A Story - Part 8

'A story' started here - [part 1]

I recalled my friend's fact#21 in my mind, “You’ll have a very good future together if the last two characters of your name are same as the first two of your partner.”

Do I need to say this to her? I thought. How stupid of me to bring this topic now, I beefed myself. With these thoughts running inside, I started to think of a way to get rid of this ‘facts’ topic even though I knew I can’t kid a girl without any reasons. You know how good they are at these things, at getting an info from the other person, that too when the other person had created a trap voluntarily.

“Hello, there?” she patted me on the shoulder.

“Yep,” I nodded in approval, coming out of my thoughts.

“What are the facts?”

“Just forget it. They’re lame, you see.”

“No matter how lame they are. You brought it, now please tell me those,” she was adamant.

“It’s only one, actually.”

“But you told facts, not a fact,” she said giving an added effect to the word ‘facts’.

“Okay, here I’m, dealing with a grammatical genius, huh?” I tried my best wit.

“Are you going to say or not?” she asked firmly, with her hand sliding towards her bag. Oh my God! Is she about to get that pamphlet out? I thought.

“My friend, he is actually drafting ‘love facts’ for his girlfriend. He just told me one of his facts drafted so far,” I said in a hurry.

“Is it? It sounds interesting. Come on, go ahead,” she was keen.

“You’re lucky if you marry someone whom you happen to first meet at a place, um, meant for studying.”

I don’t know why I didn’t say the actual fact that I was told by my friend. I don’t know why I decided to come up with something different instead. Moreover, I don’t know how I came up with a fact on my own that would eventually strike a chord on her.

“Wait a second, are you serious? I mean… is he serious?” she was eager with her response.

I just shrugged my shoulders.

“I, uh, okay, do you, um…” she tried to say something.

“Look, don’t read too much into this. He is just stupid to draft such things. Well, maybe to impress his girlfriend, who knows?” I tried to bring her back to her comfort zone.

“Place meant for studying? Does he refer the library?” She was still showering on the fact. That was evident.

I’m not sure what my friend would have meant by it, if he had come up with that fact (furthermore, I’m not sure if he had met his girlfriend somewhere in a place meant for studying). What I meant was the library, only the library. But I wasn’t bold enough to accept that, and eventually my mind was left to get hit by the questions - Do I need to play it safe? Or Do I have to go on with it and see where it takes us? Or Should I be smart as a whip to change the topic? I was confused, failing to figure how she might react to whatever I say. If only I was a good mind-reader.

“Yeah, a library,” I was afraid of her response, and continued, “Or a college, or even a school.”

“Hmm, whatever, but why did you call it lame?”

Ah man, what is she expecting from me? That I should say he meant the library, and by quoting that, I was referring us. Should I say that? What if she was really feeble by asking me further details forgetting the fact that we had met at a place meant for studying?

“I called it lame because it was drafted by my friend, after all, and only for the sake of impressing his girlfriend so that he could get a…” I stopped.

“Get a what?” a question again. My bad, I cued.

“Probably a GIFT,” I said, wondering what the relation between a GIFT and a KISS is. Well, a kiss can possibly be a gift, right?

“Whatever. Get me his other facts as well. It’s funny and interesting too.”

I don’t want her to listen to the reply that my friend had given me a day before when I asked for his other facts drafted yet. Hence, I simply nodded.

“So, what have you decided about the course?” she started again.

“Yeah, I’m okay with it,” I said merely not to disappoint her. I wasn’t in a mood to catch her frowning face.

She was more than happy. I was able see that from her face, her body, and her everything. Or I should say I felt it around. Meanwhile, she fumbled into her bag and took few sheets of paper out.

“Do you read stories?” she asked holding the bunch of papers in her hand.

“Yes, I do. Don’t you know I visit the library often?”

“Yes, yes. But do you read short stories penned by someone, like your friend?”

“I don’t have any friends who write short stories, but I do read the ones that circulate through the emails.”

“Okay, fine then. Here is a story dedicated to my friend that was penned by her friend. Read it, if you’re interested.”

“Sure, why not?” I said and plunked the papers from her hand and asked, “Was it her boyfriend who dedicated it to her?”

“Nope, just a friend who is a boy,” she replied quickly.

Why would a guy, literally, dedicate a story to a girl? That guy must be crazy or the girl must be crazy not to understand the hidden reason behind it, I thought. Actually, I was crazy to think like that. Later I found that he dedicated it to her merely as a friend, just because she was nagging him to write one for long.

“Huh-uh” I nodded sarcastically.

“So, if at all you write one, whom would you dedicate it to?”

“Neha.”

“What?”

“I mean, Sneha,” I said and stressed again, “Sneha.”

She stared me through the corner of her eyes.

