hope-Grandpa-visits-soon-so-I-can-buy-that-packet-of-biscuits broke. I have no idea what we had talked about, but I think anyone watching from a distance would have thought we had been punished to stand there...I guess teenage boys aren’t really good at farewell meetings. I think we somehow passed half an hour like this, and then bade each other good-bye. I probably gave everyone that weird awkward wave that makes people think someone’s holding a pistol to my back.

I don’t remember what I was thinking as I walked back. NTSE⁴ classes were due to start in a few days: I was probably looking forward to them. As for all my friends, I have never talked to Rick since. Adam and Peter called me last year around my birthday, it was nice to hear from them but we haven’t been in touch. I exchange phone calls with Will once every few months, even met him once last year. I guess best friends amount to something. But our lives have been very different since that last exam; our paths seem to have forked out.

1. Board exams/The boards/Boards/10^th Boards: The living dead ghosts of the british educational system used to scare children into studying right from the beginning of elementary school. Exams held on a countrywide scale to judge nothing in particular and of very little consequence unless you want to change your school, also see 2.
   
2. Public school: A really expensive school filled with snobbish children who are sure of going to college in America riding on their rich daddy’s fat wallets. Also, a place that promises quality education and a wholesome learning environment, as well as a peer group that can pressurize you into completely suppressing who you really are.
   
3. Nirula’s: Famous food chain in and around Delhi and some other major Indian cities. Serves heavenly hot chocolate fudges.
   
4. NTSE: An exam conducted by the Indian Government to select the best 1000 odd students of the country and pay them a scholarship enough to buy them peanuts for snacking once a month, and that too the cheap kind.

#2 - The Call

A week or so later, I was sitting in a park with Shine. He was like my only friend outside of school in those days. And that was our favorite pass time, just sitting... and thinking. I sat there, looking at the sky trying to draw pictures out of the clouds; while he was busy making what looked like ancient hieroglyphics in the sand with a stick. Seriously, we gave a complete new meaning to hanging out.

He broke the silence.

“What happened, Vilas, any problem? You look lost.”

Yes, I was lost. But what pissed me more than that was his calling me Vilas. It was his favorite way of annoying me, ‘coz he knew how much I hated my real name, and also how much I loved being called Will. But what did he know, not everyone’s father was gutsy like his, who chose to give his son an English name by going against the whole family. Anyway, arguing with him was like wrestling a pig. If you lose “How could you lose to a pig man?!” and if you win “Dude! You wrestled a pig..!!” (and either ways you have to enter a shit-arena in the first place). So I kept quiet. So he asked again, and again, and again so much so that finally, I had to oblige him.

“Raina is my only problem yaar,” I said, “ I have been calling her up like 4-5 times daily, and she just refuses to talk to me. I really miss her. Life sucks man!!”

“Hmm...” He looked skywards, as if consulting the almighty for solutions. “You know, Vilas, what else sucks?” He paused for effect, “Vacuum cleaner!”

Now, he was my very good friend and all, but dude, there has to be a sense of timing for a joke like that if you don’t wanna get killed. “The Hulk” was kicking inside me, but I suppressed my homicidal tendencies, and bade a cool farewell to him.

Back home, I found my mom’s temper soaring high. Reason, some girl had called, and her name was something they didn’t remember, but it was definitely not Shaila. The problem is that my parents hate any girl who comes near me, except for Shaila, the daughter of our “family friends”, who’s been with me since I was a 2^nd grader and is a really really close friend of mine, so they don’t really have any say when it’s her. But if it’s any other girl, then my butt comes in line for some serious kicking from my parents.

Of course I had to listen to a re-run of the lecture where mom tells me about how girls are just looking to lure intelligent guys like me into their “love-nets”, ‘coz they want to secure their future with sure shot go-getters (I know that I am nowhere in the list of even marginally eligible bachelors, but then, that’s mother for you). But beside the fact that I had listened to that lecture countless number of times (and like any other teenager, I never listened to them anyway!), there was another reason why I wasn’t really paying attention to it. I was thinking, “If it wasn’t Shaila, who else it could be? Who could’ve called me? And what for? Who called upon me while I was out?” OK OK... Of course I knew it could only have been Raina, I was repeating those Sherlock Holmes-ish questions just to kill time while my mom went on and on.

