CHAPTER 16-THE MAIDEN GETS CAUGHT

The next morning mom was shocked to see my swollen eye and red cheek. I had tried to rub ice on it all night long and made sure I did not come out of my room before 10.00 am because that is when dad left for work. Mom was curious to know what had happened but she didn’t have to ask anything just the look in her eye was enough for me to understand what was going through her mind. So I told her a story that we had come up with and said that a few guys tried to steal money from Timmy’s friends and when we tired to stop them they hit us and ran away from there. I don’t know if mom bought my story or not but she didn’t say much afterwards and returned back to her chores in the kitchen when the phone rang and I ran to get it. Mom asked who it was and I said it was Tarun calling when actually it was Preeti who was very worried about the events of last nights and started throwing questions at me rapidly. I tried to explain it to her that mom was around and I couldn’t disclose much right then but everything was alright now and there was nothing major to worry about. She was not satisfied and said that she wanted to meet me tonight and see for herself. So I told her I will meet her at our usual place after tutorials.
So in the evening I went to the tutorials with a band aid on my forehead even though I wasn’t hurt there just to increase the affect of injury and get all the sympathy love I could get. After tutorials I went to our secret place behind the apartment in colony and waited for Preeti to come and shower me with love and tell me how proud she was of what I had done and how thankful her friends were. For around 25 minutes I strolled up and down the alley and kept peaking at the way where she was supposed to come from. There was no sight of her anywhere and I wondered what had happened. Finally my patience ran out and I went home dejected, disappointed and worried because never before had Preeti failed to turn up for a date.
I guess I wasn’t able to hide my disappointment at the dinner table because mom kept looking at me in a funny way. She looked to be angry at something but I wasn’t really interested in anything and kept thinking about how I was ditched. Next day while on my way to school I stopped at a telephone booth and called her place but her mom answered and I slammed the phone down and went to school. Throughout the day all I could think about was why hadn’t Preeti turned up to meet me. Bad thoughts ran through my mind and I even thought of trivial issues like maybe the band aid that wasn’t really required that had pissed her off. At cricket practice I did not bat or bowl and just stood there and yelled out instructions to the juniors taking out my frustration on them. I couldn’t wait for the evening when I could go to the tutorials and ask her what really had happened.
Usually when I get home I have my lunch and straight away head to my room to watch some TV but that day I sat in the hall by the phone waiting for Preeti to call and quickly answered the phone every time it rang but her call never came and I was dejected once again. I got ready earlier than usual and left for the tutorials and waited near the gate for Preeti to come with her gang of girls. All passerby’s kept asking me what I was doing near the gates like a watchman and all I did was smile meekly and said I was waiting for a friend to bring me my notes that he had borrowed. But going by my reputation I don’t think any of them bought my story.
Finally Preeti arrived and I was expecting her to be angry at something and throw a lot of tantrums instead she straight away came to me and started apologizing vociferously. I knew the ball was in my court now and my time to call the strokes so I asked her with a glum look on her face that I needed a very good reason from her for not turning up and apologizing just wouldn’t do. She looked surprised and told me,
“You’ve got no idea what happened, do you?”

I vaguely replied “no”.

She then narrated the events of last night and said that after tutorials when she was about to come to meet me, my mum along with Timmy’s mum had caught hold of her and told her she knew what was going on between her and me and asked her to keep away from me. She also warned her to never call me ever again and if she caught her doing so, the consequences will be extremely bad for her and she will even go to her parents and complain about this inappropriate behavior.

I was left stunned while Preeti was saying all this and shook my head in disbelief when the events of the last couple of days came rushing back to me. I realized that mom had eavesdropped in our complete conversation with the cordless phone she had kept in the kitchen with her and since then had been acting wierd. I knew now why she looked angry at dinner and hadn’t spoken much to me since then and that is when I recollected something. Dennis the menace, the cartoon character was a pretty funny kid but he did say a few things that made a lot of sense and that day I realized something he uses very often to be extremely true, “you can fool some people all the time and all people some of the time but you can never fool mom.”

Thankfully Preeti had taken it all very sportingly and our challenge in maintaining our relationship had increased ten fold but as all normal teenagers with their rebellious streak, the more they tried to stop us the better we got at doing it.

CHAPTER 15-SLAP SLAP BANG

So by now everyone in the community knew about our love stories and that is why they say that word of mouth is the best way of marketing. But you should not believe all that you hear. All of us, i.e all three couples would look for an opportunity to meet each other and because everyone was talking about us we wanted to keep it really discreet and the more we tired to do that the more it looked like we were doing something wrong and the more people followed us and kept and eye on our movements. There was a parking lot in the back of an apartments in the colony where we used to meet and one day someone spotted a couple kissing there and there was speculation that it was Preeti and me but the fact of the matter is that we were the only couple among the three who hadn’t even thought about kissing yet. My friends used to ask me and I would get really irritated about what base I had reached yet and how was I to tell them getting to any base was the last thing on my mind and that I loved her with all my heart.
Navratri was here and like every year all of us were planning to go to the celebrations organized by a neighboring colony. Preeti and her gang would be there too and we had planned that whatever opportunity we get we were going to play garba together. Five nights went by; everything was going smoothly and according to plan. We were dancing all through the night and sleeping and day dreaming all through the day. My parents weren’t happy and Preeti’s family especially her elder sister who too came there every night was giving her a hard time. On the sixth night, the gang and I were near the food stalls munching on some delicious chat and mithaai while the girls were playing garba. A couple of romeos from the locality approached them and started acting fresh. Billu was the first one to notice it and alerted the rest of us. I rushed towards them and confronted the goons and one of them pushed me away. All this was getting a lot of eyeballs and undue attention towards us. I tried not to fight even though I felt like beating the hell out of them but once the bloke started verbally abusing me I gave him a low blow and he started shrieking in agony and withering in pain. In the mean time the other bloke had run away to call on the rest of his goondas and I knew this was going to be a big bad fight. Sallu suggested that we send the girls’ home before it starts getting ugly and Billu said we too should leave immediately. But Rajesh and Ameet were not leaving until they dealt with the goons who had the balls to tease their girls and make sure that no one else ever tried doing it. I was scared and apprehensive but did not want to the others to think I was being a coward so I unwillingly said that we should stay. So we sent the girls home and waited for the consequences of our actions. I felt sorry for Shehbaaz kalu,Motu,Billu,Sallu and Timmy, they had nothing to do with the fight except for the fact that I was involved and now they would have to get beaten and bruised because of me. I also felt proud to have such good friends who did not question me whether I was right or wrong and stood by me. But all this was like the last thing on our minds. All we could think about was how we were going to deal with the situation and what were we going to do if the guys were really strong and powerful. I wished Hardik would somehow magically appear there with his gunmen and scare the hell out of the romeos. I thought of calling Tarun who was always ready for a fight for a solution but it was already way past midnight and he would have been fast asleep. In the mean time Timmy was creating a bigger gang for our fight. He had a few friends who were his age, Altaaz, shoheb, firaaz and Mubeen who came forward to help us but looking at them and their skinny figures I knew it was only going to add to the numbers and not our strength. Now a few more people would be getting a sound beating because of me. All of us were really tense and sat there with glum faces and hardly anyone spoke to each other. Billu tried breaking the tension by saying that if Timmy called a few more of these skinny malnourished looking friends of his then maybe they goons would pity us and let us go and all of us could just manage a nervous smile. This was the first time Billu’s joke hadn’t cheered me up. We waited for 10 minutes before the enemy arrived but it seemed like an eternity.
Fifteen angry looking men were standing in front of us. At the helm of the group was a bald looking neta type uncle in white kurta pyjama and he straight away grabbed Ameet, who was closest to him by the collar and pulled him up from his chair. We all yelled at him asking him to let him go and told him to listen to our side of the story before he did anything. He gave Ameet a mighty jerk before letting go of him and he fell among the chairs. Motu acted as out mediator and told netaji what had happened and it looked like he understood what had happened but suddenly one the blokes from the back slapped Motu and asked him to keep his tone lower. The velocity of the slap shook Motu up and we too felt the shivers and all I wanted to do then was yell bhaago and get out of there as quickly as we could. But Motu lowered his voice and continued with our story, with his right hand firmly placed against his bruised cheek. Turns out netaji was the father of the bloke who I had punched in the sack and wanted to know who did it and if we told him who it was he would let the rest of the group go. All eyes wandered towards me and I said I had done it and he called me forward and asked his son to slap me. The eve teaser swung his hand with all his might and whacked me across my face and got me in the eye too. My eyes were moist and watery and everyone thought I was crying. Netaji felt that he had humiliated us enough and his job here was done but before he left he called the organizers of the event, pointed towards us and asked them not to let anyone of us inside ever again. It was a premature end to the navratri festivities for all of us but I was thankful no bones were broken. I learnt a lot of things that night; in India only the powerful and the unruly have a say, never start a fight no matter what, my friends were the best things that happened to me, Timmy’s friends were my friends too, by being slapped and standing up for the girls I had become a hero in their eyes and no matter how hard to try to hide your wounds, mom will eventually find out about them.

