A jerk in Love !!!!!

"I'm sick and tired of doing this same shit all the time" I grumbled.

Though these kind of thoughts flash in my mind at times, the real fact was, I really loved this job. I closed my eyes, to relax a bit and concentrate on my work. But it worked the other way. Instead of taking my concentration back to my work, it made me visualize her. The inner layer of my eyelid became a screen for my eye ball to picture her. From that instance, I lost myself.

I opened my eyes on hearing some repeated 'thud' sound on the table. It was her, who was screened in my inner layer of the eyelid. I was flabbergasted.

"Are you thinking of me?" She questioned.

"Of course not" I mouthed before my brain got activated for any reply.

"Don't lie" she replied as if she was in my closed-eye sitting aside my eye ball and watched the screen.

"Why should I lie?" I questioned her back with a stubborn look on my face, though my mind wanted to say her like, who else will I think of other than you? But it was late by few seconds. So, I couldn't change my words.

"Who knows?" she said and sat in the chair next to me.

I looked deep into her eyes to check whether any screen was there showing my face in it. Obviously, I didn't find any, for she was not as dumb or jerky as me. What else will you call a guy who wasted his chances galore of proposing his love when he had spent several days all alone with her – a jerk, right? So will I.

"Why are you calling yourself a jerk?" she queried as if she was reading my mind like an open book.

I was marked with surprise. But without revealing that, I replied, "how will you call a person who had failed to propose a girl whom he love deeply albeit he had several chances and had no hurdles other than facing her?"

"A jerk, plausibly," she said in a hurry.

"So am I," I replied tardily.

"Hmm... so who was the girl and how did you miss it?" she put forth an obvious question.

But I was still a fool for I couldn't reply her “YOU” for her first question. But somehow I managed to answer her second question.

"It was a month ago when only we both were asked to work from our old office for few days. No other colleagues were with us. We spent almost 9 hours every day together. Everyday when I started from home, I decided to propose her that day. But couldn't. At last, on the final day, I made up my mind to face whatever the consequence that may happen as a result of proposing her." I stopped to see her face clearly.

She sat still.

"To this day I remember the date precisely, it was July 7th. Before I saw her, I was badly in a mood to propose her as soon as I see her. I was wise till the moment I saw her. She waved her hand from the door as soon as she saw me. I became a fool again." I stopped and looked at her again.

She sat still. There was no change in her position. I didn't care, and I continued.

"I, being a fool, continued to work, work and work for the rest of the day. As the day was nearing its end, I thought of proposing her on our way back to home after getting rid of the tiresome work. The work was over. We both walked towards the gate. On the way, instead of thinking how to propose her, I thought of proposing her when I give lift to her till the bus stop. Unfortunately, she preferred spending 30 bucks for the auto to my bike. I didn't know whom to blame, either the god for making the day worse or my lead for making the day hectic. However, I just thanked them as they had created those 5 days for me. I was content for spending those five days with her." I stopped again to check her for she would show some kind of reaction by now.

"Oops, so sad..." at last she showed pity on me. I was happy as she paid attention for these words at least.

"You are yet to answer my first question," she was active in knowing about it. But I was wise this time to answer in a different way.

"That's not an issue now. All I want is to propose her before or, in a worst case, on her birthday," I said.

"Cool, so something was going in your mind then. I think I disturbed you unnecessarily. Sorry about that," she gestured her desire to leave.

"Nope, never mind," I answered in a way to keep her near me. As I was satisfied to say my love to her that way.

"Hmmm," she nodded.

"All I was thinking about was how to do it before her birthday," I said to her.

"It will be better to propose her on her birthday rather than doing it before. By the way when is her birthday?" she questioned again.

One of the major mistakes God did when creating woman was that he placed some kind of stuff in their brain which makes them ask questions repeatedly. Questioning someone is dead easy, but answering someone is, like, hell. Someone has to make them understand this.

"Next week," I said.

"Cool. Even mine falls next week," she smirked.

Idiot, even the date is also exactly the same, for no individual can have two different birth dates, I wanted to say her. But all I could do was to say that to myself.

"So, what have you decided?" a question again.

"About what?" I tackled her with a question this time .

"About how and where to propose her," she answered for the first time.

"Nothing is finalized yet. All I can say is I won't propose her straight away," I said.

"What? Are you crazy? Are you going to be a fool again?" questions again.

"Nope, I won't be that bad. I have decided to showcase my love for her and only to her through my gift for her. I have decided the gift too. I'm sure, on seeing it, she will, in one way or the other, ask me about it," I said in a low tone.