So finally, I thought, I had been successful in proving to Raina that I loved her and only her by persisting, even when she kept slamming the phone down on me (not literally) as soon as she heard my voice on the other end. I was ecstatic, and hence, I ran towards the phone, as soon as I was free and alone (obviously, I could never call up a girl with my parents around). As I was about to pick up the receiver, it rang. I picked up. It was Nisha, a friend of mine from school.

“I called earlier, where were you?”

So it was her, not Raina. All my evil plans of putting on airs, whenever I would talk to Raina again, got screwed right there in front of my eyes. I was too surprised to speak.

“You there? So, I called to tell you that today is my birthday and as expected you forgot to wish me.”

God knows I didn’t want to disappoint her by telling that I hadn’t only forgotten to “wish” her, but I had forgotten her birthday altogether (but I guess she knew it anyway).

“Heck no, believe me yaar, I was about to do that, anyway, happy birthday Nisha!” I hate myself!

“Thanks, and never mind even if you forgot, just remember to come to Sagar Ratana’s tomorrow at 12. Everyone is coming and I’ll wait for you, so don’t be late.”

“Sure thing, don’t worry.” I said.

Really sad. Here was a girl, for whom I didn’t really care a damn, still she calls me on her own birthday to get wishes, and then there was Raina, who wouldn’t even throw a shit-cake in my face even if I asked her for it. It couldn’t be worse, or so I thought until the next day...!!

#2 - The Geek Camp

I am scared of my cell-phone’s alarm. Absolutely terrified. Every morning, when it rings, I jump off my bed with my heart racing, my throat dry, and my mind wondering what exam I am about to miss. Guess this is one of the less-documented side-effects of being a geek.

So the boards had ended, and I was looking at three odd months of holidays. Awesome. I had been looking forward to them for months. Summers were pretty awesome, despite the heat and the sweat. The long days, the cool swimming pool near the park, the parking place where we played cricket, the bench where we could sit and stare at girls taking their power walks... summers were a time for fun and friends. So I earnestly began to pore over all those fat books sitting invitingly in my cupboard, preparing for the NTSE thing I had told you about. As you all know, I had just finished tenth grade, and as I knew, each and every one of those fat books were filled with 11^th grade stuff. I also knew that there was no chance of any of that stuff actually being asked in the exam, it just didn’t seem right in a sane universe to ask 11^th grade stuff in an exam for 10^th grade kids. But did any of this make me stop reading any of those books? No. Why? Cause everyone else was reading them. That’s how things work in Indian schools. And colleges, at least the ‘good’ ones. So, by the end of April, I knew the difference between the reproductive systems of C. elegans and T. Soleum¹ by heart, though I couldn’t tell you what either of those was if you smacked me in the face with it.

The honourable government of Haryana had organized a special week-long training camp for the brilliant scholars who had cleared the first round of NTSE. I was in pretty jolly company: one of about three kids from government schools in a room full of insanely pseudo-intellectual public school chipmunks (to be honest the other two guys from a government schools weren’t much better, they spent half their time giggling over how ‘secC’² was the only good thing in trigonometry. But I don’t blame them. I myself was the epitome of brilliance and maturity.). They came to the camp in their school uniforms, carried by their school buses, with frequent visits from their school teachers. My school didn’t have a bus, exactly one of my teachers even knew that a kid from the school had cleared the first round (and probably a dozen or so knew what the NTSE was), and there was no way in hell I was going to wear my white and blue uniform to that place. How I hated all those blue-shirts and their grammatically incorrect English chatter. They reminded me of all the officer kids from my childhood.

Ah, officer kids! My father used to work in the Indian Navy as a non-commissioned officer, which is basically no officer at all, and so he and other NCOs like him were called sailors. The real officers had their own allotted flats, servants, servant-quarters attached to their flats, and big fat salaries to send their children to public schools. So, most officer kids went to public schools. They also had bicycles and skateboards, and were plump, almost white skinned, and arrogant to a degree that my five-six year brain refused to understand. Of course, some were unfortunate enough to be stuck in a government school; maybe their parents had followed the same logic my parents sometimes used when I asked them why I couldn’t go to a public schools: frequent transfers (Of course that wasn’t true, we were flat broke almost all the time. The navy doesn’t pay NCOs enough money to buy peanuts for their kids, at least not without giving up on ever eating peanuts themselves, which is what my parents did. I wonder why I keep mentioning peanuts...). Anyway, the sole mission of all my academic endeavours was simply this: score more marks than all of the officer kids, speak better English than all of the officer kids. I’ll save the English story for later, but this was how an innocent life with potential started sliding downhill. To be honest it wasn’t tough; the navy doesn’t select its officers for intelligence, so genetics was pretty much on my side. And you have plenty of time to study hard when you are waiting for the 1^st of the next month to buy a rubber ball.