CHAPTER 14-STUPID STUPID LOVE

It was official. Preeti and I were a couple but we did not want anyone else to find out. Of course other than the people we were always surrounded by i.e. my friends, her friends, my friends at school, her friends at school, her friend’s boyfriends and friends of our friends. Pretty soon everyone got a whiff of the affair and we did not know who to blame. Was it our friends who had told the others or was it us who had told about it to so many people or was it our being so deeply in love that everyone could see it in our eyes or maybe it was a combination of all three.
Before Preeti proposed and we became a couple we used to talk to each other casually in front of everyone but now that we were a couple there was a sudden urge to hide the fact that we were talking to each other from everyone. Now we used to meet behind parking lots, talked in sign language in the tutorials, avoided each other in public and call on each others home phones when our parents were not around. We talked about the same things as before but said I love you to each other after every three minutes. We had been brought up that way because everyone around us always gossiped about people having a affair and used to talk about couples in derogatory terms like he’s after her and they have hooked up and stuff like that but nobody ever said that they are in love or anything positive about being a couple and that put the thought in our minds that what we were doing was totally wrong and unacceptable.
In school, I could not concentrate and always thought about her. When the Biology teacher talked about how the heart pumped blood and how it passed through arteries and veins all I could think about was how my heart beat became faster every time I saw Preeti. When in the history class the teacher talked about Rasputin and the affair with the Russian Queen I would be reminded of our affair. When the Hindi sir talked about Krishna and Radha I would imagine it was us and even during recess I would be busy updating the guys about what was happening with my relationship. As soon as I got home Preeti would call me from a telephone booth and ask the guy there to ask for me and if anyone else answered the phone tell them it was Tarun who was calling for me. The thrill and excitement of the affair became so exciting that we started taking bigger risks. We would decide on what clothes we were wearing and wear the same colors and she would walk past me as many times as she could when we were standing in the colony. We would buy chocolates for each other and share it when ever we got a chance to pass it around.
I also hung around a lot more with Rajesh and Ameet (Preeti’s friend’s boyfriends) and we used to go on group dates to the Public Garden for a walk early in the mornings because we thought that nobody we knew would be up so early in the morning. But we were wrong there were thousands of people there every morning and hundreds of them were well acquainted to us. So when were on our leisurely strolls too we had to keep our eyes and ears open and our instincts razor sharp and be ready to run and hide if we saw a similar face. We did not even know how many times we had been caught and seen with each other and there was this constant fear that if someone went ahead and told about it to any of our parents we would be in deep trouble but the adrenaline rush and the thrill of it all kept us going and we used to come up with newer ways to meet and hook up. I had also befriended guys who lived in Preeti’s apartment so that on the pretext of playing cricket or visiting them I could catch a glimpse of her.
Then one day at school in the English class we were studying the chapter about Chacha Nehru’s letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi when he was in prison and in one of the letters he had written to her that she should do whatever her heart wished to do but make sure that she doesn’t do anything that she wanted to hide from the others because if you want to hide something from the others it is because your conscience is telling you that it is wrong and one should never fight their conscience. That got me thinking and I thought that when I knew I was in love and was doing nothing wrong why did I want to hide it from everyone and why did it feel so wrong? I decided that I should tell my folks about my girlfriend and come clean and clear my conscience but as soon as I got home and Preeti called me using Tarun’s name and I realized that ideologies like Nehruji’s did not work in the real world and even if they did there was no place for it in my world. I was having too much fun being secretive and wrong. It was all over the top and crazy stuff but being in love makes you do so many stupid things and I was doing them all at once because according to me once your heart starts beating faster your brain stops functioning properly and mine had but I did not regret it one bit because when you are in love, stupidity is your shadow.

CHAPTER 13-IGNORING HER IS BLISS!

My ego was hurt, my heart was broken. I had imagined the camp to be one of the most memorable and happy chapters of my life but it had turned out to be a tragedy. I couldn’t understand why Preeti had reacted the way she did. As soon as we got back from the camp Preeti’s elder sister who was equally hot came up to me and gave me a lecture on how they were from a good family and if word got out about Preeti and me her name would be tainted forever and her dad wouldn’t allow her to attend tutorials anymore and if I did not give up on persuing her she would get her cousins to beat me up. I was a little scared but now getting Preeti to agree to become my girlfriend was a matter of pride for me. How could her sister have insulted me in front of my gang who as a matter of fact just sat there and saw the whole tamasha? I was even more motivated now and that is when love also became war for me. But I was really confused too, so I decided to share this with the boys at school. None of them had any experience in wooing a girl but I just wanted to get the burden off my chest. Tarun couldn’t help but laugh his heart out because for the first time in his entire life he got a chance to pull my leg. The others too were sarcastic rather than being sympathetic and I felt like a loser. But Andy gave me an idea. He said he had seen a Telugu movie in which the hero tries to woo the girl but fails and after that he starts ignoring her and making her feel insignificant and finally the heroine realizes what she is missing out on and makes up for her folly. I thought it was a stupid idea because that was exactly what Preeti had asked me to do, to leave her alone. Anyway, I had nothing to lose and decided that I should give it a go, what other choice did I have anyway? So I started ignoring Preeti in the tutorial, I would smile pleasantly and say hi to her friends Shruti and Samreen but when she tried to make eye contact I would make a face and look the other way. If she was coming towards me from the opposite direction I would suddenly change the direction in which I was going and made sure that she knew I was running away from her. I ignored her completely. I did not ask about her to her friends anymore and when they tried to bring up her topic I would tell them without any hesitation that I was over her and did not want to talk about her. I could see that my strategy was working but I wasn’t really sure about it.

One day while talking to Rehman, a tuition mate who I spoke to often because of our common interest in cricket the topic of girls came up and he told me that his cousin Ruheen had a huge crush on me and thought that I looked a lot like Shah Rukh Khan and wanted to be friends with me. I had seen Ruheen around a lot in the tutorials and also when she came to pick up her younger brother after school who was three classes junior to us. But I had never given her any real attention up until then. She was really pretty and made all the boys’ heads turn every time she stepped inside our school gates and the best thing about it was that she was oblivious to the fact that she was so gorgeous. I was happy and relieved at least some girl wanted to be friends with me but I had already signed sealed and gift wrapped my heart, ready to be given to Preeti. But my mind started working faster than a computer and I came up with a master plan. I would befriend Ruheen and talk to her after tutorials everyday and make sure that Preeti was looking. I thought that would make her jealous about the fact that the importance given to her by me would decrease and anyway girls are a weird lot, even if they don’t like a particular thing they wouldn’t want anyone else to have it.

