The Death Of A Friendship

Wow, can't believe I'm actually posting on two consecutive days. Actually, being the closet nerd that I am, and encountering several traffic jams on my way to work, (Here's a question: Why do they call it "rush" hour, when traffic doesn't even move?) I planned out today's post carefully in my head.
Bless me father, for I have sinned. It's been 22 years since my last confession.
The basic subject of my post is a guy who I'll call Ronny. Ronny was my best friend, he called me every day, he rumpled up my hair, we sat around and chilled together discussing the mystery of the sexes. Sure, he had a crush on me once, but that was way back when. Now, we were nothing more than platonic. Why, Ronny had even fixed me up with his friend. All right, so that was a disasterous relationship--- me winding up not trusting guys for a LONG time after being cheated on twice.
Anyway, so I was finally happy. I was with Z. and he made me feel special. Maybe not as special as I would have liked to have felt, but he was a nice guy and I knew I could trust him. Love wasn't really in my scheme of things.
But then, four months down the line (my longest relationship till I met K.), Z. and I started having problems. Oh, perhaps it was my imagination, perhaps I was PMSing, but all of a sudden it was like I never saw him anymore. Z. was a pro-golfer, so he spent all day on the grounds and usually, spent his evenings with me. But it seemed of late he wanted more and more 'guys night outs' which usually meant 'guys-and-single-women' night-outs. I thought perhaps I was reading too much into it and called Ronny for some advice.
"Yeah, you should break up with him," was his response
"What?" I said, shreiked actually. I was pretty much hoping it would be no big deal, that all guys went through phases like that, that I was overreacting.
"Trust me, Mynna. Guys are bastards. This is his way of getting you to break up with him so that he doensn't have to do it."
"Um, in that case, shouldn't I not dump him?" I was genuinely confused.
"Nooooo. Because then he will dump you and it's better if you do it first. Trust me."
I trusted him implicitely, so I said thanks, hung up and called Z.
And it turned out, he didn't really want to break up with me, but since I had brought it up, it must be something that was bothering me and ergo, we should 'take a break'.
Ronny called at around one in the morning from the nightclub he was in. I thought, Oh how sweet, he's thinking about me even when he's out partying and picked up the phone and went 'Bwaaaaaaaaa-aahhhhhhhh'.
"You broke up?" he asked, all gentle concern.
"Uh- sniff-huh."
"Right, I'm coming over."
My mum adored him so I knew she'd be cool with the fact that he was dropping by so late. In any case, I opened the door before he rung the bell.
We sat down, I aching and wiht swollen eyes, proceeded to start crying again. I laid my head against Ronny's shoulder and he made me laugh. He was good at making me laugh.
Then he took my hand, looked deep into my eyes and said, "I've always been attracted to you."
My jaw, I'm sure, practically touched the ground.
"And I know you've been attracted to me too. I want to make you happy."
I'm not going to put in the 'gory details' here... use your imagination. Reader, please remember my state of mind. I was too unhappy to be offended, in fact, somewhere in me, I was thinking, "Okay, so what if Z. doesn't want me, other people do." But when he kissed me, my brain screamed, This is not right. I want Z. NOT Ronny!

*A couple of months later*

We never talked about that night. Ronny told me, quietly, sweetly, "I'm only thinking of your reputation Myn. Why should this go any further?"
Of course, since it was 'my' reputation I told a few close friends and left it at that. Somehow or the other, the news got back to his ex-girlfriend, who apparantly wasn't his 'ex' back then. She confronted me, her lips chapped from biting on them and beady tears on her lower lashes.
Yes, I told her the truth. I was fully prepared not to, but by then my loyalty to Ronny had waned, since he hadn't called me since then.
And Ronny sent me threatening text messages and phone calls, but after a good talking to from some of my 'manlier' guy friends he stopped.
I still feel guilty though.

I was a teenage workaholic

I've been accused of neglecting this blog lately, so even though I'm upto my ears in work, I shall post. (So there, Hima!)