Coming back to the geek camp... on the first day, we had a sort of an introduction: marching to the front of the room and telling our name, school, and our ambition in life to fifty people who didn’t give a crap. I went along with my “I wanna be a scientist when I grow up” line. I had expected everyone to sit back and take notice, maybe gawk a bit, or at least chatter among themselves about my amazing strength of conviction. Nothing. I had been using that line since...well, since before I knew what a scientist was. My fascination with the scientific profession had risen from the simple observation that scientists didn’t have to get haircuts, or shave. I guess I had watched too many lame bollywood³ movie scientists. I imagined they didn’t have to bathe all that much either. To me, that was the very definition of an ideal career (you must be starting to see why there’s precious little romance in these posts).

Anyway, a few minutes after me, this weird looking girl from Faridabad⁴ went up to the front and said “My ambition is to become an IITian⁵.” I couldn’t believe it. There she was, a supposedly intelligent girl, and her sole ambition in life was to study at a certain college. And she had announced it with pride, as if she was going to be the first Indian on the moon, or find the cure for AIDS, or be the first rational girl in the world or something. I waited for the chuckles, the girlish giggling, the disgustingly perverted criticism from the guys. Nothing. There was a murmur of agreement among the seated masses. And all afternoon, several others presented the same ambition, the others going for the slightly better, if equally clichéd, ambition of getting into a medical college. There we were, 50 odd of the best students of one of the most progressive states of India. And our greatest ambitions were our college degrees. I love my country...

1. C. elegans is a roundworm that is used as a study model in labs. T. Solium is a flatworm that lives in intestines. For more information, wiki them.

2. secC: read as sec-C, refers to a trigonometric function that all of you must have studied.

3. Bollywood: The most cliché-loving, unoriginal, and stagnant collection of artists, a.k.a the Indian film industry.

4. Faridabad: Another of the many cities that sprouted around Delhi. It was the next big thing for quite a few years but never took off.

5. IITian: What every Indian geek aspires to be, at least every Indian geek who doesn’t have a phobia of maths. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of explaining that term later.

#3 - Next Day...

To the surprise of my parents, I woke up early next morning (I was a nocturnal animal, the kind who hibernates during day and stays awake whole night long). Not that I was excited about Nisha’s treat or anything, I had other plans on my mind. I got ready and reached the nearest PCO as fast as I could. I called up Nisha and told her about what was going on between me and Raina (editing out the part depicting me as a sex maniac).

“If you don’t mind, could you please invite her too, I would really owe you one.”

She seemed a bit hesitant, but said, “OK I will, if that’s what you want.” She seemed somewhat sad, I felt something was wrong, as if she didn’t really want to call Raina, but I thanked her anyway.

Next thing I did was to call up Shine to ask him to pick me up. As expected, he was in wonderland of dreams. His mom slapped him outta there, he seemed quite pissed.

“Dude, you see, I got slapped by my mom… and for this? I don’t believe this, why don’t you take your own bike man?” How rich, as if I didn’t know that I had that option.

“I’ve got something planned, don’t fuck time and just do as I say.” But of course, this was Shine, can’t shut him up that easily, so I had to tell him my whole plan.

It was really simple, I lure Raina to the party indirectly (she couldn’t and wouldn’t slam the phone on Nisha), then I do everything I can to win her heart back (she can’t just run away from there), and if the time during the party isn’t enough, I will do it while she drops me back home (since I had no other way of returning, and I have been driving her to and from the parties in past, I kinda deserved a lift back home in such a time of need).

“That’s your plan? Man, it sucks big time. And why should I drop you there anyway? You get the food; you get the girl, what is there for me?” I offered to treat him later on.

“Hey, I don’t need no treat from you, just gimme cash, I’ll treat myself.” Whatever…

So that part settled, he dropped me near the parking lot of the market, and I gave him the money. “What the fuck man, 50 bucks, what am I, a bloody beggar?”

