God, Satan and Me

Me: heyy God,, how is life ?

God: I think I should ask you this question ;) Just kidding man, it isn’t as easy up there as you might think these days. It’s been one of the worst recession times you know. It’s getting harder to retain people in heaven. I take a good soul from heaven and you know what it just lands up in hell after some time. Ask Satan, he is simply having a blast these days.

Satan: Oh yeah, this guy is right. I don’t even have to move a muscle; it’s like heaven in hell ;)

God: Good one satan :)

Satan: Thanks God..

Me: Hmm I can understand God, I can totally understand. So, I hear you guys are planning to spend vacations in India soon.

Satan: We were simply tired of all the problems you know. God is troubled with incompetent soul makers, those guys are just so under-performing..

God: Yeah, Satan is right.. I am even planning to outsource this work.. It’s so hard to find good people..

Satan: And I am simply pissed off at every suicide bomber coming to hell and asking for 72 virgins.. I mean come-on give me a break,, if I had so many virgins in hell who would call this place hell.. It’s just plain common sense. God, please do something, hell is getting over-crowded, you got to help me out here.

God: I am trying Satan, I am trying hard.. Anyways, back to our vacation plans. Both of us were so tired handling/mis-handling this world, we thought of taking a break. And what place better than India, it just makes so much sense financially; everything so cheap and all. And how can I forget bollywood, love those movies, can’t stop laughing you know. I mean I give people mind and it’s so damn funny to see how they just forget to use it.

Satan: And I love that guy what’s the name, sa ruk ruk kaan or something.

Me: I think you mean shahrukh khan

Satan: Oh yeah same guy shahrukh khan.. He has been my ambassador in India for such a long time now. I am so impressed by him,, such a hard worker. Makes movies full of crap and still convince people to pay for it,, genius simply genius.

God: Yeah Satan, you beat me there. He was my ambassador when he started, I was so proud of that lad, I think your another deputy farah khan ruined him.

Satan: You got that right God.

God: And I just love that dish, oh what’s the name, hang on, ahmmm,, 'gatar paani'.

Me: I think you mean 'matar paneer'.

God: Oh yeah exactly, that’s what it was, just love that thing.

Satan: Oh come on God, give me a break with that junk. You got to taste butter chicken sometime in India. It’s so delicious and far better than the one prepared by our chef.. I am tired of eating all that crap in hell, our chef simply over cooks everything.. Well, can’t blame him too, given all the fire in hell.

God: Gotcha Satan,, our chef is an Indian.. Don’t worry I will try to convince Mrs. God for inviting you over for dinner. She is still so mad for the last time, when you burnt all the new curtains she got from Dubai, with your aura..

Satan: Yeah, I am still so sorry for that God.. That’s the reason Mrs. Satan wouldn’t let me sit on her new sofa anymore :( 

To be continued..

Adam and Eve (Part - 2)

Saturday, 8 PM

 

I don’t why but I am starting to feel a bit weird now. It’s Saturday night and still I don’t feel like going anywhere. May be I am missing ‘something’ or ‘someone’ but not really sure what or whom. Is it just a hangover or more than that? You know I just had an omelette and it didn’t even taste the same. Not that I am a great cook or anything but it didn’t even taste like having egg in it. Haan!!

 

Saturday, 8 PM

 

I hate guys, I really do, all of them. He must be sitting in a pub right now drinking and drooling over all those bi*****; so typical of all these guys. And here I am wondering whether to watch ‘erin brockovich’ or ‘sweet november’ again. This time at least I thought he is the right guy, unlike that last one whose idea of romantic date was to play as a team and beat the hell out of terrorists in a game of counter strike; whole night. You know he simply hates coffee but once when I got sick he brought my favourite ‘café mocha’ and drank with me, just to give me company.

 

Saturday, 9 PM

 

Something is definitely wrong now. I have this beautiful bottle of Johnnie Walker Green Label right in front of me and I don’t even feel like drinking. She never used to let me drink too much and now that I have a chance I don’t feel like drinking. Should I see a doctor or a psychiatrist? I hated when she used to throw cigarettes out of my hand, always called me when I was sleeping, loathed my ‘cool’ jeans and once she even made me wear that stupid formal shirt for an interview. But, she was the only one who made me cheer up when I didn’t clear that interview.

I am really feeling thirsty now, let me go and get some ‘café mocha’ from the coffee house next door.