What's been going on is three stories that I have had to do, plus the regular coffee supplement that I edit. So right now, I'm surrounded by print-outs, my phone is ringing its head off and I'm frantically pursuing people to 'Design faster!'

Besides that, my cool discovery of the day is Animation Shop 3-- the free trial version. I'm severely (or should I say Sirius-ly) addicted to a Harry Potter forums site, called Mugglenet Interactive (the link is here somewhere). Anyway, so since everyone there has a cool avatar and signature, I decided to create my own. My maiden attempt has flash images of an owl, then a phoenix and then a raven. And then --- ta-dah!-- it fades into the letters :'Harry Potter. Not Just For The Birds'. Quite cool, eh?
I think I'm in Sirius danger of becoming a nerd!

On to other news. Dee is off tommorow to go visit her boyfriend in Calcutta. (Humph, my boyfriend might as well be in Calcutta for the amount I get to see him). Anyhoo, so it's back to my mum's for me this weekend. Yes, I'm a wuss, I don't like staying in an empty house. I keep hearing mysterious 'noises'.

I'm planning to go for Spiderman 2 this weekend. Anyone here seen it who can give me an opinion?

And I think that about wraps it up. It's been a boring couple of days, you see-- to much work and not enough time to think!

*Elvis style lip curl* Thank you, thank you very much. 

Friday. Saturday. Sunday

And now, ladies and gents, a recap of my weekend.
Blargh. Monday morning. Blargh.
Not like Sunday's are much fun either. I don't like Sundays coz usually I sleep the day away. By the time I wake up it's dark, I have a gummy taste in my mouth and my day is over. Plus it's boring having nothing to do!
Friday was super-fun at Turquoise Cottage. I keep bumping into my ex-boyfriend there. It was an amicable breakup so we're always very decent to each other. He was my 'older guy', working  when I was in college, always teasing me about what a baby I was, the one who introduced me to heavy duty making out (not making love though, I stayed a virgin till 20), the one who took me to a different nightclub depending on what day it was, who waved away my wallet when I offered to go Dutch and who (this still makes me cringe) introduced me to his entire family the week we were dating!!
So anyway, back to TC, he gave me a pat on the head (that's me, everyone's favourite puppy dog) and asked me about life. Then him and K. shook hands, nodded at each other and Z. (that's his initial) zipped off into the crowd.
After that I bumped into my one time best friend N. (Is she still my best friend? Can we really make up for those times she didn't come through for me? Is it worth kicking my ego around to approach her again? Does history together really matter all that much?) She smiled, told me she was moving to England to live with her boyfriend. I said, "Oh really, when?" She sighed and said she didn't really know. I asked her for the party on Saturday night. Pat came the Pavalovian response: "I don't think I can make it." I walked away.
My mum told me this morning that N's step-father has cancer of the oesophagus. Quite serious. He's a good man. Should I call her?
On to Saturday night. Dee and I had the party all planned out. She had the day off, I had a book launch, from whence I returned and cleaned up, thank you very much!
The house looked fantastic, we rearranged the furniture in the 'lounge area' pushing the coffee table against the wall to create more space and tossing a table cloth over it. That was the bar and the most important piece in our decor.
Though the party wasn't as large as we expected it to be (a lot of people called and cancelled) we still wound up having a good time. First we played drinking games (slow at first and then in earnest when the electricity went) then sozzled and swaying, we danced and sang. It was just the right sort of company-- all easygoing people, who liked us and liked to have a good time.
Now comes the big mistake of the evening. Ginny (remember her from Manali?) proposed we drive to the next state-- Gurgaon in Haryana-- which really wasn't as far as it sounds, and go to the Buddha Bar there. So we wrapped up and headed there, only stopping to let Ginny out to get into her friends car. Drunk and tired (this was 2 am) we staggered into the Buddha Bar, looked around for a bit and then sat down. (Well, Dee curled up and went to sleep on a couch, but that's a different story). Half an hour later, we decided to screw them and went home.
Guess what happened? Upon arriving in Gurgaon, Ginny decided she had a headache and wanted to go home. Her entire party went to drop her back. Jeez!
Phew, is all I'm gonna say!