“Dude, what else do you expect? Who am I, Bill Gates? You know what, I get…”

“Ya ya, now don’t gimme that I-get-10-bucks-a-week shit. Just get the fuck outta my face you cheapo!” See what I had to bear for Raina? And she thought that I didn’t love her..!!

Anyway, I went inside the restaurant, and hi-helloed everyone. Formalities completed the usual chatting and gossiping session began. But my mind was just not there. Everybody had come except Raina. As soon as I got opportunity, I asked Nisha about her.

“She asked if you were coming too, when I told her, she said she was a little busy, but will try her best to come.” No need to say, I was dejected. Maybe Shine was right, my plan sucked!

About an hour later, everybody started to say goodbyes and all. By the end, it was just me and Nisha. I was feeling really bad, and it was showing on my face.

“Hey Will, don’t make such faces yaar, everything will be alright.”

“Yeah…” I sighed.

“I see you don’t have any vehicle with you, I can give you a lift back home if you want.”

“Yeah…” I sighed again (at least I had a backup to get me back home). And that was when she came really close to me.

“I know how bad you must be feeling right now Will, but I think it’s about time you started looking somewhere else.”

Now, due to the fact that I was at the zenith of depression, or maybe ‘coz she took me by surprise I didn’t know how to react. So I just let it be and went ahead with the things. She was looking into my eyes and I was looking into hers (to be honest, I was looking at her lips, but whatever!!). A holy saint (under the influence of ganja) once said, “Life screws you from behind while you are busy fiddling with condom.” Something like that happened to me too, that day. It took me a while to come out of that trance, but when I did, and become aware of the surroundings, I found Raina standing there. Damn, I was screwed. Second time in a single week, I found myself wanting to kill myself. I wanted to kill Nisha too for seducing me, but none of those could have saved my ass. Raina went to her car and I ran after her. Nisha tried to stop me, and with my head about to explode (not to forget all that confusion), all I could say was “Fuck you!!”

Before I could stop Raina, she had sped away like Schumacher, and with her, all my plans went down the drain. And that was when I realized what I had done. I turned around; Nisha was nowhere to be seen (there went my backup too!). I felt like a guy stranded on Temptation Island, minus gals, or even worse (such a guy will at least have coconut trees to smash his head into, I didn’t even have that).

I guessed I had had enough excitement for the day. I wanted to introspect (how could it all go wrong?!) but I decided against it. I had one more thing left to do after all. I hated it more than anything else at that time. But with no other option left, I entered a nearby shop, lit a cigarette, and made that call…

“Hey Shine, could you please come and pick me up?”

“Well, well, well, now what do we say in such situations..?!”

We say fuck you!! But of course, I kept quite.

Told you, life is a compromise!

#3 - Sky Diving

It is fun to look back into your past and blame all the mishaps, all the unfortunate turns your life took, on someone else. My favourite scapegoat is my 7-10^th standard class-teacher, Mrs. S. Now, Mrs. S was a pretty good teacher. She was sincere, actually cared about her students, and was fairly knowledgeable. In short, she is one of the few teachers who did not lose my respect even after teaching me for a number of years. No, wait, that’s not true. I still respect most of my teacher’s from back then. Well, certainly not Mr. Y (devout fan of corporal punishment, had a killer headlock which was well supplemented by his smelly armpits), or Mr. G (brilliant hypnotist, could put a bottle of amphetamines¹ to sleep), or Mrs. K (good at knitting, also rumoured to have been knocked on the head by a falling ceiling fan, which may explain her blatant bias towards girls) for that matter, but certainly most of them were pretty good. I was pretty surprised by how good our teachers actually were in comparison to the more famous public schools of the town.

Coming back to Mrs. S, I can recall several incidents where her behaviour harmed my long-term physical, emotional and social health. Neglecting her biggest fault of keeping me interested in Science through that crucial period of mental development, she can still be blamed for some of the most axe-on-my-foot decisions I’ve ever made. I had joined the school in the middle of the 7^th standard, a consequence of my father retiring from the navy just when life had started to seem good and comfortable. Now, changing schools and cities wasn’t really an issue. It wasn’t like I had to say good-bye to some girl who would grow up to be the love of my life. I didn’t even have that many friends to leave behind. And I was fairly good at forgetting old friends (fortunately, that habit is long gone), even if I sucked at making new ones (unfortunately, this one isn’t). The only friend that I really regret getting out of touch with is Vince. Vince was probably the liveliest person I’ve ever seen. He was always smiling, even after he returned from a summer vacation with his leg amputated. He still laughed like mad, still played cricket with friends, and still acted as goofy as generally possible. We both loved reading, and on my last day of school he gave me a book, a 3-in-1 digest of ‘The Three Investigators’², with his address and phone number written on a small piece of paper stuck on the first page. I promised I would write, I never did; kept putting it off week after week till it was late enough to convince myself it would be too awkward to write that letter at all. We would probably have drifted apart anyway, but I hate that I didn’t even try. Sometimes I ask myself why I never had the kind of friendships they show in movies and tele-serials, and I try really hard to repress this memory, and many others like it, as they threaten to answer the question for me. It’s much easier to just blame my parents.