 

Saturday, 9 PM

 

It’s so late in the night and still I don’t feel like making a dinner. I anyways have gained so much weight coz of him; you know what he just eats like an animal. I never have anything left in my fridge when he is around. I hate when he never lets me watch anything else when his stupid cricket match is on, never keeps his apartment clean, hardly takes a bath and once he even dragged me to watch a damn play with him; though it’s a different matter that I really loved it.

 

Saturday, 10 PM

 

You know what; drinking coffee alone is not fun at all, it just tastes so bad. Should I give her a call, I mean just to drink a coffee with me?

Adam and Eve

 

Saturday, 11 AM

 

It was a Saturday morning and I had promised myself I won’t call her again at all,, not after what happened last night. I mean come on, who the hell brings a sprite to drink with whiskey. I specifically told her I am getting whiskey and vodka and you take care of the soft drinks. All she cared to bring was a damn sprite. I know we have been hanging out for a while and stuff but she already started forcing her own choices on me. Everybody knows that no self-respecting guy can drink vodka when there is whiskey around. It’s just like watching ‘sleepless in seattle’ in theatre when you have a brand new dvd of ‘die hard’ back at home. I know what she had on her mind man, I totally know.

 

 

Saturday, 11 AM

 

It was a Saturday morning and I had promised myself I won’t even pick his call,, especially not after yesterday’s fight.  How come was I supposed to know one can’t drink whiskey without a coke? He asked me to arrange for soft drinks and I just got what I like, at least I knew vodka goes with sprite. If you need something, you should ask,, why be ashamed like a girl and expect me to assume everything. I mean our relationship is simply falling apart, the other day I asked him to get a wills strong and he got me a wills navy cut, as if I am not strong enough to light a wills strong. Bloody hypocrite!!

 

 

Saturday, 4 PM

 

I still dread about that night, few weeks or may be months ago when I met her for the first time in a totally sad pub; can’t even remember the name right now. I was so drunk and my eyes were so heavy that I could not even see her face properly. Don’t tell anyone but I thought she was my favourite Katrina kaif; not that she looked any good but I was just that drunk. I even lied about going out for a smoke when actually I was going to rest room for puking. I was so proud of coming up with such a great excuse so quickly that day. heehee!!

 

Ohh man!! Enough of her,, I should get something to eat now!!

 

 

Saturday, 4 PM

 

We have spent such a great time together though. Just thinking about 16^th Jan, it was exactly 8:12 pm at a very sleek bar called ‘Styx’ when one of my friends first introduced me to him. I was so impressed by his angelic eyes and he treated me just like a princess. He was such a gentleman that day and to an extent that when he had to smoke, he just went outside rather than smoking in front of me. Aaaaahh,, so charming!!  

 

What is that smell?? Ohh damn, my omelette!!

 

To be continued..

Dreams Unlimited

And then I woke up.. Damn!! It was a dream and like all good things it came to an end. I was so close this time to accomplish something I was day-dreaming about for such a long time. I got to wait for another dream now..

For most of us, life has become a race lately. How long can you run? You can’t, even if you want to; there is always an end-point in this race of life, just like any other race. Everyone has to stop at that point and I don’t think anyone wants to get there first. We just blindly run in this race, forgetting good old words from Ursala LeGuin, "It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end”. So, why are we running at all, who is it we are trying to beat and what it is that’s driving us anyways? I don’t want the answers because I know these are not the questions; this is life. I dream of not running for a change, I just want to relax and dream, but that never happens, not even in a dream..

Today, when I woke up, I decided to live my dream for a change.. I braced myself for being punctual at office today. I got ready immediately and reached office as soon as possible. Everybody was surprised to see me in the office before lunch time and even my boss gave me a smaller lecture on discipline this time. I was already feeling much better. Then I completed what ever little work I had for the day and was surprised to see Tejaswi not offloading his own work on me. Sagar did not call me for a single meeting whole day and Rohit and Pranil didn’t crib even once for all the junk code I wrote. Hmmm, that never happens. Hasta couldn’t come up with a single question and kothari had not yet given me any movie review. Something was definitely fishy but who cared, I was living a long conceived dream.

After having a gala time at the office, I decided to put an end to my long term misery. I mustered lot of courage to finally express my feelings towards this girl, whom I was seeing almost once every month. I was pretty confident that she didn’t have any such feelings, still I thought of trying my luck. I called her up for a dinner date, got dressed and started rehearsing my lines. After mugging up all the material, I ran to pick her up from home. For the first time, I was neither shivering nor stammering in front of her. We were having a pleasant conversation about all the unnecessary things during the dinner and I was saving my speech for the deserts. After the deserts, I took her permission to ask something. To my own amazement, I delivered the whole speech without any trace of diffidence. She was smiling with shade of tears sparkling in her eyes. I thought my dream had come true and my race has finally ended. She just looked into my eyes and said.. “abey 12 baje gaye, office nahin jayega kya”.. And then I woke up..