Rehman introduced me to his cousin and we were friends. Now every time she came to school I made sure I was either batting in the nets or if sometimes I was bowling my run up would become longer and I would bowl a couple of miles faster. I didn’t know where the sudden burst of energy came from but she had that effect on me. I would try my hardest to impress her but I was careful because I did not want the teachers to notice I was flirting with a girl in the school campus. We exchanged gifts on our birthdays, valentines and friendships days and pretended to talk to each other everyday after tutorials but there was no real conversation. She was really pretty, elegant and lady like but the spark between us was missing. I could never imagine her as my girlfriend no matter how hard I tried. On my birthday she gifted me a musical card that could sing Happy Birthday and looked really expensive. She had addressed it from- Me, I couldn’t take a chance and have anyone at home become suspicious that it was given by a girl so I changed the Me to Mizbah (If you remember, he was Tarun’s arch enemy in school because he had told on him once and gotten him badly beaten by Suzie Miss.). But my folks wouldn’t know all that. Now it was her birthday and my turn to gift her something equally good if not better, so I thought hard and bought her an audio cassette of the upcoming Shah Rukh Khan movie Dil se and got it gift wrapped for her. But as soon as I got home I couldn’t stop my urge to listen to the songs once before I gave the cassette away so I tore the gift wrap, removed the seal and enjoyed listening to the songs a couple of times. I was engrossed listening to the songs and lost count of time and was late for the tutorials and mom was shouting at me to get out of the house right away. I realized that I did not have enough time to gift wrap it again so I removed a few stickers from the birthday cards given to me by my friends and stuck them on the cassette case and gifted it to her. She really loved her gift and the decoration too. But I was actually happier than her because Preeti had seen me giving the gift to Ruheen and ran away from there. The next day her friends told me that Preeti might have a soft corner for me because she kept mentioning my name a lot of times since the day I started talking to Ruheen and was very anxious and eager to know if we were seeing each other. They also told me that she was almost in tears when she saw me gifting something to Ruheen. Just then Preeti arrived and extended her hand towards me as if she was signaling a sign of friendship. I wanted to jump up in the air and celebrate but instead I shook hands with her and smiled. I was happy my plan had been successful but Preeti did something that totally swept me off my feet she went down on one knee and said the three magical words “I love you.” I was blushing like a girl and quickly replied I love you too and grabbed her hand and brought her up. I cleared things with her about Ruheen and told her that she was just a good friend and nothing more than that. I had won my love and also the war but I lost a good friend that day. Ruheen never spoke to me from that day on and for many months I thought it was because she liked me and was disappointed that we couldn’t be together but one day Rehman cleared my misconception and told me that it was because one of the stickers on the cassette I had gifted her read “I love you sweetheart” and she thought I had proposed to her and then cheated on her. My stupid mistake had resulted in a huge misunderstanding which eventually helped me in getting my girl. Life is like that- cruel and unpredictable. I had found love but at the expense of breaking another fragile heart.

CHAPTER 12- LOVE IS IN THE AIR

I was trying my hardest to get Preeti to like me but to no avail and out of nowhere God gave me an opportunity. The Yuva Sangh- a non-profit organization that worked for the development of the youth through various programs was organizing a two day camp for hiking and trekking at a place called Gun rock. It was a really beautiful place filled with hillocks and valleys and greenery everywhere. It also had the best spot for rappelling down a hill. Unfortunately Hyderabad has really expanded far and wide now and there are no guns or rocks left there anymore and all you will see there is a concrete jungle.
It was the ideal place to fall in love with nature and with each other. The Gang was going, so was I, like we always did but this time Preeti and her friends were coming too and I was really excited about it. It would mean I could spend two whole days with her, turn on my charm and make her fall truly, madly and deeply in love with me. I did my best to impress her by being really cool and pulling other peoples leg. I thought I was really smart to do that and I would win her over and to an extent I did because she changed places and came and sat closer to us in the bus with her friends. But my superiority complex was shattered when the faculty taught us how to tie different types of knots and I couldn’t even get one right, I still cannot. My bubble was completely burst when they taught us how to tie a harness and I needed at least six goes to get it right. Kaalu was the first one to try out all the activities. He did rock climbing really easily using the three point technique the faculty had demonstrated to us and when it was my turn I was clumsy and slow and I hurt my elbows and shins but what hurt most was my ego being shattered. I realized then that everybody has some or the other talent in them and I should respect them and learn from them. But my pyar ka bhoot hadn’t died down yet I was still trying my hardest to impress Preeti. In the evening during the camp fire I did a stand up spoof on all the expressions and rumblings I had seen and heard from the group when they were asked to rappel down a cliff or squeeze through a gap between two rocks and made everyone laugh till they cried and I finally could see my hard work reaping some rewards. When I was having dinner with the gang, Preeti’s friend Shruti approached me and said she wanted to talk to me about something,

Shruti- How was your day today?

Me- I had a lot of fun. (while on the inside I was still coming to terms with being such a jerk for so long)

Shruti- How are the elbows now?

Me- Its nothing, being a sportsman am used to such minor injuries (still grimacing with pain every time I moved my hand from the plate to my mouth to eat)

Shruti- Well, you were really funny during the camp fire.

Me- ah! That was nothing (trying to act modest but blushing with pride)

I was getting restless because this conversation was going nowhere so I finally asked her what was it that she wanted to talk to me about.

Shruti stumbled and mumbled and finally asked and I quote “We were wondering which one of us you do not consider as your sister?”

I wanted to burst out laughing and say there’s no way I would consider any of you as a sister because I think all of you are totally smoking hot. But better sense prevailed and I thought over it for a couple of minutes and said –“Preeti”, she gave me a huge smile and walked away. I thought I had finally made my feelings known to her and it had been much easier than I had imagined. I did not share this with the gang as I wanted to hear it from Preeti before I told anyone and besides my experience of sharing a secret with my friends and expecting to be a secret was unrealistic. The whole night I couldn’t sleep as my heart was singing with joy. The next morning I was the first one to get ready and I waited with bated breath for the girls to come out from their rooms so that I could see Preeti and give her one of my best heavily dimpled hugest of smiles. But when I did that she stared at me with never seen before hatred and anger. I couldn’t imagine what was wrong. I was really curious to know but we had a lot of activities lined up and I couldn’t get a chance to talk to her till noon. Finally at the lunch break I managed to get some proximity to her and she told me that she had only considered me as a friend and nothing more than that and if I ever tried to talk to her again she would complain about it to her dad and get me beaten up by him. My heart started to feel really heavy as soon as I heard those words, my heart beat was racing, my legs felt lifeless and numb. This trip was not going as I had expected. My elbows and shins were injured, my ego was hurt and now to add insult to my injury my heart had been broken too. I tried to put up a brave face and told her I had never thought of her that way and she had mistaken my intentions and moved away from her with my tail between my legs before she made a big scene and stripped me of my self respect or what ever was left of it. I had been rejected even before I could propose. Love was in the air but unfortunately that was the only place where it was.

CHAPTER 11- I AM IN LOVE

It was a Sunday but our tenth class board exams were approaching. Geeta Mam had planned a full day study camp for us to revise a few important chapters. I was in a very irritable mood because I knew I was not going to get any rest and recreation for the whole week now. I reluctantly had a bath and called the gang to make sure they were attending classes today and left for the tutorials, I was a bit earlier than the others and was waiting for them near the entrance when my eyes wandered to who all were present in the class room. I saw a glimpse of someone pass by and my heart skipped a beat. I was eager to know who it was, so I moved a bit closer to get a better look and realized it was Preeti. I had seen her everyday for the past couple of years but she looked different today. She had tied her hair in two plaits like little girls do and looked really pretty. Her tiny nose, small eyes and fair complexion made her look almost like a Japanese girl. The green colored dress that she wore was really pretty and she looked breathtakingly beautiful in it. I had never felt anything like this before and I did not know what it was but I just wanted to keep looking at her. A touch on my shoulder from behind startled me and brought me back to my senses. It was Muez and he was wondering what I was up to. We headed inside the class and I made sure that we sat right behind Preeti which was unusual for us because we were known as compulsive back benchers. But I convinced Muez that we needed to pay attention in class today as our Tenth class Board Exams were approaching. For the first time in life, tenth class had benefited me in someway. The others in the gang were a bit late in arriving and I was pleased that they couldn’t sit with us that day because I did not want them to know what was going on because even I did not know what was going on. Was it what they call falling in love? Or did I just like the way that she looked today? For the rest of the day I couldn’t take my eyes of her. Before today I had always made fun of her and her friends and called her names like Japanese Fan, and Chinki (thats how us racist Indians call the Chinese people) but things had changed now. During the break when a guy tried to tease her I targeted the guy and made fun of him till he cried. I realized I was being extra nice to her from that day on. The care a damn attitude was gone and I was gentler when talking to the ladies. I couldn’t gather the courage to ask her to be my friend but I spoke a lot to her friends now and tried to impress them with my sense of humor. Whenever I got a chance I would sit behind her in class and keep admiring how beautiful she was. I loved everything about her, the way she smiled at her friends, the way she looked confused when she did not understand a question, the way she said thank you with a tilted head when I picked up the pen she had dropped and gave it to her and especially the way her hair moved when a gentle breeze was blowing.
I was in love for the first time and I wanted to share it with someone, so I told Billu about it and asked him not to tell anyone. He promised he wouldn’t but he told Sallu anyway. So now the three of us talked about it in signals in the group whenever she was passing by. Muez suspected something fishy was going on and asked me about it so I told him about it and asked him not to tell anyone about it. He went ahead and told Timmy anyway who in turn told about it to all the others in the gang. So now all my friends knew that I was in love and every time Preeti and her friends went past us they would tease me by saying “abe saale dekh Bhabhi jaa rahi hai” and I would blush too as if we were already blissfully married. I did not even know if she knew about my feelings for her or if she liked me, that is when Billu told me that two of her closest friends, Samreen and Shruti already had boyfriends who were in our class and he was well acquainted to them. He said that I could befriend them and they would help me in getting my girl.
It felt really strange but I had to approach Rajesh and Ameet and share my feelings with them. They gave me some inside information on what Preeti liked in a guy and what was her favorite flower and chocolate and stuff like that. So now whenever she was around I would talk loudly to my friends about how I loved the smell of jasmine and why red was my favorite color. I even spent 37 rupees and bought a Snickers bar that she loved and shared it with her friends and her which was abnormal for me as I hardly shared anything with anyone let alone expensive candy. “Oh the things we do for love.” But all the hard work paid off and she considered me a friend now. We still did not speak much but she smiled and said hi every time she saw me. I hated it now when we did not have tuitions and felt sleepless and restless if I did not see her for a day. I thought about her all day and all night long. I imagined where I would take her on a date and how good we would look together even before knowing if my feelings would be reciprocated. Those were the best days of my life and those were the worst days of my life. Best because I was cut off from the real world and lived in my own dreamland and worst because I did not know what would happen with my sports, my studies, my life. Meanwhile the news of me being in love with her was spreading like wildfire and I guess everyone except her knew about it now and that is when I learnt a really important lesson in life, never tell anyone a secret and tell them not to share it with anyone because people don’t like to be instructed on what to do and what not to do and one mans secret is gossip for the rest of the world.