I really should do something about this habit of digressing from the topic at hand. Anyway, so one of the earliest pushes-down-the-cliff I got from her was the day I went to collect my 7^th standard report card. She was talking to another teacher as I reached the staff-room, and as she gave me the proof of a wasted year and patted me on my back, she said something like ‘He’s a really bright boy, he’ll definitely go to IIT.’ Before that day I was an innocent boy who had never thought or dreamed about anything except from school exams and the occasional Cynthia, besides the being a scientist dream I mentioned. In 5^th standard, in the second round of the interschool magi quiz, I had passed when they had asked me the full form of IIT, and smirked in disbelief as someone else gave the answer: it’s not a part of the UN and not even in the US, how would someone expect me to remember something so stupid and unimportant? To be honest I didn’t think much about it after that day either. But I guess the phrase contaminated my subconscious. And when the time came to make a decision, this infection raised its ugly head.

There were a few more pushes along the way, the most notable one being in a PTA meeting in 10^th standard, when she told my dad I might end up scoring 90% in my boards. Now, 90% was a big deal. In the history of my school, only one student had ever crossed it. I gave a sheepish smile and screamed internally: “How dare you? I’ll show you what I can do. I’ll score 93%, no, 95%!” My big fat ego...I wonder how things would have turned out if someone had ever challenged me to get a girl (or even worse, sports). Thankfully, no one did and so my ego survives relatively un-bruised.

The final push I got was when my dad went to collect my admit card for the board exams in 10^th standard. As I mentioned earlier, Mrs. S really cared about her students. So she felt obliged to tell my father the merits of changing my school, and of joining FIITJEE³. My father, the simple man that he is, agreed to follow her advice on both counts. I was happier than hell: I was going to be a public school guy! I had heard the last two years of school could really change your personality. I had also heard about the ‘open’ atmosphere there, something I was really looking forward to. I was also going to start preparing for IIT, which was the best place in India for bright people interested in Science and research. I would become a scientist after all, with a great public school personality to boot. I had no idea what anything really meant, I wasn’t even sure what I really wanted. It was just exciting as hell. Someone had opened the aircraft door, and I jumped. They didn’t tell me to pull the green cord before the light-green cord⁴. Even worse, I didn’t know I had jumped from an airplane, and I didn’t really know about gravity. When will the bloody parachute open?

1. 1. Amphetamines: A stimulant used to treat certain disorders causing abrupt sleep. Also, a fairly popular soft-drug for getting high. Wiki it for more…

2. 2. The Three Investigators: Good, old-fashioned children’s mystery books. Amazing storylines, really good characters, and no magic brooms.

3. 3. FIITJEE: A coaching institute, to prepare for the extremely difficult entrance examination of IITs. Also holds classes for 8^th and 9^th standard students to give them the much needed ‘early edge’.

4. 4. Phrase lifted from ‘Malcom In The Middle’. Amazing show, really funny and occasionally inspiring.

#4 - Inevitable "iota"

Not even halfway through the holidays, I was pretty much bored of everything. Guess all play and no work made for dull days. Gals, contemplating to kill me (refer to the previous chapters), weren’t helping either. And given my family, that was nowhere near the pack-your-bags-we-are-going-on-a-trip type, rest of the break didn’t seem to be heading towards anything remotely interesting either, let alone exciting. I was too ashamed to admit it, but I wanted schools to open. Shine’s expressions were similar too, but none of us wanted to admit it. It was like “let’s see who blinks first”.

One day, over the phone, Allan told me something about FIITJEE. It was supposed to be an institute (or institution?!) that was gonna get you through to IITs.