 

Ob La Di

Wow, yesterday's list-blog seemed to be rather popular, certainly more comments than I've recieved for days! Thanks to everyone who commented!
My prettification of my blog contibues, check out the newly added FAQ section. I hope you find it useful. ;)
This weekend I'm super-busy. I have three (count 'em: THREE) booklaunches in the span of two days. I have to meet my 'Manali Gang' tonight for drinks at my favourite pub in the whole world: Turquoise Cottage.
(Why I like T.C: a)  It plays all the oldies from the '60's to the '80's, which I love b) It's cheaper than most places c) It has great decor.) Anyone reading this in New Delhi should certainly check it out.
I also have to in the meanwhile squeeze in working on the coffee-supplement that our paper publishes and that I edit, which means writing a whole thingie on 'Being Indian' as the next issue comes out around Independence Day (August 15: freedom from the British). Help would be much appreciated!
I have to co-ordinate a party, for which I still haven't invited anyone (Dee, if you're reading this, don't kill me!)
Ooh, I got my Manali pictures back from developing (yes, I'm one of those dinosaurs who still has a camera with actual "film"). I've got the sweetest picture of K. and my dog, Gudiya up on the "walls" around my desk. They're both sorta squinting into the camera, K. is smiling so his dimples show, Gudiya's looking like she's thinking, "These humans!" But in the Manali pictures I swear I look like a freak of nature. I just keep looking at them and thinking "Oh my God! Is that what I look like?"
Off to smoke. Will write more later.. I feel inspired today! 

EDIT: I've created a new blog! Please visit it here and tell me what you think! It's not a personal blog, though, so be warned.

List-o-phile

I've become totally addicted to american baby blog (check link from yesterday). I'm halfway through the archives and I can't wait to see what happens next. The story is simple enough, a Singaporean guy married to an American woman and they have a son and a daughter on the way. But he writes very sweetly and simply. You know how some blogs just grab you?
I'm in a list-making mood today, so I'm going to do some:

Happiness is:
> The new issue of Cosmo on my desk, waiting to be read.
> Driving with the music and A/C turned way up, on absolutely empty roads
> People asking me where I've been ever since I returned from holiday
> Finishing my major work yesterday, so I have time today to surf and blog.
> Reading the new re-written Mahabharata and feeling connected to my roots.

Things to look forward to:
> Friday night tambola (a variation of Bingo) at the Defence Colony club.
> Saturday night party at our place (oh f*ck, still have to invite some people!)
> Wearing the absolutely drop-dead, look-again sexy red dress that my dad bought me from Mango, UK.

My favourite names:
> Maya: meaning Illusion
> Anoushka: no clue what it means, but it sounds pretty
> Sharona: From the song My Sharona.

Things happening around me:
> Come As You Are by Nirvana, just ended on this guy's computer. He's been playing disctinctly gay music all day. I'm talking about Michael Learns To Rock, that song Milkshake etc. The scary thing about him is that he has his girlfriend's name tattooed on his arm!
> Someone is whistling.
> People are complimenting each other about page layouts.
> The guy who gives the most acerbic reviews to every hapless movie that crosses his way has given something the rating excellent. Hmmmm...!
> The ache on my left shoulder is increasing annoyingly.

 

Older men are sexy

I suddenly noticed as I was typing this that my font looked different. Oh joy.. there's a 'fonts' pull-down box, a colour box and even if my eyes see correctly-- an image box!
Today I've been rather bored. Yesterday was a book launch in a hotel--- a very famous author's son wrote his (his father's) biography and there to launch it was a very famous actor. Here's a hint: the actor was accompanied by his wife, an actress in her own right, and his best friend in Delhi--- a politician. Still clueless? Amitabh Bachchan, silly! (If you're Indian, you really should be reading more newspapers), if not Amitabh Bachchan at 60 is still one of Indian cinema's biggest superstars.
Today I decided to experiment a little with my blog and set up the cutest hit counter (see the bottom of the page). The only thing is, I don't think it works, coz I've checked my website twice and the numbers still say zero. Hmmm... any words of wisdom?
But all in all, I'm quite proud of myself for setting it up. *pats self on back*.
To go back to Amitabh, I think it's unbelievable that someone that old could be that sexy. Take Richard Gere for example. Now he makes my toes curl everytime I come across a rerun of Pretty Woman or Runaway Bride. But he's old enough to be my grandfather.
Amitabh doesn't do that for me, but he does make me want to be still and listen everytime he talks. And since I belong to the 'generation that doesn't oil it's hair' (English, August) that's a rather remarkable feat for me.
Psst.. I've also added a daily cartoon feature.. enjoy! :)