CHAPTER 10- RIOT IS WRONG

It was the day of Ganesh immersion, the city was shut down and all the roads were blocked. There were cops all over the place and all of us were instructed not to go on to the roads without informing our folks. It was a day all my mates from the neighborhood looked forward as the procession happened only once every year and for us, Muslim kids it was a holiday when we were free as we did not have to go for prayers nor visit our relatives or greet them. Some of our neighbors were part of the Scout’s troop and gave voluntary duty on the roads and helped the police with the security. The rest of us gathered on the terrace of the tallest building in our locality and watched the procession go by. We used to enjoy the sights and the sounds of the procession especially Motu, who never took his eyes of the road and kept enjoying every moment with his binoculars. He used to call us whenever he saw something special like this year he had spotted a Ganesh idol made out of pure gold and one that looked like Shankar Bhagwan. I would call Chottu to find out what time the Khairtabad Ganesh idol, the tallest one from the city would pass from Abids and we would wait eagerly for it.
Timmy wanted to go on to road for a while and have some kulfi and dance for a bit so we asked the watchman of our apartment to accompany us. We took permission from our parents and headed to the roads excited and pleased. Blaring loud music, people dancing like crazy, throwing Prasad and water at the public watching them was what we enjoyed the most. Once Billu and Timmy had eaten their share of kulfi,bhel puri, dahi papdi and drank three glasses of lassi each, we headed back to our places and decided to gather on the terrace again after lunch. I couldn’t imagine anyone could still be hungry after hogging on so much street food but knowing Billu’s appetite I knew he was still hungry, he always was.
Around 3.30 pm all of us gathered on the terrace again and were playing cricket when Motu spotted a huge commotion and we heard sounds of firing and people running all over the place. In a few minutes, everyone from the neighborhood was on the terrace wondering what was going on. Police sirens and ambulances were spotted everywhere. Motu was glued to his Binoculars and had spotted a major stampede happening near Central Publishers Stationary. My mom along with the other ladies from the apartment looked really worried and some of them were weeping. Salman’s dad handed him his cell phone and asked our mates to call their parents and inform that they were safe and with him. We did not understand what was happening. The procession happened everywhere but nothing like this had ever happened before. Timmy’s dad then arrived and said that he had just watched the news and there had been a scuffle between Hindus and the Muslims near a mosque in Begum Bazaar and this minor incident had escalated to the other parts of the city too. The old city was on a lock down and the police were on high alert. Just then we saw flames and Yam General Store near my school was burning. The smoke from its flames rose high above the city and it looked like the whole city was covered by a sky of smoke. Someone mentioned that the crowd was turning unruly and had done this mischief as the shop was owned by a Muslim. I couldn’t imagine who would want to burn down the store of the poor Mushtaq uncle, a pious and religious man who used to give us candies for free and joked that if he could he would never take any money from any of us but he had too to earn his livelihood. He was a Muslim but he did not differentiate or bother about who came to his shop. He treated all of us equally. I knew Dhawal would be really sad that his favorite store had been burned down and had been reduced to ashes. Where would he buy WWF trump cards now, where would we go when school was over and the canteen was closed? There were thousands of Hindu kids in school like him who would be heart broken. My thoughts were broken by the sounds of fire brigades arriving and firemen trying their best to stop the fire from escalating. My dad asked all the women to take the children home so that we were not exposed to anymore of these gory scenes. We wanted to stay but were forced to go home. Eventually we decided to stay together and watch the news in Salman’s house. The news reporter said that there were incidents and riots all over the city and now a temple had been destroyed by some Muslim rioters near Charminar and the police were having a hard time controlling the anti social elements and the Rapid Action Force and the Military had been pressed into action. I wondered who these haters were. I wondered if this would change things forever. A lot of my friends were Hindus and my dad had spent all his life doing business with the Marwadis in Begum Bazaar. I did not know any Hindus who hated me or my family and I knew for sure that neither I nor any of the Muslims I knew hated the Hindus and my belief was reinforced when Tarun’s mom called my place to enquire if all of us were alright and when I saw the sights on the news of a Muslim, carrying a bleeding Hindu Priest on his shoulders out of a Temple and putting him in an ambulance and the fireman trying to douse the fire at Yam General Store had a red Tilak on his forehead. Just then mom said something that cleared our thoughts, No religion in the world preaches fighting and violence and in any situation a riot is always wrong. The people who indulged in these riots did not have a religion and they only did all this to achieve their own selfish motives at the expense of the poor Indian public and played with the sentiments of thousands of people. She also said one more thing that none of us will ever forget and is my mantra in life, “WE ARE INDIANS, BEFORE WE ARE ANYTHING ELSE.”

CHAPTER 9- SEX EDUCATION

Biology was a very boring subject. It was generally depressing when our teachers talked about stomata, stigma and the Human Digestive System. But one Chapter that everyone was looking forward to was Human Reproduction, which was chapter 9 and on pages 156 to 183 in our text books. I remember it so distinctly because every time we opened our text books we inadvertently turned to that chapter and looked at the diagrams of the male and female reproductive organs.
Chapter 8 had been completed and we all knew that the next day we were going to study the only chapter we were excited about studying in our 12 years of schooling. Andy was specially looking forward to this day and couldn’t hide his excitement. But it was nothing like what we were expecting. Sheela teacher came in and started talking about Human Reproduction and mentioning strange stuff like Ovaries, eggs, ovules, X and Y chromosomes etc. The only word we were familiar with was sperm and that too was called spermatozoa. Dhawal and Chottu giggled every time it was mentioned and Jogesh looked a bit embarrassed. Most of us were really disappointed that the chapter had not lived up to our expectations. What we wanted to know about was how to do it, what was the right way to do it and I specially wanted to know how could the well endowed African American porn star in the porn movie could keep going for 2 hours non stop. It looked like a tough task and if that was the way it was supposed to happen I couldn’t imagine Andy could have ever had sex. He couldn’t climb the stairs to the dining hall without looking dazed and out of breath and looking at his thin body structure his family doctor could have ordered him to keep of sex for life and if he ever did it he would have succumbed to death because of an asthma attack. Imagine how the headlines in the newspapers would read the next day. Young Lean Malnourished boy succumbs due to his sexual urges. The bell rang and I guess Sheela teacher had guessed that all of us were totally confused and knew what kind of questions were running through our minds. So before leaving she informed us that the chapter will be completed in the next couple of days and then we would have a session on Sex Education where all our doubts and questions would be answered.