“Okay, it’s time for me to leave. Have to hang out with my friends. Will call you sometime tomorrow to fix the date and time to go to the center to register us for the course,” she said happily, and left the library in minutes.

I sat there still looking at her walking away.

... To be continued [A Story - Part 9].

9. Someone you wish you could meet

Dear SIWICM,

Frankly, my list of ‘Someone I wish I could meet’ is long. Yep, it’s really long that it could be evident from the fact that I’m inspired by many people in different fields. Call yourself lucky or even be proud to feature in my list, which of course, is the reason for this letter being addressed to you. However, I’d like to put up this point that you’re not on top of the list, certainly not. No offense. Credibly, this letter should have been addressed to the one(s) topping the list, but it was only you who struck my mind the moment I wanted to write this letter.

I haven’t seen or heard from you for ages. Well, apparently, it shouldn’t be the case for the people who were the-best-friends. Hmm, we were; guess you too remember that. You know what, I still cherish the days I spent with you, the inexplicable fun we had, the places we explored (do you remember our adventure ride to the forbidden palace next to the railway station? I still laugh at the fact how fearful you were that you made us run back like hell just as we were about to enter it).

Man, how good we were as the-best-friends! Ever wondered why do things go wrong when everything seem to be so perfect? We too were all but perfect for each other, giving the necessary support when the other was in need, sharing almost everything - the happiness and the sadness, sacrificing anything just for the sake of other’s wellbeing. But why did we end up like this? I know I was responsible for whatever we are now; I was the one who gave you the cold shoulder. I was lame then, you see.

I still miss those gifts that you gave me when we were together. I shouldn’t have returned those to you the other day – the day when I wanted to break up with you. I curse myself for that act of mine. I can feel now how bad you’d have felt at that moment. By all means, I should have at least listened to your words of having them with me even if I choose not to talk to you ever again. But if I were sane enough to listen to your words, I wouldn’t have broken up with you in the first place.

Whatsoever, nothing is going to change apart from the fact that we could patch up at least now. Better late than never, we’ve been taught in school, after all. J

Do reply or give me a call, if you’re interested. And, BTW, send me those gifts if you’ve those with you yet.

P.S: I’d definitely have posted this letter to you, if I had your address with me. Trust me.

Yours (wanna-be) friendly,

Suresh R

+91 - 9952965990

In case you're wondering what this is about: 30 Letters

Why this kolaveri di

The latest anthem of the young lads (or the soup boys as mentioned in the song) is this song, written and sung by Dhanush for his forthcoming film ‘3’ which has the music composed by a newbie named Anirudh. The song was OFFICIALLY released yesterday as a single (after the draft version of the song was leaked online few days back by some UNKNOWN person). Everyone says ‘kill piracy’, but God, who is going to kill it actually?

Whatever, the song has already reached a mass. If you are yet to listen to the song, don’t get any idea that it has something to be cherished in the lines of ‘Oru Nazhil’ [from Pudhupettai] or any of your other favorites that you hold close to your heart especially for its lyrics or the music or the singer. The song doesn’t have any extraordinary lyrics, yet so catchy (at least among youngsters). To be precise, it’s a Tamil song with English lyrics, with only English lyrics. I’m not worthy enough to comment on the music front. All I want to say is it has a good music and in fact, a good start for the new composer. And Dhanush renders the song so beautifully, proving that he is a good singer too.

The ‘actor’ Dhanush has already become a ‘lyricist’ penning a couple of songs for his film - Mayakkam Enna, and has already been lauded by many sources for his nothing-extraordinary-but-so-catchy lines. Now, here goes he, penning all the songs (seven in total) for his next film – ‘3’. This one is just a sample!

The song is gonna top the charts for sure, for a very long time.

Here is the video of the recording session of the song. Watch it and have fun. (Guys, don't worry about the lyrics if you can't follow it J, it's been subtitled.)

Life is...

“Life is …” – That’s the most used starter of a phrase by anyone who, well, invariably thinks about ‘The Life’. Everyone would have had different words added up to it, at different times, which obviously was influenced by their stand on life back then. Apparently, I too had multiple phrases that start with ‘Life is …’, and moreover, had heard/read many versions from different people so far. Wanna know the latest? It’s “Life is a bitch when the only woman you can think of belongs to someone else.” – By Chetan Bhagat in his book, Revolution 2020.