“Now what the hell is IIT?” I thought. It wouldn’t be a surprising question when I tell you (much as I hate to admit it now) that I didn’t really have any dream at any point in my life (I still don’t! I know I’m doing something, why, I have no idea!). My father signed up for Navy directly after his 12^th standard exams and my mother is a graduate. So I had this picture in my mind (dumb-ass that I was):

1. Joining Navy was cool (maybe it was the water).
2. All those sexy uniforms and places where you are posted (especially Goa) are all that a man needs in his life.
3. Graduation doesn’t pay; you either become a teacher or a housewife (can you imagine now, how stupid I was?).

It’s pretty weird, but my mind was kinda made up, I was gonna join Navy and as for graduation, I would do it just for the heck of it..!! That’s when Allan dropped that bomb on me. Simply put, it was the first time I came to know that everyone in this world is tagged (more or less with their jobs) and you are as good as your tag. It took me even more time to realize that there are numerous sub-tags too. For example, engineers can be IITians or Not. IITians, as we all know (hopefully!), are highly valued, but the truth is both suck (as my IITian friends tell me themselves, though I suspect there is a common code of conduct between all IITians due to which they all try to play humble).

Anyways, I would’ve certainly followed Allan and joined FIITJEE, but when I heard about the fee structure I was too shocked to reply and I decided that I wasn’t gonna go to IIT after all, extremely stupid decision, considering that later on I joined the same institute, at the same fee and not to forget that I had to complete my entire course in one year instead of two (but as they say, when time is wrong mind passes shit instead of ideas!!).

Allan, I thought, was too ahead of me, so I wanted to discuss, about what to do, with someone more like minded. Of course, I went to talk to Shine. Adam was there too.

“What the fuck is this IIT?!” Shine looked genuinely shocked (told you, he’s like minded). I told them what I knew. Adam was shocked even more, the fact that studies didn’t end after 12^th standard was news for him. Shine looked up towards the sky (I think he does that too often). Adam, on the other hand, said goodbye and walked towards his home. With the look he gave, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had killed himself before reaching home (fortunately he didn’t). Maybe he made his peace with the fact that the only way to rescue himself from his family profession of milking cows was to study further. Shine was done consulting God.

“See bro, I don’t think this IIT crap is for us. No matter how hard we try, we can’t get in. We are just not up to that level.” I love true pessimists like him. They’re no good to society, but arrive at a decision very quickly (though those decisions turn out to be a load of crap, but let’s not go into that).

“I think right now we should concentrate on getting through our school studies. If we get good marks then we can do our graduation in any subject we like. What can be more satisfying? As far as getting a job is concerned, who doesn’t get a job these days yaar? We will too.” I know it’s the lamest thing you will ever hear, but at that time it sounded very impressive. More so when he told me about a tutor he knew, a certain Mr. NPB. He was believed to be an excellent math teacher.

Shine thought that studying under him would secure a nice future for us; we might even become a mathematician someday. Crap, crap, crap. But being the true math-lover that I am, I really loved the sound of that word “mathematician”. I knew nothing about what a mathematician is, but I definitely wanted to be one. My belief in Mr. NPB was even more strengthened when after returning home I came to know that Mr. NPB had taught my father (and my uncles) in his 11^th and 12^th standard days (he was like our family tutor). Now, I thought, anyone having such a long experience has to be good. So I waited for the next day, when I was gonna meet my mentor (supposedly!), and take my first step towards being a mathematician (again supposedly!).

#4 - Froggie Style

My biggest fear, for the first 14-15 years of my life as a slowly maturing geek, was the frog in the well story. I am not sure I remember it correctly, and I guess most of you must have heard it, but it went something like this: A frog lived at the bottom of a dried well, his own dark and deliciously damp corner of the world. He lived a princely life, the insects and worms that inhabited the well being fairly easy prey. It was a neat arrangement, and the frog pretty much considered himself to be the king of the world. Anyway, one day the well was flooded with rain water, and the frog had to swim up and jump out. I don’t remember what happened next, but I think the frog saw a huge bird or something and wet his pants, metaphorically of course.