It was Saturday and all of us were sitting in class in our colored clothing as we were allowed to wear what we liked and not be stuffed in our uniforms and ties on Saturdays. We felt liberated. I was looking forward to the session on sex education and discussing it with my mates from the colony on Sunday and boasting about how I knew more about sex than them. Just then the Principal walked in and closed the door behind him. All of us were startled and stood up to wish him Good Morning. He wished us back and asked us to sit down and then announced that he was here to take the session on sex education.
I thought it was ironic that someone who had given up sex by taking a wow of celibacy was going to talk to us about Sex Education. I wondered when the last time he had done it was or had he ever had sex in his life? He started the session by asking us to shed all our inhibitions and ask him all the doubts we had as we were mature now and should not believe in the false stories and imaginary myths that our friends told us about sex. He said that in America everybody was given sex education by their parents and they called it talking about the birds and the bees. Now that’s an expression that I have still not understood and I never will. Where do birds and bees come in while talking about sex? In the words of famous Indian comedian Vir Das, I would be willing to pay good money to watch a bee doing a bird doggy style. The principal talked about how we should be vary of HIV and aids and how we should talk about sex and not treat it as a taboo. This again got me thinking that we Indians are the biggest hypocrites in the world. We treat sex as a taboo and still we are the second largest population in the world. The Principal answered all our questions and cleared our minds to a large extent. After that we never giggled or felt shy whenever sex or Human Reproductive organs were mentioned and now I believe all young people should be given sex education. I know I will talk about he birds and bees to my kids will you?

CHAPTER 8- THE MYTH OF CLASS TENTH

The first day of our last year at school, the first day of tenth class. I was really excited at seeing all my school mates again after a while. Everything around was new, brighter uniforms and shoes, cooler school bags, heavier text books and a new class room. Our new class room XB was located on the ground floor which was ironic as it was right adjacent to the basketball court and if we peeped out from the window we could see the canteen area too. I wondered who had come up with the brilliant idea of having the tenth standard classrooms on the ground floor where we could be easily distracted. It was like making a difficult thing even more challenging. But then my eyes drifted a bit to the right and I noticed that the Principal’s office was too close to our comfort. I don’t know how many feet or meters away it was but it was so close that if he farted I am sure we could have smelt it. Maybe that was the reason our class rooms were on the ground floor so that the Principal could keep an eye on us.
Dhawal and I sat on the same bench and wondered who our class teacher would be and hoped it wasn’t the boring Miss Suzie or the too strict Miss Madre. Hardik was late as usual and we watched from the windows if he was going to make it before the assembly started.
The bell rang and the whole school gathered in grounds for the first assembly of the new academic year to be greeted by an unfamiliar sight on stage. A tall man with a weird hairdo and lots of marks on his face stood before us in a white cape and all of us started speculating, whispering, murmuring and guessing as to whom he could be and why couldn’t we see our principal. The man walked up to the mike and there was absolute silence now. He welcomed all of us back to school and introduced himself as the new Principal for our school and informed us that our outgoing principal had been transferred to a school in Warangal. His name was Brother Franklin Aroona, he said he was a gold medalist in biology and had been educated in USA. Andy started smiling and whispered what the point in being a gold medalist in biology was, when you have taken a wow of celibacy. Because for him, biology only meant Human Reproduction and he had been eagerly waiting for that chapter to be taught in class and had mentioned it to us at least a 1000 times since the Nepal Trip. The reverend also said that he was a state level basketball player at which my eyes wandered in search on Hardik, who was standing near the gates and finally made it to school 20 minutes late. He looked pleased as he had wondered if tenth class students would be allowed to participate in sporting activities and the signs looked good for us so far. The assembly ended and we headed back to our classes and waited for our class teacher to arrive. It was relief when Mrs. Sheela, the biology teacher entered our class as she was very friendly and helpful. She had been teaching for the last 10 years and all of us respected her a lot. But the disadvantage was that she knew us all too well and immediately changed our seating arrangements in a manner that our gang was separated and we were sat next to the nerds.
Weeks passed by and class tenth so far was largely incident free. All the hype and anticipation had died down and there was nothing special about the tenth class except that we were going to have board exams and pre finals. The subjects too were much easier than what we had expected. All of us felt that the 9th standard math’s was much tougher than what we were studying now. The examination format was easy too. We were given a lot of choices like answer any one from the following three and so on, which made it very easy for us to decide on what to concentrate on and what to leave out. We also had the additional help of Model papers and all our seniors had always told us that the questions would be from these model papers only. Jogesh had also found out that the persons who correct our papers would get 7 rupees 50 paisa per paper that they check, so they wouldn’t be too keen on giving too much attention to any answers and would only be bothered by the amount of papers they corrected. It felt like a mockery of our hard work and learning. The most important year of our lives would be judged by people who got small change for their work. Chottu was particularly agitated by this and said that our education system is run by a bunch of jokers and all of us agreed with his views. So all the build up, all the exaggeration about the tenth class being the most important year of our lives had come to this. We had special classes, expensive tutors, we had stopped going on our weekend trips to Treasure Island in anticipation of our Board exams and then we found out it was all just a Hoax. Like Amir Khan said in 3 idiots, our education system will make all of us well trained but not well educated.

CHAPTER 7-BLACK,BLUE,YELLOW AND RED!!!!

We were in Nepal and we were getting bolder by the day. We knew we weren’t going to get this much space any time soon and wanted to make the most of it. Everyday we became a bit more frivolous and naughty. Shah showed us some places that he had seen on his previous trip but were not part of our tour plan. There were mostly things like massage centers and local markets where we could get branded shoes and clothes at a very reasonable rate. Hardik was interested in a massage that was given by a blind man who was very popular but I talked him out of it as I did not think any straight guy would like to be touched by another guy especially a blind one. What if he was not really blind and only pretended to be? What if he asked Hardik to take off all his clothes and liked what he saw? What if he tried to end the massage with a happy ending?
Last day of our tour and we had the whole day to ourselves. The professors had allowed us to spend the day as we chose by either going shopping or staying in and packing for home but we were supposed to be back by 4.00 pm as we were scheduled to leave by 5.00 pm. Everyday we got a bit more used to the place, we knew the people, their customs a bit better now. We also knew where all the hot girls would be and at what time. There were a lot of schools who had come for their excursion to Nepal and the girls from Bishops Cotton School, Bangalore were really hot. We used to pray that we bumped into them at least once everyday. Some of the girls gave us smiles and giggled amongst themselves when they saw us. We never knew if they were being flirty or just laughing at how our mouths opened and our eyes popped every time we saw them in their tiny shorts and little skirts. Sights like those were a rarity in Hyderabad and we wanted to make the most of it. Shah had found out that the girls had come to Nepal on the same time as we did and he guessed they too would leave on that day. He thought that all the girls would be doing some last minute shopping at the local market near by and as they too were away from home we might have a chance of befriending some of them and getting their phone numbers if we tried. Tarun and Dhawal got really excited about this, I was excited too but I knew we weren’t going to get that lucky. Anyway, I decided to go with the flow and we reached the market. No sooner had we gotten there we started searching for the babes from Bangalore but with no luck. It was getting closer to 2 pm and the girls were no where in sight. We were getting more desperate and restless by the minute. Some of us had already given up and were already settling for what we saw in abundance there, Nepali girls. Those beauties were everywhere, shopping, selling or just wandering about the place like they were there just to entice us and all of them smiled at us, maybe out of courtesy but it was all the encouragement we needed. Sometimes we used to ask them for directions and where we could find certain stores so that we could start a conversation but never succeeded. It was our last day in Nepal and I think Shah thought it was his last chance to have some fun. He wanted to be with a girl. So he zeroed upon the hottest Nepali shopkeeper in the market who was selling scarves, wooden baskets and other souvenirs. He went up to her and started chatting her up by asking her the prices of various goods in her shop but with no intention to buy anything whatsoever. She was polite and patient initially but after 10 minutes of all speaking and no spending she looked a bit irritated and tried to brush him off. Shah was persistent tough and did not give up. I think he knew no one other than the gang was going to know about this even if he did not succeed. At least he would have given it his best shot and had some fun.
Shah tried to be a bit bolder now and tried brushing his fingers across her palm when she showed him a keychain. she looked at him with anger in her eyes. Shah was scared now but he gave a sheepish smile and continued talking to her anyway. Her anger had reached simmering point now and she asked all of us to get out. Shah thought she was being a bit rude and said something that sounded to me like “anyway we were not going to buy anything; we were here just for you.” I don’t know what he was thinking when he said that. Maybe he thought she would take it as a compliment or maybe she would feel a bit shy and her temper would cool off. But none of us had expected what happened next. The hot NepaI girl lost it. She started abusing us and yelling at us at the top of her voice. Hearing this, the other shopkeepers from the neighboring shops and tourists started gathering around us. She said something to one of them in their native tongue and we knew we were in deep trouble. We panicked and Chottu said “Bhaago” and we all started running like mad dogs. The Nepali’s ran after us like the cops ran after the bad guys in old Hindi movies. Chottu, Hardik and I managed to escape to safety but the others were not so lucky. We hid behind a huge boulder and from our vantage point we could see a couple of guys had caught hold of Dhawal and Andy and beat the hell out of them. They were made to lie on the floor and kicked everywhere. Shah tried to run but was caught by a guy who was much more agile and fitter than any of us. He was punched in the eye and the face and his nose started bleeding. Tarun tried to help him but the Nepali guy who was much smaller in stature, looked like he was the illegitimate son of Jackie Chan jumped with both his legs in the air and kicked Tarun in the chest. Tarun fell at least three feet away and I think could not breathe for a minute but as soon as he could he ran like there was no tomorrow. The attention had shifted to Tarun and Shah managed to make his escape too. All of us met in the veranda of the school we were staying at, to check the wounds and could not stop laughing at what we had just been through. Shah had gotten a Black eye, Tarun’s face looked lifeless and Blue, Yellow was the color of the shit that we had gotten ourselves into and Red was the color that our faces would turn to trying to explain this misadventure to our teachers and mates. Alas, Shah had to wear sunglasses for a few days, Andy could not walk straight, Tarun did not talk to me for a couple of days because I stood there and saw the whole Tamasha instead of helping him and Chottu came up with a story to cover up the incident. Our Nepal excursion was supposed to be a memorable and colorful chapter of our lives and it indeed was. Every memory, all the fun and all the colors are etched into our minds for ever.

