Monday, July 31, 2006

The characters portrayed are purely not fictional. if there is any resemblance to anyone then it is not coincidental.I hereby solemnly swear that the incident that is described here is true to the best of my knowledge.
I know what ur thinking…for what is all this build up for??? Actually the whole incident is just a simple one that might have happened to anyone.. but I could not resist exaggerating as this is my first blog and I want it to seem interesting.
Anyways the day was 29th July 2006 and it all began when my friends called me up and we all decided to get a belated bday gift for our friend Prabhu. Of course the immediate question that now springs in ur mind would be why is the gift belated??? But for those who know me too well will obviously understand that the idea of a gift simply slipped my mind like how rain drops slip on a glass pane and now coming to the next question.. why did this slip my friends’ minds also???..its obvious too..they are all MY friends.
So let’s not deviate anymore from the subject. We all had planned to meet around six to six-thirty in the evening in Hyderabad central after we came to a consensus (which was arrived at after several long hours of argument) that we would get the bday boy a formal shirt. Of course when my dear friends mention a time they always don’t mean the Indian standard time… they probably mean Saudi Arabian time. So I thought it will be too late by the time I get back home after dinner and so tried to pass the offer by giving some illogical excuse. But my friend Sowmi only knew me too well and completely grabbed my attention with those beautiful four letter word…SALE…ah.. how I love that word.. so i was lured to hyderabad central like how the children of the village were lured by the pied piper’s music.
So I calculated that we would all meet around 8.00pm IST. So I was there sharp at 8.00 pm waiting for my friends in Hyderabad central at the same time feasting my eyes on the clothes which were put up for sale. I was so engrossed in shopping that I didn’t notice that the time had flown like a quick breeze. It was already 8:30 and entry my tall, dark and lanky friend Venkat who has a notion that he is the ultimate techie guru of all times. But too bad we have to flatten his ego once too often. He also has the uncanny habit of calling all his male friends ‘man’ as if to constantly remind them every time that they were indeed male(thankfully he does not call his female friends women ;) )
So I think that gave you an overall picture about him. I would also like to add that his timing of entry was not all that good. I was jus looking at a beautiful kurta, which seemed to be begging me to take it…but I had to leave it all alone crying after me while I went to meet him.
Parting with my beloved kurta pushed me into depression and as most psychologists say depression causes hunger.. so now since the cause of my hunger is justified, let me move on with the rest of the incident. We went to fuel station our only place of refuge for two hungry lost travelers. But no matter where we went the crowd kept following us like the moon that follows us in the night.
The fact that we had to stand in a queue, place our order, pay and get the bill and then stand in another counter for food itself looked frustrating. And what was more frustrating was finding a seat among those hungry mongrels that refused to budge even after finishing their food, just to make a conversation as if it were the last day of their lives and they had to spill everything in their hearts before they left this mortal world.
Finally we split up to get French fries and pav baaji. I went to get the fries and Venkat left with a determined look to get the pav baaji. As I waited in silence to get the fries..my token number was finally called out and finally I got to lay my hands on the fries… but to my utter shock and horror I was not served tomato ketchup but it was substituted with mayonnaise( how can anyone think mayonnaise would substitute the unparalleled tomato ketchup) . With a sad expression I turned to look for a seat amongst the crazy crowd. And there it was, a two seater , which was just vacated by its inmates.
So now that my mission was achieved I began to look for my lanky friend to see if his luck was as good as mine. Continuing to scan the area I called up sowmi enquiring about her whereabouts, when a rude chap came and took custody of my hard earned possession, in this case my partners chair. Armed with only a cell phone and half in conversation with sowmi I ran to the intruder and demanded my prized possession back when he replied he would not return it with an expression in which kids usually say ‘finders keepers’. Annoyed with immatured men like this one I went back to my place sulking about the fact that the world was full of such brats. Still venkat had not returned with my food and I was starting to get worried that it would get cold. After another 15 minutes he turns with a stupid smile saying something about the guy forgetting the order…Guys …. Guys… Guys.. I sighed mentally…. they really cant seem to do anything by themselves..wat will the world do without women… it would be catastrophic.. forgive me for being a feminist but if you had seen all the guys that I knew in my life you would come to the same conclusion. Of course you cant blame venkat for just quietly standing there without even wondering that it has been over 15minuites and still the pav baaji was nowhere in sight..its in their genes.. always getting distracted by the women around them forgetting the very purpose of their mission.. and it was Venkats mission to get my food and he had almost failed.. but better late than sorry.. so we finished having our food and then entry Sowmya and Praveena.
So by now its 9.00pm IST and I see the two of them mumbling something about the traffic that evening. so to tell a few words about Sowmya and Praveena. First ill begin with Sowmya.. my ever radiant and talkative friend. She is the kind of person with whom you can have an interesting conversation even about boring subjects. And Praveena is my lanky friend who is the girl next door, with shoulder to lean on type (only too difficult for me to lean coz of her height).
So finally our team went about the mission assigned to us. We went rummaging through the various sections and finally cutting the long story short, we found the one that the three of us agreed to.. but Sowmi was not happy with the color though but we managed to coax her into buying it. She obviously thought ‘if u cant fight them then join them’.so finally after waiting for in queue to purchase our product we finally got it packed. It was then that Sowmya and Praveena announced that they were extremely hungry. So we had to go back to the place of the hungry mongrels. Finally by the time we ate and left it was 11.30 pm.. and I was sulking about the fact that I was late.
I have cut short many events and even censored a few that had taken place for the benefit of my friends and for viewer discretion. Eventually Venkat was bullied and beaten up by three girls and this shows that its hazardous for men to be among a majority of women.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Finally I would like to thank the people who were responsible for inspiring me to write this blog. Rabiya the eternal prodigy has inspired me to write a blog from time to time. I also thank Venkat, Sowmya and Praveena for making this blog possible.