Windows open:
A movie review site--- for work.
One of the better blogs I've seen in a while.
Bravenet site tools manager.

 

a room with a view

It's me. I'm back.
I think holidays are just like people's best invention. Whoever thought that a lazybum like me could get excited about going for a loooooong walk (uphill, too, I might add) just in order to sit by some river?
Or that a person who rarely gets hungry, like me, could devour pizza, mo-mos, lasagne, humus and pita bread and still be hungry afterwards?
Whoever would have believed that a person like me, normally shy and reserved, to the point of stand-offishness, would have gotten along so well with a group of people I barely know?
In fact, I even discovered that two people in my traveling party read (and not just Sidney Sheldon or John Grisham either) they had read Sylvia Plath and JD Salinger and we had a long discussion about the Bell Jar.
Then there was a yummy (and I mean absolutely del-ect-able) Israeli guy who we spotted with his rather homely girlfriend (humph!). He was so pretty, with curly brown hair and pink cheeks which matched the pink of the cashmere stole he wore around his neck (and it didn't look gay!). We stalked him, I'm ashamed to add, mercilessly, collapsing into giggles everytime he passed!
And the shopping! Old Manali was one big flea market, with tons of clothes and interesting little things called hash crushers (which make rolling a spliff easier apparently, with spikes that crush the tobacco and hash for you inside the device). I picked up a wooden one for K, which has a separate chamber to store your uncrushed hash. The things these hippies think of!
Imagine if you will, vistas of mountains everywhere you look. If you strain your eyes, in the distance you can make out a few snowcapped peaks against the pine covered ranges in front of you. There's a nip in the air, you can fill the chill as you inhale and as you walk you can practically feel your cheeks taking on the rosy hue of the mountain dwellers around you who call out greeting as you pass.
That was Manali.

Bridget Jones c'est moi!

Cigarettes: 1 (so far), Alcohol units from last night: 5, TV binges 1(so far, but the Friends repeat comes on in a bit so will have to change the number), Times reread Bridget Jones' Diary: several.
I found myself facing a huge sound system with a Dj for the second night in a row. And at private parties at that. You see, usually when I go for parties, they're small affairs. Someone's computer is blaring out music, drinks sit on top of a table, most people bring their own and you settle comfortably in your jeans and t-shirts into conversation groups.
Not so with these two parties. On Friday night, I went to my friend Puja's house. Puja died about two years back in a horrible car accident which made it to all the headlines, and we, her college gang, make it a point to keep in touch with her family as much as we can. So since her parents were having a party and it was her brother's birthday, it was a pretty fancy do. There was a DJ who started out playing pretty hard-core trance but when the adults (I mean, more adult than us) drifted to the dance floor, he played some great oldies. While Puja's mum made it a point not to serve any hard liquor in the room where we were, there was plenty of wine which we guzzled. K. came to Puja's for the first time, I introduced him to her parents and brother, but I really don't think I needed to. He's the kind of guy who is comfortable in every situation and by the end of the evening has made himself four or five 'new best friends'.
We were supposed to go elsewhere from there, but as it turned out it got rather late so we went home instead.
Saturday night rolled along and I was still pretty dehydrated from Friday. I don't get hangovers normally, but when I do they in with a vengance.My normal complaint is 'dry mouth', when your lips are chapped and bleed a little and your tongue feels furry and like it's stuck to the top of your mouth and you feel the world's problems could be solved with some water.
Anyway, I've said before that I'm going to Manali, right? Only, K isn't coming coz his college starts on Monday. So I'm going with a friend of mine called Ginny and her two pals, sisters called Ridhi and Sidhi. I wanted to spend some time with them before actually getting to Manali and wanting to gouge my eyes out because I had nothing in common with anyone, so when Ginny suggested we go for a party thrown by her younger brother's friends, K, Dhati and I tagged along.
It actually wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. We kept to ourselves in a corner, the music was nice enough, if a tad too Punjabi --- and if you're not Indian, you're probably not going to grasp what too Punjabi is, so never mind. And there was plenty of free alcohol, fancy too! with not just Smirnoff, but Smirnoff Twist and not just Bacardi, but Bacardi Limon!
So that was my weekend. How were yours?
And by the way, all anxious enquirers, Gale (my muse, see the last post) and I have resolved our differences! Hurrah.