"Brave decision. But why are you saying it in a dull voice?" she questioned again. I bet women only have the capacity of constructing a simple sentence into an interrogative question.

"I searched for that particular gift for the past two days in almost all leading outlets, but couldn't find one. I am upset because of that only," I replied her.

"Oops, that's not good. What's the gift you were looking for?" she questioned.

"I won't say to you now. I will give it straight to her one day whenever I get it. Hopefully, as per the shopkeeper's words, I may get it in another two weeks," I answered.

"So, what are you going to do? Thought of any alternative?" it was her.

"What else can I do other than writing to her?" I put forth my opinion.

"Hmm... That’s a better idea, if not the best. But make sure that it shouldn't be an ordinary one. I mean, it should empathize your feelings without revealing it directly as you preferred."

"Yeah, what you say is correct. I had already decided on that too," I replied quickly.

"That sounds great. So, you are trying not to be a fool again," She said.

"Maybe," I shrugged.

"What's your plan?"

"I had already opened my heart in my diary. I had penned a complete account of why and how did I fall for her. I have planned to give my cupboard key to her on her birthday, which contains my diary," I paused.

"Are you going to say her that you have placed the diary in the cupboard and ask her to open it by herself? Instead, I would prefer you to hand it to her all by yourself," she said in a hurry.

"Come on, I'm a bit better than good. All i'm going to do is to drop her a mail saying indirectly about the diary. I guess she is smart enough to figure it out. Let her look into it and get back to me," I explained her.

"This sounds better too," she smiled.

"The only concern is that I'm afraid of the consequence that would follow if someone else sees them. I mean both the mail and the content in the diary. I'm actually worried about it," I put my concern in front of her.

"Suggest her that she should open the cupboard on her own without the knowledge of others," she tried to encourage me.

"Even then, if something....."

"You don't have faith in her, do you?" she intervened before I had completed my words.

"No, it's not like that. How can I love her without having faith in her. I trust her, completely," I elucidated.

I closed my eyes again. I don't know what she thinks of me and I don't know what I mean to her. All I know is every time I think of her, all I want to do is be with her, always, I said to myself.

I opened my eyes. She, who sat next to me and gave some valid suggestions was not there. I looked around. She was no where in the cabin. I moved my eyes towards the door, she was entering in. As she reached my place, I questioned her, "When did you leave this place?"

"What? Are you in a dream or something? I'm just entering office now," she said with an excitement.

"Oh, sorry. I was just kidding. You carry on," somehow I managed to avoid any further questions from her.

It took few minutes for me to figure out that whom I was chatting few minutes before was nothing but my imagination. I smiled myself at my illusion.

I rolled my chair towards my system. I saw her again, this time in the monitor. She questioned again, "Could you please say the content of that diary in a single line. I badly want to know about it."

After few seconds, I said, "It would suggest that- my love for you may not sound extraordinary, but at the same time, it's not ordinary either."

"Well, one last question," she pleaded.

"What again?" I asked.

"Could you say me what gift you thought of giving her first, please?" she asked softly.

Without answering the delusional figure, I closed my eyes and said in a mute tone, "Anything for you ma'am."

"Sorry, What do you mean by that?" she queried again.

"Anything for you ma'am," I replied again, and continued to myself on seeing her puzzled face, "You will come to know about it in a couple of weeks, hopefully."

Questions - Life - Answers

In this long journey of life, Somewhere, sometime, some questions will rise in one's mind, no matter whether it'll be answered or not. For some, there'll be answers at some point of time, either through some strangers or by one's own experience, and for some, one has to be in search of the answers as long as they could.

At one point of time, there were few questions in me. Like, Will the so-called best friends fall apart? If so, will they re-unite? If so, Will they be as close as they were before? As a matter of fact, it depends actually. But little did I know then that I'll get answers for these questions from my own experience.

It was 5 years ago, when I met him for the first time in my college hostel. It was the day when we got admission for our hostel. He introduced himself to me, as ganesh. I reciprocated to him with a reply, sunil, for it's my name. At that point of time, I never thought he would influence me to a greater extent. I never thought he would mean a lot to me. But that's life. Everything, or at least few things, happen contrary to what we think or exactly what we haven't thought. Mine falls in the second category.

In the next four years, our relationship grew closer and stronger. We had several small fights, misunderstandings, altercates and whatnot but nothing stood strong enough to break our relationship. Moreover, we had umpteen contradictions over our favourite things like movies, director, music director, etc (these are the inevitable things that college guys, sometimes girls too, argue over). So, it’s natural, we had strong disceptations whenever we discuss about these stuffs. I would tease him, by making fun of his favourite movie star and he would mine. In fact, we did this just for fun as neither of us really hated the other's favourite, but pretended to be so.