Most of them that you happen to hear/read might seem to be funny, crazy, nutty, and top of all, a cliché. Most of us, from our perspective, laugh it off. Yeah, we do, unless we’re at a stage in life where we’re almost on their shoes. It’s the life, after all. But what we fail to do is to think what made them to define life as such. Maybe, we’re too lazy or too comfortable in life to think from their shoes. Say, someone had scribbled ‘Life is so miserable’ in the wall of a subway, and unavoidably, our eyes happen to glint at it as we walk by it. The immediate thought that would strike our mind is to picture that someone as a real LOSER. We’ve no idea of why he had seen life as ‘so miserable’. Of course, life wouldn’t have been so miserable for him right from his birth. Maybe his past few days, few months, or say, few years had been miserable for him. Or maybe, the truth is, his mind had seen life that way. And that doesn’t mean he is a LOSER.

Okay, what am I going to ramble here? It’s about what life is. It’s as simple as this, LIFE IS NOT SO COOL. That’s what I feel about life, right now. If you’d got what I wanted to clear up in the last two paragraphs, then you’d no longer think me as a loser or as a crazy head. Look, it might sound as a cliché, like I’d mentioned earlier, but the fact is ‘Life Is Not So Cool’. Trust me. Or you’d feel yourself only if you’re so gloomed by the so-called boredom.

I haven’t had much of a work at office for the last couple of months. It was the winding up phase of the project that I worked on. Going by that point, it’s kind of normal to be less occupied at work, and I’m very well aware of it. But the problems were – one, it wasn’t coming. The news came out of the blue. (I don’t want to get into it here as it’s an official, internal, and confidential matter, you see!) And two, it – I mean my release from the project - could have happened several weeks before. So these things along with the almost-no-work fact screwed me for the past few months. I’m not a guy who likes to sit and enjoy the ‘no work at office’ phase. I always want to be engaged in work at office, even if it takes whatever time in my 24-hours day. So it was no wonder why I felt life as not so cool.

In a way, the boring time was a blessing in disguise; it was the reason I was so ACTIVE in my blog for the past few months. (And moreover, it was why ‘A story’ was born!) Finally, the much awaited release happened on the fourth of November, and ta-da, I’m on bench now (not literally though. It was just a word coined by anonymous). Literally, it’s a very bad phase (at least for me) as it means no-work-and-so-just-be-idle-apart-from-searching-for-a-new-project. I’ve been suffering the effect of this for the past one week. I’m bored like hell. Although, it’s not like I’m looking for a project to get into. I’m almost into one already except it’s not official; when it’s not official, technically, my doors aren’t closed yet. And hence, I’m still in a ‘NO WORK’ phase.

To add fuel to the fire, the internet at my home has gone haywire since last Monday. We had, as usual, blamed it on BSNL for the situation. It’s BSNL, and so it’s obvious, we thought until today morning. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case this time. We should blame it on our neighbor, wait, I should correct the term, and it should be our STUPID neighbor. We found that our phone line was actually CUT by our neighbor, and that was the reason for our situation. Worse, the reason we heard for their act. The wire that was hanging along their wall wasn’t looking good. Yeah, believe it or not, that was the reason given to the lineman who went up to their place to check the connection. Why do people behave like this? Why do they get out of their minds, often? When we fight for a change in the system in our country across various things, what we basically forget is the fact that we people should change for good, first.

So blame it on our neighbor (and surprisingly, not BSNL) for my inactivity on this blog-o-sphere for the past few days. Uh-huh, I’m lucky to find an excuse. All in all, I was bored at office, and equally, at home. Meanwhile, amidst these troubles, I found that I can live without checking my mails, without Facebook-ing, without blogging, and even without checking the blogs that I stalk, but certainly not without Twitter. Yeah, I badly missed it, missed checking the tweets of the people I follow. (I was worried on missing the latest updates from Selvaraghavan on #Mayakkamenna release.J) The first thing I did after the internet connection was fixed was to login to Twitter and check my timeline, the tweets I had missed.

Having said that, before I wind up the post, I’d like to quote the height of boredom I’m presently at – “I paid a visit to a couple of temples, this evening, just to get rid of the boredom and nothing else.” And I’d like to repeat, “Life is NOT so COOL.” Gotcha!

A story - Part 7

‘A story’ began here – [Part 1]

The rest of the day went by with the thought of me messaging her. Message, not to let her know the time alone, but to have a casual chat with her, like any friends would do. Yeah, given our conversation back in the library that day, I was a friend of her already. Or at least, I thought so.

I was just roaming in and around my home, then was lying on my bed, then was standing at the terrace looking for the moon when it played hide and seek with me, and then was staring at the television with no idea of what was playing. All these activities, I did holding my mobile in my hand with a message composed to her that was left unsent – only the message changed from a mere “Hi” to “What’s up?” to “Are you busy?” to “Had your dinner?” to “I’ll be going to the library at 9”.

Amidst these crap activities of me, there entered my friend, screaming, “Hey man, have you ever tasted a lipstick?”

“What? Did you say ‘A Lipstick’?” I was baffled.