Writer's Block

I've been on leave since Tuesday. This is no reason to stop blogging I know, especially since I only leave for Manali on Wednesday. But ah, that commonest of common excuses-- writers block.
I hate writer's block. Being a print journalist, it is a malady most of us strive to avoid. It's actuall pretty easy to avoid, when you're doing a story, because if you've done your homework, you have people's quotes supporting what actually happened and voila! You have a story.
Being creative on the other hand, isn't always easy. I bet ol' Shakespeare got writer's block as did Eliot. What did they do? Well, it was easier in their times to get away with it, I suppose.
I still believe in Muses. My muse is about as lazy as I am, she visits occasionaly, waves her magic wand of inspiration over me and vanishes. Never stops or stays for tea, or sits and chats about my future plans. Yup, they don't make Muses the way they used to. My Muse is called Galaderia, a good old family name, but being the modern creature she is, she wants to be called Gale, if you please.
I ask you, is any self-respecting Muse ever called Gale? I told her not to be silly, that it was too reminscent of a strong breeze and someone as "gentle" and
"inspiring" as her should never succumb to being called that.
Do you know what she did then? Sulked! She's as old as the hills, but is sensitive about her age, so we pretend she's a teenager. I'm hoping she'll stop sulking soon and pay me a visit, because it's high time I got out the 'novel in me'.
So a little compliment to Gale to end this post. She's intersting looking, my Muse is, with long purple-green hair, skin the colour of filter coffee and very large silver eyes. She is inordinately proud of those eyes, always fiddling around with my mascara to make them look bigger, or fluttering her eyelashes at me. It may work on the men she muses for (because these days it's hard to get an exclusive Muse, all to yourself, you have to share), but it makes me rather giddy.
So Galaderia, if you're reading this somewhere, please stop sulking and come back. I miss you, truly I do.
This is what most modern Muses look like.

Surfin' away

It's a rushed sort of day and yet I feel so lazy. I have a lot of work to wrap up before my upcoming holiday, stories to file, stories to track, things to be put in order... phew! All this for a mere two weeks!
And to top off my list of worries, I still don't have a required friend/chaperone to come on the trip with me and K. (coz our parents aren't exactly thrilled about the idea of the two of us going alone, you know?)
To take my mind off all this, I decided to blog surf for a bit, to see if anything particular caught my fancy. There are times when something in another blog inspires a stream of thought for my own.
So..presenting Mynna's round-up of the five most recently updated blogs as of 3.51 pm, Monday, 5 July.
Crap Corner: What looks like a promising blog, despite its terrible name. (Honestly, people should learn how to name their blogs appropriatly). This one has only two entries, but its tagline reads 'Short reviews of music'.
Read My Email: I was like huh? when I saw this one. Wouldja really be interested in someone else's email? Apparantly April from New Jersey (hey, lots of April's out there) thought you would be. Some of the emails are nice and some are the variety that I delete instantly. She sure gets a lot of junk mail!
Ooh.. this list is getting harder. I keep skimming past the ones with Japanese writings and one promisingly caleld A Clockwork Orange but when I finally clicked on it, turned out to be in Portugese..!
Okie time for some stats, as my other browser window loads. On a general survey taken by Mynna (TM) of For The Fat Lady Internet Surfer's Coorporation (also TM), it was found that more women than men tended to blog about their persoanl lives. The men had purposeful blogs, the women seemed more to digress. When asked for a comment, Mynna said, "It's because women feel the need to unburden, and as there are fewer people today ready to listen to your crap, the internet serves as a confessional."
A writer and his web blahg: This one is also from India, from Chennai to be exact and handed me a useful little link called the Indian webblogger's ring. It seems a nice enough blog, only a trifle ponderous, so don't go here if you just want to skim.
Okay, I know I said five, but it's hard to find quality blogs! So here's my last one.
Adventures in Goat World: This is a nice, funny blog. She's even put a little not to her relatives in there, which i think all of us anxious not to have our parents read what we write should emulate.
Happy browsing, equally bored people!

