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.