The Perfect Crime

It was a well planned heist; thief hadn’t left a single trace of evidence. Neither a single witness nor any lead, I had nowhere to go. I was in the middle of a war and I had just lost my only weapon. I was terrified, I was dumbstruck and I was on the verge of breaking down. I somehow decided to control myself and vowed not to let go of this criminal and prevent rest of the people from his or her mischief.

My maths period was about to begin just after the lunch time and someone had just stolen pen from my desk. It was a nightmare came true for me. Still there was some time for Maths period to get started. I had only few minutes for my quest and suspect list was endless.

My first and foremost person on the hit list was Sampat Pradhan. He always used to lend his own pen to one girl or the other and then was constantly on the hunt for pen himself. But then I saw him drooling over our history teacher passing by the hallways. He couldn’t have done it.

For one second, I thought of complaining about this to our current class monitor Nidhi Minj but then I realized even she could have misused her power. No-one would have suspected her and she could have easily maintained her spotless image. But then I saw a huge bunch of her own pens in her school bag and then even she was out of my list.

At this moment of terror I decided to seek help from a friend. I called up our senior most detective Pushkar Sachdeva (nicknamed ‘*****’) for the help. He agreed to help me but on his own terms and conditions. He refused to search among the girls and asked me to sponsor cricket balls for our practice matches. I agreed to everything and all I got from him was a mathematical curve with all the boys’ names on x-axis and probability of them being a thief on y-axis (Damn these toppers!!).

I was going nowhere with my quest and face of my nemesis ‘Dhamini sir’ was flashing in front of my eyes. I got hold of myself and suddenly saw Deepali Tripathi coming inside the class all jumping, grinning and beaming big time. She gave me a big smile (well I thought so) as she passed by me. My suspicion on her grew stronger as no girl ever comes inside a Maths class smiling. But then I remembered it was her pen which I was using for last one week and I had just lost it. Damn it!!

Then I made the biggest mistake of my life and asked Siddharth Chauhan for my help. He asked me to relax and made a deal of 100 bucks if he could find my pen in 5 minutes. I immediately agreed and gave him 50 bucks as advance. He came back after 5 minutes munching jumbo burger out of my money. When I asked for the pen, he replied “I promised I will find it in 5 minutes but I never said ‘next 5 minutes’ ”. I would have got my money back if it wasn’t for his body builder cousin Dinesh Chauhan’s dreadful staring.

My quest will continue…..

NOTE: This blog is based on true incidents and any resemblance to living or dead is totally intentional....

IITian and First Love

It was a night I won’t ever forget in my life. I was going back to my home town from the college for winter vacations; waiting for the bus to Delhi along with a friend on bus stop. I was in my second year and my mind was still wandering into depths of probability theory and c++ programming.

One thing that I completely forgot while standing at the bus stop was that ‘It’s a curse if you miss a girl which your friend has seen’. You will be tortured for rest of your time in the college for that crime (irrespective of the looks of the girl). I was reminded of that eternal crime when I felt a cool breeze brushing my face and leaves flying all around (damn that movie ‘Mohabbatein’). I turned around and it was then I saw her almost coming out of vacuum and landing exactly 2.69 m from my vertical 2D surface. My heart beat started falling like my grades in that semester and I kept watching her in such bewilderment as if I had been awarded ‘A+’ in physics. If I was in space I would have flown myself into her vicinity in no time (Gravity literally ‘sucks’ man). I didn’t even realize when that love virus broke my firewall, entered into my hardware and corrupted all of my software. If all this wasn’t enough, that virus had also installed malicious AGO (Ask a Girl Out) software which no IITian has ever been able to install in their hardware (not even the pirated version). I was on the verge of executing that AGO program when I noticed my friend trying to execute advanced version of the same software. I dared him for a game of ‘Mortal Combat’ (damn I should have practiced it better) without even realizing he was one of those ‘jack of all trades master of no grades’ 5 pointer. I said ‘mere paas grades hain, CGPA hai, professor ki recommendation hai, tere paas kya hai??’. He replied with quite a crooked n proud smile ‘I went out with a girl on a date once’. I was out of all sorts like an Indian batsman by that bouncer, although later I found out that even her boyfriend was present on that date.