CHAPTER 6- ME, MY PALS AND NEPAL

Chapter 6- Me, My pals and Nepal.


We arrived in Nepal very exited and enthusiastic. We were hell bent on having fun our way especially because all the strict teachers had decided not to travel with us. I guess they had decided to let us live a little or were sick and tired of seeing and managing us even on a vacation. There were only two teachers traveling with us. One of them was the head of our science department Mr Venkat. He was a quiet and simple, typically south Indian guy who had really short hair that used to stand up straight at the back giving him the look of an exotic love bird. He was a nice guy who knew boys were boys and liked to have fun. He let us speak in our mother tongues when we were on tour and told us not to mention about it to anyone back home, because at school we had a strictly “speak in English” rule otherwise we were fined 5 rupees every time we were caught. 5 rupees may sound small change now but back then 5 rupees meant a perk or a dairy milk candy, it meant a postcard of your favorite WWF wrestler, it meant a new rubber cricket ball and most importantly it meant we did not give the school any more than the ridiculous amounts of money than our parents were already paying as school fees (and they told us education is going to get even more expensive in the future as if it already wasn’t). The other teacher accompanying us was our Hindi professor Mr. Radhesham or Shreemanji as he liked to be called. We called him chimpanzee or chimpu behind his back. He was a funny guy, not funny as in he made you laugh with his sense of humor but funny as in goofy and stupid. He tried to speak in English but pronounced all his E’s as O’ and all his A’s as E’s. I bet he would have lost a fortune if the fine applied to him because even his English sounded like Shuddh Hindi. One of his favorite dialogues was and I quote “When you was in the Sevonth kilaas (Seventh class) you was a very great baai(good boy) but now you have became the very naughty child, stend up (stand up) on the bench with you fingers above your lips.” Hindi had earned him his bread and butter and I guess English was not just his cup of tea.
Nepal was exotic and breathtakingly beautiful with its scenic beauty, mountains and pleasant weather but most of us weren’t really bothered if we were in Nepal or Nampally. All that mattered was that we were with our friends with no real adult supervision. We saw temples, trekked up hills and mountains, clicked pictures with monks but our minds were always elsewhere, the Nepali girls. While our tour guide was explaining us the significance of the silent hands temple or Katmandu’s history our roving eyes were looking at those beauties with tiny eyes and well rounded faces. All of them had great figures unlike 80% of the women in Hyderabad who are either too skinny or too fat and most of them cover their faces behind a burkha.
In school we usually stuck to our group and did not bother about the others too much but in Nepal there were just around 60 of us and we got to know each other pretty well as we spent all day and night together. The days were spent sight seeing and at nights we used to sleep in the huge assembly hall of a Govt. school and that was were we had the most fun. Our Sirs were given a separate room so we were on our own all night. The dark of the night is when you get all your stupidly brilliant ideas and Andy had come up with this one. While all the other boys were fast asleep, we were going to draw moustaches and other graffiti on their faces with our tooth paste and click pictures. All of us were skeptical and first but decided to go with it. So Tarun,Hardik,Dhawal and me spread to one corner of the room and Jogesh, Chottu, Dhawal and Andy went to the other corner and we started our art work and started improvising as we went along. From faces we shifted to hair and armpits as well and hair oil, gel and shaving foam were added to our armory. We got the most amazing pictures but then Dhawal messed up, he liked his art work on one particular guy so much that he couldn’t control his laughter and fell on the guy. That startled the guy and he woke up and saw what was going on. Thankfully he wasn’t the class bully or a senior. He too couldn’t help but laugh when he saw the designs on the others around him. This guys name was Abhijeet Shah. He was a gujju from the A section who got along really well with everyone one. We too were acquainted to him but he was not a friend up until then. Abhijeet or Shah as everyone called him looked more like a Shahlini to me. He was very fair, walked like a girl and had no body hair whatsoever. He was always smiling and could take a lot of shit from everyone. He was the most punished boy in school as he was often thrown out of classes and seen wandering around the Principal’s office more than he was spotted in class. His problem was that he was very talkative and laughed out loud at the smallest of jokes and that got him in a lot of trouble even when he was not the culprit. We exchanged pleasantries and befriended Shah that night. He was one of us now,a part of the gang. We stayed up all night and he talked and talked and talked about his classmates, teachers and how he had been to Nepal before.

CHAPTER 5-HERE COME THE WOMEN(COINCIDENTLY COMPOSED ON WOMEN'S DAY)

Till this point of time, the thought of the opposite sex was non existent in our lives. Even sitting next to girls in the tutorial was considered taboo. We knew girls were different to us; they wore pretty dresses, tied their hair in different ways, spoke softly and giggled a lot. But we did not find any of that attractive up until now. But now we were changing. Our soft voices was getting coarse, we sounded like uncles. There was scattered hair growth on our faces and other places. The funniest one was Shehbaaz Motu’s case. He had grown precisely three strands of hair on his chin and it seemed like God has forgotten to water his garden. Every morning while walking to Nizam College for our cricket matches I would be attracted to posters of a scantly dressed Mamta Kulkarni from the movie “Sabse Bada Khiladi” and look at it slyly while being careful that the others did not notice. I felt like a man now, like the sabse bada khiladi. I did not like to be told what to do by my parents and elders now and all of us discussed this and cribbed how we were still being treated like kids even though we were about to enter class x. Tarun especially hated it when his mom asked him to join special classes for math’s in the summer vacations and abused his cousin who had come up with the idea in the most chaste Punjabi. We called each other everyday during the summer holidays and everyday his vocabulary became more interesting, entertaining and enlightening. He talked about things I did not even imagine were possible. Regular fights with his dad were the order of the day for Shehbaaz Motu as he asked him to help him out at the shop during the summer vacation. The rebel in us and the one inside our pants was speaking louder and clearer than it ever did. Billu had downloaded the animated Kamasutra and all of us went over to his place when his parents were not around and watched porn for the first time in our lives. Some of us could hold our excitement better than Muez did. Ten minutes into the movie and when the Animated Man was doing something really disgusting to the Animated Woman which by the way looked really painful and could have put us of sex for a long time had we not been to our overflowing teenage testosterones, Muez had disappeared into the bathroom and returned after a while with a smile of satisfaction written large upon his face. We liked girls now, we loved them in fact. Now we began hearing stories from the seniors about how this guy had a thing going with that girl and how that girl had turned down a proposal from that guy and how a certain Casanova had changed 3 girlfriends in 6 months. But I was always a Shah Rukh Khan fan and really mushy and romantic at heart so I was going to wait for the right girl and not be dragged into the whole dating game. Watching porn and looking at Mamta Kulkarni felt like a sin to me but I couldn’t help doing it sometimes but I always asked God for forgiveness. Our sexual awakening had chosen the worst timing. It had arisen just before the most important year of our lives, the tenth class and had confused the hell out of us. We were rebellious, horny, confused, and moody and loved our privacy more than ever. Chottu had gone on an indefinite hunger strike until he got a separate room. But before school could start; before the pain set in, before we were forced to study the school had organized an excursion to Nepal. It was like feeding the lambs some water before they were going to be sacrificed. I and the Gang along with 50 other schoolmates with raging hormones just like ours were off to Nepal for 10 days of non stop fun and entertainment with one question lodged in all our minds “Did girls feel the puberty blues too?”