At times I wonder, how long will our friendship last without any problem, given we have these kind of differences? But the way we had been together answered me like it might never end. So, I never really cared about it much by then. But u know, when u have everything in control, u won't think of the super power above u. And when this is the case, he, the almighty, in order to show his presence, plays a game with u, which of course, at times, is more difficult than riding a bicycle with one leg. No other go, u have to play it, or in other words, he‘ll make u to play it.

He played with me too. An unexpected incident happened to me; well, to be precise, between us, in an unexpected way. It was one fine Saturday night almost a year ago, when I and ganesh decided to booze, me to give him company, and he to let out his stress created from his call centre job – one of his 3 reasons to booze. Well, the other two, in short – to relax, to spend time. Of course, one has to be a modern Shakespeare to find the difference among these three.

Actually, I had an important work to do on that day – to visit my relative, but I had to give that up not only because of the beer, or vodka which I would love to have rather than other high-alcoholic beverages, but because of my then-long-time question to be asked to him. I took it as a great opportunity to get an answer. What’s better than being inebriated for someone to get or give whatsoever answer one need? Being a tosspot, we boozed together several weekends, several days, in that regard. But I had not had the same opportunity as this one, as we were accompanied by few other friends too, all the time.

In order not to miss this golden opportunity, I had put forth him a condition of not including anyone for the evening. Needless to say, he nodded.

It was almost 8’o clock when he entered my room. Being a professional soaker, I had made all the arrangements, right from buying the drinks with side-dishes to setting the room in blue colour with the help of a zero watt bulb, thanks to Thomas Alva Edison – creating an almost-awesome ambience, thereby changing my room to a bar, minus A/C and Cushioned seats.

He entered in, and all I could see was a dull and tiresome face. He threw his mobile and bag on my bed and fell on the same. In order not to delay the party anymore, I took out the bottles and placed it on the floor. On hearing the clanging of the bottles, boozer-him got up twice as fast as he fell on the bed overthrowing tiresome-him who might still wanted to lie in the bed for some more time. I tear-opened the lays packets and other side-dishes and placed it around the bottles which stood in the centre.

Before I sat in my allotted place, he sat in his, and picked out a beer bottle and opened it with his teeth-opener. I felt ashamed for the nth time for despite being a professional soaker, as said earlier, still I had to depend on other soakers to teeth-open the bottles. I assured to myself that I should not rely on anyone next time. As a practice and knowing my calibre, he placed the opened bottle near me with a mocking smile and engaged himself in teeth-opening another beer bottle for him. I ignored it.

“Cheers,” we started. As we were about to empty our respective bottles’, I started to discuss about our future plan, the plan of directing a movie. Though we were graduated from an esteemed engineering college as B.Tech degree holders, our real passion was not to stun the world with some innovative-useful-cheap-whatnot kind of invention, but to stun the world with a movie, by directing it. I should say, though we had umpteen small-small differences between us, this same passion kept us together with a covalent bond.

We had already decided about working together in our first attempt, we hadn’t thought about our next though. I thought it would be a safe bet to start this topic before questioning him with my then-long-time question. I didn’t know whether it was a bottle of beer or his passion towards movies which made him excited at the topic, all i knew was he was more than excited.

He planned our work rather in a serious manner. He wanted us to enter into the field at our 28 years of age, and earn to save till then. So that it would help us to produce our own film, if we couldn’t find a suitable producer, well, a producer who believes in us and our script. We knew saving money for the span of 5 years won’t help, that too when we were in a not-so-big-salary giving companies, but then it could definitely add up. To be frank, his family back ground is too good to produce a film on his own. So, obviously to find a producer wasn’t a big deal for us.

Even then, we argued about the music director for our film. The funniest thing is we never discussed about the script till then – we had our own scripts in our mind though, but argued about the technicians. He suggested his favourites and when I suggested mine, he said that he himself would score better music than the one I mentioned. “Fuck your music class,” I wanted to say him, as it made him to think like that. As the situation was getting worse, I tried to change the topic. It would have been a wise decision had I not chosen the topic of querying him with my then-long-time question. But again, it was his, the almighty’s game which I had to play with him.

“Ok fine. Forget our deal. You yourself score the music and direct the movie in the way you prefer,” I don’t know why I said that. But I didn’t mean it.

“Thank you. At least, I need not bother about some imbecile who seldom has knowledge of choosing his favourite, let alone a script. Fuck you.” He said as he opened a bottle of vodka, of course, he teeth-opened.

I became curious to change the topic and questioned him, “Do you love someone?”

“What?” He asked, seriously puzzled.