Of course it’s a nice story, and the brainier ones of you probably know what it is leading to. The interesting thing is that this story wasn’t told to me by my grandma, or grandpa, or anyone even remotely related. My first version of this story can be ascribed to aunty S, the wife of one of my father’s colleagues. We had just moved to Kochi¹ from Mumbai, well Bombay actually. This is a long time back. Now aunty S was the strict kind, and kept her little boy(s) on a very short leash (I actually remember one of them wetting his pants when she looked at him with a hint of anger, and then promptly getting on with cleaning it up). Consequently, they studied hard, and she was fairly proud of them. My reputation as a rising star of geekdom had preceded me to Kochi and my mom wasn’t that good at hiding her pride when she talked about me, and aunty S couldn’t help feeling a bit competitive about the whole thing. I think her exact words went something like: “Yeah, it’s easy to score well there you know. The system down here is much tougher; we have seen many children who topped their classes up there struggle to rise above the average here.” Well, the standard of education in South India is certainly better, the teachers more sincere, and the students more hardworking. I didn’t know all this at that time, but I had heard rumours, pretty scary ones. Anyway, I did OK, and aunty S spent the next three years narrating different versions of this story: the government-school-public-school version, the junior classes-senior-classes version, the rot-learning-real-learning version and a few more. To be honest I used the reverse corollary of the up-there-down-here version during my shift from Kochi to Gurgaon to justify not working hard, guess I owe aunty S a thank you.

Anyway, as I have repeated ad painfulum², I was shifting to a big-shot public school in Delhi after the tenth standard. I was quite excited on the first day of school. I had seen the huge campus, replete with comparatively good looking buildings, the well-maintained playing ground (with actual growing grass on it!), the shiny over-priced uniforms that I had had to buy from the school uniform store (a uniform store on campus, wow!), the two-three food kiosks, the huge library (well, at least from the outside)...in short, it was everything I had dreamed of all those years when half our classes were held in the shade of a tree because there was no power in the classrooms. It was amazing. I had asked one of the guys I had met at the geek camp to give me a lift to the school on the first day; he had changed schools too and his dad was dropping him. The school started really early, a few minutes before seven I think. We reached the school just in time and I stepped in through the gates. And then I realized that I had no idea where to go. No idea where my class was, and no idea how to find out. I had a scrap of paper that said XI E. I started looking around, confident that I would be able to find the classroom in no time, the confidence stemming from the assumption that I could figure out the system according to which the classrooms had been assigned. Stupid assumption. Firstly, the school was too damned big for such an approach to work. Secondly, there really was no apparent logic behind the system. In the ten minutes it took me to figure this out, I was already late for class. Finally I gathered all my reserves of courage and asked a helpful looking guy who was standing around (doesn’t make sense for a guy to be standing around at that time...maybe it was a teacher; the memory is pretty blurred). Well, he/she wasn’t much help. Somehow someone told me the way.

On reaching there I realised the class was being held in a seminar room of sorts. I had come there earlier and ignored it as it was so obviously a seminar room. I stepped in, introduced myself to the stern looking teacher (she turned out to be fairly malleable) who asked me why I was late. I stammered something like I couldn’t find the classroom, all the while, aware that my backside was facing the class, hoping that my trouser bottoms weren’t wrinkled or stained horribly. The teacher was obviously feeding something important to the class, and everyone was taking notes. I opened my bag and realized I did not have a pen with me. Great way to start, I mentally kicked myself and proceeded to stammer to the girl behind me to give me a pen. I also took the opportunity to turn back and survey the class. Stupid, stupid, faker, bookworm, rich bitch, stupid, faker, stupid faker, Casanova, gay, poor thing, obviously stupid, rich bitch, overzealous misfit, nervous wreck, rich Casanova, dumb blonde, fake blonde, stupid, fake stupid....I went on and on till I felt my confidence rising. Bring it on, I mentally spat at everyone. Then we had a short round of introductions: names, where we came from, and how much we scored in Science in the boards (the class teacher was also our physics teacher). I smiled a little, I knew almost everyone in the room had totalled excellent marks but I had always believed most people who scored well in boards were idiots who had memorized all the history chapters. I, on the other hand, being the brainy guy, had scored well in Science (93) and Maths (99). Stupid assumption. The dumb blonde had scored 96 in Science, the fake blonde had 98, the rich Casanova had 94, the nervous wreck had actually scored hundred...I think you see the pattern. As my newly rebuilt confidence melted like a glacier in a global warming documentary, it dawned upon me that I was pretty much at the bottom of the class in this little race. It was a big world indeed. At least I didn’t wet my pants.

1. Kochi: A beautiful port city in the state of Kerala. An amazing place to visit, not that good to live in.
2. Ad painfulum: till it became painful. Ripped off from ad infinitum. Yes, this is my idea of clever word play.