EDIT: 'For The Fat Lady' is now the first link under google search for Mynna! *passes out cigars and champagne*. (Said Academy Award style) I'd like to thank all the little people that helped me to get here today!!! :D

Everybody needs a summer holiday

First off, many thanks to Hima-the-lovely for the template to attach links to my page. At the moment there are only three, but I will go on adding to the list.
Secondly, hi! to my roommate Dhati who has just returned from Leh and who I've told about my blog obsession. She's going to log on for the first time today to see what I've been upto while she's been away.
Everyone meet Dhati. She's a little crazy, yes, but then so am I and we have lovely moments of total insanity together. Then there's her 'Monica-from-Friends' side, which is not so lovely, because it's rather annoying having people clean up around you. So, I guess you could say she's sort of a borderline schizo. But we love her anyway.
Anyway, enough about Dee (get your own Blog!), on to more exciting things. I'm on holiday from Tuesday onwards (yay!) for two. whole. weeks.
So my boyfriend and I are planning to go on a little trip to the mountains, maybe do some trekking (yech) and hang around in Old Manali, a lovely little hill station up in the Himalayas (nice). So that means I won't be blogging for sometime, next week. All two of my readers please stand notified!
Photos of the day:From the paranormal gallery.

Scary!

The most totally spooky thing just happened to me. Out of boredom I Yahoo searched my name (Number 8 for Mynna by the way!) and then searched Minna, which is what most people know me as. Here's what I got.
The search for Stanford senior Christina "Minna" Sandmeyer ended Friday evening when the body of the missing student was found in Palo Alto's Foothills Park. According to police officials, a visitor to the park found the body approximately 50 yards down an embankment. Sandmeyer's identification, journal and bicycle were found nearby. No note was found. Authorities are completing the investigation, said Dan Ryan of the Palo Alto Police Department. Ryan said that the death appeared to be a suicide. Sandmeyer, a 22-year-old civil and environmental engineering major who planned to return to classes in September after a yearlong break, had last been seen July 13.
And everyone knew her as Minna...
Big deal you say? Here's what spooked me out. This happened in July. It's July now. She was 22... I'm 22! I mean, hello, can anyone else see the spookiness?