CHAPTER 4-EXAM FEVER

The exams were here. Class 9 had passed us by in a jiffy. We did not even notice that a whole year had gone and all we had done was masti. 15 days before the exams and everyone was finally paying attention in class to all the important questions that were given but Hardik and Andy who missed a lot of classes due to basketball tournaments and other reasons of unnecessary absenteeism were still busy completing their notes.

The mood in colony was glum too; all of us came for our tuitions, met for a bit but did not have our late night rendezvous. The exams were getting to us. All everyone talked about now was why the fuck had Pythagoras made his theorem and how remembering Newton’s third law of motion gave us loose motions. A cloud of sadness had descended upon us. The thought of exams was not scary but the scary part was how much pressure our teachers and parents put on us. All the parents expected their wards to top the class and the height of optimism was when Muez’s and Tarun’s parents expected that too. Late night pots of coffee were served so that we could stay up and study. But all the caffeine in our system made us even more sad and depressed. I hated exams then and I hate them now. Who the fuck gave them the right to judge us on how good my handwriting was, how well did I understand theory of relativity when I was going to do nothing related to that ever in my life. Who gave them the fucking power to rank us and grade us? I passed class 9, all of us did but nobody remembers even a single thing we studied. Education should make us better equipped in understanding the world around us better. It should help us in making us better human beings who are happy and progressive. Education should be able to make the world a better place but I don’t think our education system does that.

The results were out all of us had passed, some of us like Jogesh with flying colors but the biggest surprise was Tarun. He had worked his arse off done better than most of us. But this joy and relief was short lived. Because waiting for us with open arms and waiting to smother us with pain were the Tenth class Board Exams and nobody missed a chance to rub it upon us. I sometimes felt that even our parents got a sadistic pleasure out of reminding us about the so called ‘most important year of our lives’ because they had been through that phase and their parents had tortured them then and they had waited all their lives just to see us complete class 9 so they could get their sweet revenge and attain mukti. But all that could wait because right now we had the summer vacations and the vast expanses of the Nizam college cricket grounds beaconed. My cricket bat that had began to feel lonely and neglected finally got some much deserved attention. Cable connections were back in the houses; Mango juice replaced the coffee and Billu’s internet browsing history showed webpage’s other than Google which he used to search “how to pass your exams without studying”. Treasure Island was our second home thanks to Hardik and the late night meetings in colony went on, all night long.

CHAPTER 3- BACK STREET BOYS,GUYS FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

Now let me describe my friends from the neighbourhood, the funny blokes, the guys who provided me with all the ammunition to attack my school mates with my sarcasm, the boys who thought they were the coolest. The strangest character among the group was Muez, he was cheap, crass, naughty and did not know what to speak and when to speak. That used to get him in a lot of trouble with Geetha Madam and the other tutors. All the boys called him Habeebnala, not just because he lived there but because he had a constant runny nose through out the year and would flow just like the nala. Other than him there were three guys named Shehbaaz, which is like the most common name in the community because every third guy is either a Shehbaaz or a Akbar. So all the Shehbaaz’s were given nick names. In my group we had Shehbaaz Billu the one I introduced to you in the first chapter. He was the guy who had the first personal computer, the first internet connection, the first walk-man, well, let’s just say that he was the first one to get a lot of things, I think he even reached puberty early. It may have been a coincidence or maybe the personal computer and internet connection had a hand in that. Nobody dared to say anything to Billu because he possessed two qualities a killer smile and an even deadlier sense of humor. He used to humiliate his rivals with ease and then just smile at them while the others cried with laughter. Then there was Shehbaaz Kaalu. Indians are the biggest hypocrites in the world I must say, we cry foul at the way the western world treats us and call them racists at any chance we get but if one of us is a bit darker than us brownies we label him as Kaalu, kaalia or other derogatory terms. Kaalu was a terrific sportsman, a born athlete, good at any sport he chose to play, be it badminton, table tennis, cricket or kabaddi. He used to be a big show off when we were younger because he got the most pocket money and had his own chetak scooter which was like a status symbol when we were kids. But his biggest problem was he could never make up his mind on what he wanted to do and he was never satisfied with what he had. If everyone else was playing cricket he wanted to swim. If he was given bowling he wanted to bat higher up the order. If everyone wanted to go to a restaurant he wanted to watch a movie. All of us used to get very irritated with this attitude but we came up with a plan, we used to tell him the opposite of what we had planned and get him to do what we all wished to do. The third shehbaaz was Shehbaaz motu, he was plum and fat and ate at the drop of a hat. Motu had a love for all the best things in life expensive food, expensive clothing and expensive women, about whom I will tell you in the later chapters. Everyone picked on Motu because he wore unusual colors like pink, orange and yellow and had a penchant for trying out new things like new hairstyles, piercing his ears, wearing jewelry and stuff. He also was pretty dumb and never ever accepted any of his mistakes nor did he change his style. But his heart was pure and he never ever lost his temper no matter how much he was teased. He was the first metro sexual man I knew, even when being metro sexual was not considered cool. All these guys became my friends later but one guy who was my friend since childhood was Salman or Sallu as we called him. We went to the same Montessori and lived in the same apartments until my family moved out to a bigger place. Sallu was a bit of a geek earlier but became really handsome and good looking as we got older. Now he looked like a jock but was really shy and hardly spoke to anyone. He only had fun and was his true self when he was with us. All the girls in the tutorial stared at him was a glint in their eyes that I did not understand back then but none of the girls spoke to him ever because he was with Billu always. If Broke Back Mountain would have released then they would have surely been mistaken for gorgeous gay cowboys. But we knew that was not the case because of Billu’s website preferences. My cousin Abrar or Timmy as everyone called him was a part of the gang too. He was a year younger than the others but got along really well with all of us. He had just moved to colony and came to know the others because of me. Initially everyone knew him as Murad’s Cousin but later on he became quiet popular especially with the ladies.

CHAPTER 2-SCHOOL DAYS

Now let me tell you about how most of our time was spent in school. We used to finish our lunch boxes during the short recess itself so that in the lunch break we could play soccer with a rubber cricket ball with twenty players on each side. By the time the bell rang to signal the end of the recess we would have our neatly ironed and tucked in shirts wrinkled and out of place, our ties would end up in our pockets and be used to wipe the sweat of our brows.

As I was the goal keeper my trousers would get torn from the chins and my knees would bleed. After the first three or four times I had gotten immune to it and so had my mum who had to take me to the health center for first aid and my maid who was given the difficult task of removing the blood stains from my trousers and get them repaired. The next class after the lunch break was always social studies and the ugly and boring Suzie miss would put us all to a sweet slumber. The last period was for extra curricular activities, which I loved as I was the vice captain of the school cricket team and we practiced every day. Similarly Hardik, Andy and Jogesh headed off for basket ball practice while Dhawal and Chottu were stuck in the class for some stupid activity like debate or elocution. Till the previous year Tarun was also a part of the basketball team but as he had gotten very poor marks in biology and physics his name was withdrawn from the team. Tarun now attended remedial classes with people who were mostly repeating the class for a second year, goons and bullies. I thought it was very funny until one day we were having net practice after school and a couple of goonda type people with hockey sticks came to me and asked,

Aye Babu? Do you know who is Tarun?

I sensed something was wrong and answered, Nahi Bhai, I have never heard the name before?

Apparently Tarun had called Sunny, the classes bully a failure in front of the whole remedial class and had threatened him not to ever try and take his pen. We were quiet used to Tarun’s rants by now but Sunny hadn’t taken it too well and called a couple of his cajjins (that his how Sunny pronounced cousins) to teach Tarun a lesson which was “You never call a failure, a failure in front of all the other failures.” Beats my logic but who was to argue with a failure with goons for family.

I ran to Hardik and told him what was going on and he lost it. He was very possessive about his friends and wanted to tackle the goons himself. But better sense prevailed and Chottu convinced him to let his Body guards handle the goons. The sight of a gun made Sunny pee in his pants and his cajjins run like Usain Bolt.

Someone has said that “everything happens for the best” and I thought that someone was either really stupid or really drunk when he said that but even this ugly incident brought about something positive.

Tarun wowed never to take his studies lightly ever again.

