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?”