Story continued from
Part 1
Part 2
All my plans and efforts went up in smoke. It was a heart-wrenching passage in my life. I roamed about in the wilderness of my forlorn life. I even missed the first day first show of the latest Chiranjeevi release. I let down my hero!
Minutes, hours, days, and weeks rolled on and I watched time pass me by, helpless in my hopeless status quo. In the meantime, competition grew by the dozen: guys with funky hairstyles. Guys that could play the guitar. Guys with bikes. Guys with money... they all swarmed around her and drowned her in an amorous cacophony and unbelievable attention. My interest in life and related stuff waned. I was inconsolable but I couldn't share my grief nor could I tell any one about the silent, searing, perennial pain. Despite my misery I still looked like a happy kid: my face was flawless. My boy-breasts were intact. Forget a mooch, I couldn't grow a pimple so I could announce to the green world that I had unshackled myself from the tyrannical grip of childhood and segued into the exciting, unpredictable waters of adulthood; I will always be the nice kid to her; I will never be the bad boy of every girl's dreams, I resigned to myself..
I fared miserably in the first PU exams. I scored all of 18 out of 150 in Math. My dad remarked, 'My! That's 18 more than what I expected.' I stopped going to school. My teachers and classmates forgot that I had existed. I was on my way to becoming the loser of the century. Through it all, she hung out with me, and treated me like her kid brother. I watched on as boys made a beeline to give her love letters. Not a single twit had the courage to utter a few words and make their case. They provided excellent entertainment to her though. She would come back and tell me about how each one of them had acted like certifiable morons. One guy I don't wish to name offered her Tamarind rice along with the love letter. Another offered to not take any dowry. Some guys displayed her name tattooed on various parts of their bodies: one guy had blushed after admitting to her that he had tattooed her name. When asked 'where?' He had mumbled 'inner right-thigh.' Thank god for small mercies. 'Why don't you pick one?' I asked her. 'Are you mad? Look at each one of them!' she replied and rolled her eyes.
In the meantime, her girlfriend became my friend and I guess she figured what was up. I mean I left so many clues that even our Police department would have figured out what was eating my brains. One lazy afternoon I was struggling with Thermodynamics, when her girlfriend walked in to my home. She did some small talk with my mom and turned her attention to my notebook. She picked up the book and started flipping the pages. After a few minutes her gasp exploded in my living room. My mom raised her eye brows, but jumped right back into her Kumudham magazine. I was staring at her with my eyebrows stretched so far that, they would have flown if I had tried harder. She showed the page that she was reading. The page had that stupid compatibility calculation of 'the' girl and me; you know you strike off all common letters and calculate the reminder using a formula and find out if you are going to marry her or not? Yeah. Laugh away. It wasn't so funny back then. She flipped through the other pages and discovered that I had filled up pages with 'the' girl's name. She dropped the book and looked at me. I nodded in resignation.
Later that evening I went for a walk and found the two girls sitting on a culvert. I stopped by to say hello. My girl was normal. The friend had not told her. I was perplexed why she didn't. Anyway, I finished my walk and was on my way back when I bumped into the friend.
'You obviously have not told her, have you?' She asked.
'Of course not.' I said, thinking 'I am waiting for my mooch to grow.'
'Hm. Don't bother with letters. History says that they don't work with her. Not even blood letters.' She said.
'I figured that one out all right. Do you have any suggestions?' I said and grunted a billion times as if a garden lizard walked into my windpipe.
'Create a fight. Make sure it is a minor affair; I mean it should result in her not talking to you for a few weeks. She will come back, you know her, when she does, break the news somehow.' She said.
Fireworks erupted in my heart. I saw it all happen: after the fight, we didn't talk for a couple of weeks. She came home after it had just rained. No one was home. She said 'How could you do this?' And I went 'I never knew that life would be so empty without you in it.' A profound silence ensued and both of us started talking at the same time. I went 'okay you finish what you were saying' She said the same thing.
'You go first'
'No no you first.'
We laughed.
Silence again as her Alanis laughter faded into the beautiful night. A cool breeze blew through my window, carrying the fragrance of the Jasmine flowers in bloom. Our eyes locked and I whispered, 'I think I lov...'
Screams of 'Hello! Anyone there? Yoo-hoo' brought me back to reality. The friend laughed and said, 'stop dreaming and good luck.'
I thanked her and as she started walking away, I asked her, 'But why are you helping me? I mean we hardly know each other!'
She swiveled on her foot, measured me up with her Chinese eyes, and said, 'I think you are cute. I'd love to have a brother like you.'
I wanted to say a lot but a pebble the size of an Apple got stuck in my throat or was it the Rakhi thread noose that tightened around my neck? As usual ended up uttering gibberish 'eh, heee-heee. Klmbighit ko? Horrrr!'
I went over the plan a million times that night. I chose the a$$ hole (AH) of our colony to be the fall guy. The AH is a brainless wonder. Scientists are still figuring out how AH manages to lead his life. What does he use for decision making? He has no brains! If only the scientists had asked me. I know what he uses to think. The AH was one year our senior but his best friends were kids from the kindergarten. No self-respecting adult would hang with him. AH thought he had an incendiary wit and he chose to exploit it to impress all the beautiful girls of the colony. I have to admit that he did come up with funny stuff once in a while, but his looks betrayed him. He made Hunchback look like Gregory Peck. I mean if you wanted to feel good about yourself, you took a picture with AH. Whether or not you looked good, the contrast that AH offered made you look 1000 times better than you actually are. And of course there is the oil thing. He had an oily face. Oil dripped, no poured, from his face. If Indian Oil discovered him, we can say good bye to our fuel problems. Okay, you know how much I hate him now.
The plan was to go bitch about 'the' girl to AH. AH would go snitch to her. Later, after a few days, I will use one of my super-juniors as a witness and prove that I never uttered a single word to AH. One stone. Two mangoes. This will make AH look real bad and give the perfect emotional niche to launch my love story. Air-tight plan. I explained it to the witness-to-be. We did dry-runs and all... nothing could go wrong with this plan we thought.
I chose the cricket ground to talk to AH. When Ah bowled I gave him curt compliments. 'Good ball.' 'Great bowling!' Ok that was not so curt. AH was surprised. After the match I sat next to AH and he launched into a self-congratulatory diatribe on his cricketing skills. Finally, after everyone left I started executing the plan. I spun stories about how she tailed me and is after me. How she can't stop coming to my home. I should have stopped there but I chose to seal it well. I told him 'even if she brings up some stupid idea like love and marriage? I am going to stop talking to her.' and I walked off into the sunset, blowing the imaginary guns in my hands and spinning them before I jammed them into the imaginary holsters, blissfully unaware that all my shots were going to backfire. Big time.
[
...await the concluding part. Hee hee.]
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