That was class 9 and everyone around us, our parents, and teachers and subconsciously even we knew that this was the year to have all the fun. Because next year we would have tenth class board exams and since the 6^th class we were told about sixty thousand six hundred and sixty six times that, that would be the most important year of our lives. So every Saturday Hardik would arrange for us to go to Dream Valley Resort, where a delicious lunch buffet and unlimited soft drinks were kept ready for us. We used to play cricket till it was dark and then reach home around 7 in the evening.

For others in the gang that was only fun they had all week but for me things were a bit different. I used to live in Karimabad Colony where all the residents were of our community. It’s a small Shia Muslim community where everyone knows everything about everyone else.

In the evenings a lot of the children my age used to go to tutorials run by Geetha Madam and her Husband Sirish sir who lived near our colony. I had a group of friends here too. After tuitions all of us used to gather in the colony grounds and play hide and seek or just stand there and share our school lives. So without even meeting my school gang all the boys knew about them through my stories. We went home only when one of the parents came looking for us or it was 10.00 pm as that was the deadline set for us. On Sundays we used to go to the Nizam College Grounds, Basheerbagh where half of Hyderabad came to play cricket with a hard tennis ball. There would be around 50 matches going on side by side and one would get confused as to who was fielding for whom. It was great fun nonetheless and was part of our Sunday routine. Sometimes we would play amongst ourselves but mostly we used to play against the other groups from colony or the boys from the neighboring Netaji Nagar Colony. Am describing all this because I want you to understand how difficult it was for me to concentrate on my studies with so many friends and distractions all around me. I had the best of both worlds, friends to keep me company at school and friends to keep me company when school was out.

CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION

It was the lunch recess in Little Flower High School in Hyderabad, (Andhra Pradesh or Telengana-only time will tell) I sat on the teachers chair, surrounded by my buddies, Tarun, Jogesh, Dhawal, Andy, Chottu, Hardhik and others narrating this story;

Few of my friends from my society and me had gone to Treasure Island Resort on the outskirts of the city this Sunday. As we had only one car and there were seven of us Tillu, who was actually very huge in stature and I had decided to go on my Kinetic Honda(which was a lie as I did not have a Kinetic Honda back then nor did I know how to ride one). On our way back after a fun days outing we had lost sight of Shajjad’s Thukkar maruti van and lost our way. As the roads were all deserted and it was getting dark we began to panic. Just then we saw a lean, short guy with a briefcase in his hand standing on the road as if he was waiting for some one.

Seeing him there was a relief and we went near him and I asked,

Bhai, How do we get to Abids?????

The man Replied: Abids is too far away but I can show you the way till Mehdipatnam if u give me a lift. I need to be somewhere by now and I cannot find an Auto rickshaw anywhere.

He didn’t look too harmful so we decided to give him a lift.

So now I was the meat in between Tillu and the Man’s Sandwich.

After traveling for a while, Tillu thought it would be funny if he teased the guy a bit as he was getting really bored and the crack in his arse was beginning to ache after driving for such a long distance.

So he asked the man,

Bhai,whats in your Briefcase????

The man did not reply.

Tillu repeated the question, Bhai,whats in your Briefcase????

The man chose to keep quiet again but I could sense he was getting a bit uncomfortable as he started to hold my shoulder a bit tighter.

I was a bit scared but Tillu was relentless he repeated his question again but this time a lot louder BHAI, WHATS IN YOUR BRIEFCASE????????

The Man Replied, it’s My dick, Do you wanna suck on it??

I was taken aback by the response but Tillu thought it was funny and started laughing out loud.

He asked the man again, Bhai, Don’t play with us,Tell me what’s in your briefcase

The Man said, it’s My dick, Do you wanna suck on it?? But this time with a lot more aggression. That wiped the smiles right of both our faces and we began to talk in our native tongue Gujrati.(Have you ever noticed ,a man always starts speaking in his mother tongue whenever he is in trouble).But this was to make sure that he did not understand what we were upto

Tillu:He looks suspicious, we need to get rid of him.

Me:Gandu, why did you have to piss him off?

Tillu: we need a way to get rid of him.

Me: I cant think of anything and I hope he doesn’t understand gujrati. He does look a bit of a gujju though.

Tillu: You tell him you need to pee urgently, I will stop the moped on the side and when he gets down to let you off we will run away.

Me: I like the way you are thinking, lets do it.

After a few minutes I said to Tillu ,making sure the man could here me loud and clear

Tillu I need to pee, could you please stop somewhere so that I can pee?

The man said: Yeah, I too need to pee, stop here.

Tillu immediately stopped the vehicle and the man got down leaving his Briefcase on the seat and went to pee.

As soon as he went a bit far, I grabbed the suitcase and told Tillu,

Abe Gandu,Chal bhagaa!!!

Tillu drove as fast he could and both of us did not have the balls to look behind and see if the man was coming for us or not.

After a while, when we were confident we had lost him we started laughing hysterically. I took the suitcase home as a souvenir.

No sooner had I completed my last sentence My best friend and the butt of all my jokes Tarun exclaimed, What was in that suitcase?????

I loudly replied , it’s My dick, Do you wanna suck on it??

All of us went mad with laughter and tears started rolling down our eyes, Andy was rolling on the floor with laughter and thumping on his chest trying hard to breath.

I had got Tarun again. Once again he was a victim of my evil pranks.

The bell rang signaling an end to the recess and some respite for me from the angry glare of Tarun. I had not pissed him off so bad since I borrowed his handkerchief and wiped of the sweat from my armpits and returned it to him in front of his arch enemy Mizbah.

I knew I took Tarun for granted a lot, but by now all of us including Tarun and me were used to this and it all felt so normal.

That was what our lives were like in school. We all came from different backgrounds, religions and financial backgrounds but once we were together we were like brothers. Brothers who liked to have fun.

Tarun was a true Punjabi. Very good looking but short tempered and stupid, because he used his heart more than his brain. His dad was an engineer and his mom was an awesome cook. I can vouch for that as we used to hog from his Tiffin all the time. Jogesh’s father worked for the government in science department and looking at Jogesh you could easily say that he was a science experiment gone wrong. He was huge but with tiny feet and a squeaky voice. Andy and his family had lived in America for a while but returned for the comforts and nawabi lifestyle of Hyderabad. He went to the US of A as Amandeep Reddy and returned back as Andy, but the name was all that had changed, as they say once a Telugu always a rice monger. (He used to eat rice and yogurt with his palm, 6 days a week). Dhawal Wangadia was a Maadu(marwaadi), he lived in a joint family with his parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, half a dozen cousins, his ancestors and four buffalos. Their family owned three oils mills. It seemed that the whole production of one mill went straight into Dhawal’s hair or I guess he was just marketing their product. We used to tell him that even if there was a cyclone and all hell breaks lose his hairstyle would not be disturbed. Their most popular product went by the name of Ghar coconut oil which was ironic because his bungalow looked more like a dharamshala than a ghar. S.Abhijeet or Chottu as everyone called him was the son of a Real Estate Developer and only guy in our gang who was shorter than me, and by shorter than me I mean a pygmy. He was the one who used to laugh the hardest at all my jokes and pranks and had a really subtle sense of humor. Unlike me he would instigate mischief but never ever be blamed for it. And then their was P.Hardik Reddy, a tall, shy, athletic guy and the captain of the school basket ball team. His dad was the Home Minister of our State. Hardik used to come to school with two gunmen who stood at the gates and gave us a smile because we were Hardik’s friends, which I confess made me feel superior to the others. But Hardik hated all the attention and thus he hated his bodyguards. I think he hated my guts too because I made fun of anything that walked, breathed or showed any sign of life and I know he hated me when I made fun of his Telugu accented Hindi. Other than us there were 55 other boys in class and 4000 other boys in school most of whom were sons of the most prominent people in the city, jewelers, builders, hoteliers, engineers and business tycoons. I felt blessed that my father a Dry Fruits and Kirana Merchant from Begum Bazaar, a hard working, honest, middle class, common man had managed to pay twenty thousand rupees donation(which was like 5 lakhs in today’s world) to get me admission in such a prestigious institution with great friends, strict but good teachers and awesome facilities.

The best thing about all this was that our backgrounds did not matter to any of us and we never ever thought or talked about it unless we wanted to make fun or ridicule someone. There was no Hindu-Muslim; Rich-Poor divide in school. We all sat in the same benches, read the same books, and had lunch in the same dining hall. The outside world had not corrupted our fragile minds at all.