Once Upon A Time

Today I'm going to cheat a little and post something I had written earlier. I was thinking about the song 'Unsent' by Alanis Morrissette. (I'm SURE I spelled that wrong!)and I thought of this guy, so I decided to put that little chapter of my life up.
The first person I was able to identify myself as “having a crush on,” was Akshat Prasad. Akshat was eight years older than me, a friend of a friend’s brother and he was slightly chubby with long sideburns, but to my love stricken twelve-year-old eyes, he looked like Elvis.
Elvis was an artist; I was still too callow to know much about. My current musical tastes were restricted to Ace Of Bace, UB40, Bryan Adams and Joey Lawrence (who was adorable. Whatever happened to him?) I knew Elvis lived a long time ago, was called the King and girls, now my mother’s age, used to be crazy about him. But since he bore such a strong resemblance to my beloved, I bought a cheap poster at a Diwali mela and stuck it up over my bed. Elvis had his lip curled, and this was during his “chubby” phase, so really, he and Akshat did share a lot of the same features.
But to Akshat I was just another one of the annoying children who hung around the colony. He was a gentleman though, never failing to smile sweetly at me and say, “Hi” in his voice, which is firmly imprinted in my memory as soft and husky.
I don’t know when things started to change. Perhaps it happened after I started to menstruate, the summer when I was doing a desperate dance of catch-up with my peer group. All I knew, was suddenly I had acquired a 19-year-old boyfriend, whom I refused to meet alone, for fear he might try to kiss me. My friends too, were surging ahead with their seventeen-year-old beaus.
That was the summer Akshat started dating Jai. Jai, short for Jaishree, was someone we all adored. She was about nineteen or twenty, I think, when she and Akshat started “going around”. She wasn’t beautiful, at least not in any conventional way. She always wore loose, low cut tops, so that when she bent over you could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her hair was very long, with slight waves and her sharp pointed chin had a cleft in it.
I don’t know why I never felt jealous of Jai. Perhaps it was because I never regarded Akshat as someone I could get. He was a god, to be set up on a pedestal and admired from afar, a gorgeous entity that should only rightly be dating a goddess. Meanwhile, I lived in the scattered largesse of their love.
Luckily enough for me, my best friend at the time had an older brother. The very same older brother who had allowed me to encounter Akshat in the first place. No doubt, like all “younger sisters friends” universally, we flirted with him and he teased us indiscriminatingly. But he and Akshat were best friends and they allowed my best friend and I to ride with them in their cars. I remember once we did that, and the sun was shining and the music was playing and I was just so damn happy I couldn’t get the grin off my face. I might have been smiling too hard though, because my friend’s brother and Jai exchanged a condescending smile.
Pretty soon, even Elvis wasn’t a satisfying image. I needed a picture, something to kiss before I went to sleep. I sought the help of a friend of mine, whose claim to fame as that she had 14 boyfriends in her school, all madly in love with her and ready to do her ever command. As the rest of us went to different schools, this information was never refuted, although I did find out recently that she spent most of her school life, unliked.
Still, back then, she was in the same school as Akshat and she was a good friend to me. She pulled out three years worth of old yearbooks, one of which contained the picture of Akshat’s graduating class. We waded through scores of photos, of boys and girls, smiling hopefully, with the sun in their eyes and teachers who remarkably kept the same dour expression all three years. Finally she said, “Found it!”
There it was. Prasad, Akshat, sandwiched between Punj, Swapna and Paul, Mary. I peered at the tiny photograph, with barely a millimeter of his face visible and then I cut it out of the magazine and took it home.
It had a pride of place position in my ‘secret drawer’, with an empty cassette cover as a frame. Akshat had gone out of town, with a play, as I recall, and every night I wrote to him on notebook paper. I spritzed the letters with perfume as soon as I wrote them causing my alphabet to blur. Then I gathered them all up, tied them with a ribbon and let them lie next to the picture. I never sent them.
Akshat and Jai had a lot of fights towards the end of their relationship. ‘Dance-parties’ were the thing we did in those days, always following the routine of ‘fast song-slow song-slow song-fast song’. My best friend threw a party, along with her brother, and so both her friends and his were invited.
I saw Akshat with Jai, downstairs, sitting around the statue we liked to hang around. The two were having a serious discussion and Jai turned her face away when she saw us. Akshat however watched us walk off and then called out my name. “Yes?” I answered, my heart throbbing, my sweat pores suddenly activating. “Save me a dance, okay?” he said, smiling his crooked smile.
I thought he had forgotten but sure enough, when the party was winding up, he came up to me and we danced. Never did I wish so hard that Meatloaf would just go on singing.
Looking back I wondered whether he was just doing it to make himself look good in front of Jai. But then I loved him even more for being nice to a gawky twelve-year-old.
My love for Akshat ended when he cheated on Jai, who discovered scratch marks on his back. I tore up his pictures, because his cheating on her meant cheating on all of us.
Jai started dating my best friend’s brother.
Discovery Of The Day: This blog is really..um.. different! Oh and also while on the quest for originality, check out April's blog, very nice!