“Ok. Let me put like this. Did u love someone or kind of proposed someone?” I asked again accenting on ‘did’.

“Why the hell are you asking this at this fucking point of time?” He miffed.

“I wanted to ask about it sometime before, but it took so long for me to get this kind of opportunity. Anyway, answer me,” I coaxed.

“Nope,” He said in a low tone and fuddled a glass of vodka.

I didn’t want to give up. I fuddled two glasses of vodka in no time and questioned, “Why the fuck did you message Indhu in that way?” I don’t know why I used the f-word and more importantly her name. She, Indhu, was my classmate in school for 7 years and unfortunately my college mate too, luckily or unluckily, not my classmate though.

“Indhu? What the fuck did she tell you? What the fuck you want me to tell?” He said as he threw the glass, sadly with vodka in it, at the wall. Me using the f-word made him free, unconstrained and whatnot, to use it again and again.

“Why the fu...” I stopped as I didn’t want to give room for him to use the f-word again. “Why the hell did u throw the glass? Why are you showing off, you schmuck?” I continued in an angry tone.

“Fuck you man. Did she send you to argue with your friend for this small matter,” He asked in a serious tone and took my glass, of course with vodka, to throw at the wall. I was too active to hustle it from him and gulped the vodka, fearing any delay would end up in painting the wall, again, with the shades of vodka.

I took the remaining vodka from the bottle, too, and gulped it in one go, fearing for the same reason and said, “See, she didn’t say anything to me. I just saw her Inbox while using her mobile on the other day, some three months before. She didn’t even know I had seen the message. From then I wanted to ask you. I did today.” I lied. I tried to hide the fact. The fact that indhu called me to say about that sms-thing, and how bad she felt on seeing that message, and so on.

“Yes, I messaged her, and of course, indirectly proposed to her. What the fuck are you going to do with that?” He shouted, sorry, the alcohol in him made him to shout. He didn’t even care to stop using the f-word still. He couldn’t for he was in a state of being controlled by the –oh group, of course, me too was.

“Idiot, I knew it on seeing the message. Why the fu..” I stopped again, not merely to prove i wasn’t controlled by the –oh group, OK, at least like him, but to make him stop using it for I was too tired to hear that word anymore that night. I continued,” for god’s sake, Why did you hide it from me?

“Why the fuck should I tell to you? Who are you to me in that regard?” He said. I guess he didn’t mean it though. But by then, I felt he meant it. After few seconds, he foot-kicked the vodka bottle, luckily no vodka in it that time, as his hands failed to find any. On seeing this, I was agitated. I pushed him on the bed.

“Screw you, your deal and whatnot. There‘s nothing more between you and me. No movies, no music, no Quarrelling. Thank God.” I said. I shouldn’t have thanked this Idiot, for he was the one who created such play. But I was too drunk to realise it. I walked towards the door, and turned towards the bed, where he was lying still and said “Fuck you” for the one last time and went out.

I came back after an hour only to find the room with all the things, including the broken bottles, laid in the same position as it was when I left, minus the schmuck in the bed, if I remembered it correct. I least cared about him and the broken bottles, too. So, that was a bibulous evening fiasco.

Neither he nor I called or messaged the other. Nine months rolled by. We didn’t even meet once in the mean time. May be that Idiot, the great almighty, had created the game a bit too long. It was on one fine day, at our classmate’s reception (a girl obviously, how could a guy get married at 23 years of age), we both met. At first, we hardly cared to glance at each other. But, these fights, say kindergarten fights, are forever part and package of life. We have to let it go. At one point of time, friends, good if not best, will surely come together before long (if one considers these 9 months as short). We, too, after initial hesitation, talked. It started slowly, but smoothly. It rose up to the level of - he telling what exactly had happened on the other day when he messaged Indhu and me apologizing to him, and followed by him apologizing to me. I really thanked God, the almighty (not Idiot any more), for that day.

Though we were emotional on that day, we couldn’t capitalize on it. I mean, still we are friends, may be good friends, but that touch we had before the fiasco is not found now. Till date, we even booze together at weekends, not all though. Still I can feel the difference, might be he too. We can’t help it.

We never spoke about the deal again – the deal of directing a film. We hardly share our personal matters. We hardly call each other often, etc, etc..... But we say we are good friends still and to be frank, we pretend to be so. And the thing is he is endowed with good talent in writing stories, screenplays. So, whatsoever it takes, or howsoever we are now, this thing is for sure, ‘a film by ganesh-sunil’, or ‘a film by sunil’ might not happen, but ‘a film by ganesh’ will be there in the cine history. And I will be somewhere watching it with pride.