“Yes, a lipstick,” he gestured as he sat next to me patting my shoulder.

“Sorry, dude. I had several eatables all through my life, but a lipstick wasn’t one of them,” I laughed, wondering what had gotten into his otherwise savvy head.

“I think she should change the flavor,” he said with his head traveling east and west.

“Man, what are you talking about?” I was shocked.

“Nothing, just forget it.” He stood to walk to his room.

“Hey, wait,” I said trying to pull him down. But he was too strong to be pulled, and I was left with no other option than to follow him nagging.

~~~~~~~~

“What happened?” I asked him as he was making his bed. I repeated the question ample number of times, in different tones, until he responded.

“Man, why are you nagging me? It’s just that I kissed my girlfriend. Okay?”

I remained silent thinking of me being in his shoes. No, don’t call me names. I thought of me in his and Neha in his girlfriend’s shoes.

“I guess she got a new lipstick, and that tastes horrible, you know,” he said rubbing his lips with his fingers. He might’ve imagined the lipstick stains being stuck in his lips still.

“So… you do it often?” I knew it was lame to ask, but I couldn’t help it.

“Hmm… yes, only if you refer ‘at least once a day’ as ‘often’.” He said winking, “Thanks to my love facts that I’ve been showering on her lately.”

“Love facts?”

“Yeah, it’s just the facts that I draft when I’m into her, I mean, mentally. Like when she is away from me, yet with me in my mind, you see.”

“Is it some kind of a trick? Just to taste her lipstick, uh, I mean, her lips.”

“Do I look like Barney Stinson of ‘How I met your mother’ series? No way. I’m rather serious buddy. Look, do you want to hear today’s fact?” His then-recent addiction of that sitcom was evident in his words.

“Of course, yes,” I was excited.

“Here’s fact number twenty-one…” He started.

“Hold on, did you draft twenty-one facts already?” I cut him off, thinking about him tasting the lipstick twenty-one times (at least) already.

“Come on man, it’s no big deal. Now, listen to the fact for the day, ‘you’ll have a very good future together if the last two characters of your name are same as the first two of your partner’.”

I had already started to run the respective characters of his and his girlfriend’s name in my mind, and said, “But your last two and her first two didn’t match?”

“Are you a male chauvinist or what? Give her the first preference,” he replied in a cool manner.

“Poojitha and Harish. ‘H.A.’, it is,” I shouted.

“Do you think I’d come up with a fact that is not in favor of us? Idiot,” he said. (Yeah, he was right. Idiot, I was, for I’d never come across such things on my own.) I should come up with my own facts, I thought.

“But why only two?”

“My name isn’t Tharish to have three,” he said.

I replaced Poojitha with Neha. His fact drew them to be a good partner as well. Hell, no. I shouldn’t give him any clue about Neha, my inner mind voiced. I then scanned mine with Neha. Crap, his fact was not in favor of me, not in favor of us actually.

“It sounds lame dude,” I said and turned back.

“Uh-huh,” he smiled.

“Okay. Give me your other twenty facts now,” I asked him just to check if any of them works for me. Desperate, I was.

“No way,” he said, “I’d give you only after I reach my target of hundred.”

“Hundred?”

“Yes,” he nodded, proudly.

“You are something man, really,” I said, “And don’t ask her to change the flavor next time, instead ask her not to apply it when you want to, you know…” and left his room.

~~~~~~~~~~

I was only thinking about ‘The Love Facts’ for the next few hours. When he could draft the facts for his love, why can’t I? I thought. The funny fact was I wasn’t even sure of the relation between me and Neha then, and of what was cooking on her mind, but I began to think about ‘the love facts’ already. Maybe, it was because I pictured that she was the one for me, no matter how early it was to decide.

I messaged her to come to the library around 10:00 A.M. the next day. I didn’t get a reply. Ironically, I was happy for that because, back then, I was clueless of what to talk about if her reply builds up into a late night chat. You know what, for that exact reason, I messaged her late night with a hope that she might have slept already and I didn’t have to bother about the chat.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Hi,” I greeted her. She looked ravishing, as usual, in her blue Shalwar. I wondered how many hours had she spent before the mirror preening her ready. Call me whatever, but I wanted to be her mirror.

“Hi,” she waved back. She entered in and took the chair next to me.

“So, what have you decided?” she was concerned only about what she wanted. Or maybe I assumed so.

“You know what, my friend has been drafting some facts lately. I heard his latest one yesterday. It was interesting.”

“Facts, what’re they about?” She might have guessed them to be related to her stupid course. Her curiosity showed that all.

Love facts, I wanted to say, but ended up saying, “Facts, as in, facts. Do you want to hear that?”

She nodded. Just.

… To be continued [A story – Part 8].