#5 - "2 + 2 = 5"

“Hmm... so you are Mitesh’s son?” I realized that it feels a bit weird when someone you are meeting for the first time addresses your father by his name. But this was Mr. NPB. Beside the fact that he was my grandfather’s age (or near-about for sure), he had quite an intimidating personality. I couldn’t make myself come up with an adequate reply.

“You see, he was a brilliant student.” He continued. “He was the best in his batch. Showed real good results. I’ll expect nothing less from you.” Of course this was the common ploy that teachers adopt (where they praise your relatives, whom they have taught earlier, endlessly) in order to motivate you (or frighten you maybe...). I was at Mr. NPB’s house which also doubled as his tuition centre. Shine was with me, we were there to get a batch allotted.

“What kinda name is Shine? Who names their child like that?” Shine too was at a loss for words just like me. Of course he had been caught off-guard for something that had been his strong point till then (he had impressed a lot of people by his name but to someone so old, it was plain stupid, much to my liking of course).

“Why don’t you say anything? You stupid or what?” We remained silent. He sniggered (it was offensive but I thought it was kinda justified).

“Come at 6 p.m. and do come prepared for speaking, you see it’s necessary in this world we live in.” We were more than happy to run away.

We returned, some 10 minutes before our allotted time. Mr. NPB was teaching another batch inside. Waiting for our turn, we started chatting with other students of our batch. That’s when we heard those rumors for the first time. I was amazed to find that almost everybody except us knew that Mr. NPB was a drunkard and a gambler (part time of course!). Obviously enough it was hard to believe. These were a bunch of fools, I decided (I refused to believe any crap about my would-be mentor). Previous batch came out, we went in and Mr. NPB went for a break (old guy needs a break, no evidence to prove that it’s a “drinking” break, I thought). I took a lazy look around, all my batch-mates appeared quite ordinary, nothing special. Though I was very disappointed to see that there were no girls in my batch (except for one, but she was like 4’6” tall, needless to say I didn’t notice her). It was depressing.

About half an hour passed, Mr. NPB didn’t come out. Rumor mills were churning at top speed.

“Maybe he passed out, too much vodka I bet” someone said. Everyone agreed. I was getting restless. The wait was getting on my nerves. I didn’t come for this, this was too much shit. What kind of teacher was this? I wanted to beat the crap out of Shine for dragging me into this stupidity. He was doing his usual looking skywards routine, abnormally calm. Everyone else too was happy; they found it quite amusing, unlike me (it was like constipation, you’re sitting on the damn pot, waiting and waiting, and for what...). Thankfully, he appeared (just before I was about to stab Shine in the eye with my Reynold 045).

He appeared tired, or maybe sleepy. I wasn’t really sure if the rumors were false after all. Anyways he started teaching us. He made jokes in between lessons. And I had to agree, he was a good teacher, but that was that. 15 minutes into lecture (it was some vague crap about “iota” and “Euclid plane”) it happened again. Mr. NPB dozed off. Yes, he just dozed off. I know it might sound unreal, but he just fell asleep right there in front of us, sitting upright in his chair. It was like the most bizarre thing I ever saw outside of TV. No one knew what to do. It was even crazier than their rumors. With nothing to do (obviously!), we just sat and stared at him (or at each other). Nobody dared make a noise (some of us weren’t even sure if he was alive or not, but no one dared confirm).

Guess there’s no need to tell you that my first day there sucked. Yes it was crazy; yes it was unthinkable and unbelievable. We almost laughed in his face when Mr. NPB’s son told us later (after he was called and he woke up his father and took him inside) that it was a kind of reaction which was normal due to the “tonic” Mr. NPB was taking (Of course we didn’t believe a word). We’ve had a completely different picture of “tonic” in our minds since that day. For me, it was so bad that I had decided never to go back, and I wouldn’t have, if not for my father.

He made me go back the next day and asked me to persist for a bit longer. And as much as it amazes me today, I loved him. It took us the first few days for getting used to, but eventually all devotees, gossip-mongers and baffled ones (like me) liked him alike. We still made fun of his drinking and gambling behind his back, but we all liked him a lot. For the next one year, that one hour of studying math under him was probably my favorite time of the day. And I never thought I would say this but Mr. NPB was the best and my favorite math teacher ever (he didn’t make me mathematician or anything but seriously, who was I kidding anyway..??).