Finally we decided to leave it all on fate as both of us had no idea how to approach a girl even after reading ‘Learn how to flirt in 21 days’ at least 10 times. We simply started to stare and notice her each and every move and we were so excited while doing that, as if we were trying to get a result in one of those chemistry practical. After a long time, inevitably our eyes were in the same horizontal plane and some sort of sparks started flying somewhere, as if our eyes had seen some alien. Both of us couldn’t take so much of heat and pressure exerted by alien forces and we had to take our eyes off her. At least we had achieved something to brag about for a long time in the college, that we saw a species named ‘girl’ directly in the eye. Both of us were giggling inside as if no one caught us while cheating in the exam. But then something unexpected happened which neither of us would have ever even dreamt of. She wasn’t just looking at us but also started walking towards us with some sort of a divine smile.

We were in a territory where no IITian has ever been; we felt as if our time has come, we are soon to be treated like GOD back in college, we’ll be giving part-time classes on dating soon and those idiots will prepare notes, tutorials and reports for us. Finally, curse will be lifted on all IITians and we will excel in this area too. We won’t have those signs in college festivals ‘Dogs and IITians not allowed’ anymore, we will be able to include a term called ‘girlfriend’ in our dictionary and even our phone bills will start touching skies. She was getting closer and we were standing in an upright position as if our NCC commander was approaching to kick our butts. Her glow literally blinded me and my heart started to fill with all those mushy emotions.

I was reminded of chapter 7 of ‘Learn how to flirt…’ explaining in detail some mysterious topics as love at first sight, first love, eternal love and much more. I should have solved question no. 2 at the end of chapter 7 ‘What would you do when a girl starts talking to you’. Damn it!! I can’t even cheat now; in fact right now I am in competition with my own friend and an IITian can never afford to loose any competition. It was survival of the fittest, chance of a lifetime, moment of glory and I dared to put a step forward towards her before my friend could even try to talk to her. I was able to feel my each and every heart-beat, I was sweating, I was shivering, and I still wasn’t able to believe all this was happening in real world. It was her who took the first step, came close to me and whispered those words in my ear ‘2000 loongi, chalega kya?’..

Two Words

I turned to look back but I couldn’t find her, I tried to shout but words didn’t come out. I just stood there hoping she will come back but I should have known it was all over. I wanted to leave but had no idea where to go. I had missed my last chance and I was left with just two words “what if”.

It was couple of years back when I saw her for the first time. She was one of my colleagues in the company and was one of those reserved, conservative and arrogant looking geeky girls whom you won’t find a reason to say a single word to until they crash and spill coffee all over you. Well, that’s how we first met and had a wonderful conversation where she said “sorry” and I said “its fine”. After that I started keeping even more distance from her.

It was a Friday night when against all my wishes I was slogging till 11 in the night. I was about to leave on my bike when I saw her sitting outside our office. She had hurt her leg and wasn’t able to move. Luckily we had a clinic nearby which was open at that time; I got her treated there and dropped her home. That’s how we first ‘officially’ started talking to each other.

I never knew when those occasional greetings converted to frequent conversations and we started spending a lot of time together. I had no idea this never-talk-to-anyone-in-public kinda girl had so much to say, to an extent that I had to shut her up most of the time. We had nothing in common and we used to fight for everything but still we were the first person around each other when-ever needed. I didn’t even realize when I started having irrepressible feelings for her. I was aware of the fact that she belonged to a highly conservative family and though I didn’t care about any of that but I wasn’t even sure if she felt the same way.

I distinctly remember it was a Sunday afternoon and I was still sleeping when I got her call. For a moment I felt like disconnecting saying ‘wrong number’ but then I recognized it was her behind that deep dull voice. She was leaving for her hometown and asked me if I could drop her to the airport. I wasn’t aware of her plans but had no time to think of anything either. At airport, she was almost completely silent and also had sore eyes but then I thought it must have been due to lack of sleep. It was then she broke the news that her parents had fixed her marriage and she is leaving to finalize the engagement date. I felt like being in a bad dream from which I will wake up in few moments but that never happened. I just stood there and couldn’t say a single word after that. She just grabbed her luggage, said ‘good bye’, turned back and went inside the terminal and I was left with just two words “what if”. What if I had enough courage to express my feelings, what if she had felt the same way about me, what if she was waiting for me to take the first step, what if I had tried to stop her….

I started taking those heavy steps to get back home but they just got heavier with each step. I tried to console myself but nothing came to my mind. It was then I realized how much I loved her and had just lost my last chance to tell her that. Then I just sat there for a long time trying to sink in the feeling of what had happened. Suddenly, I felt someone coming near me and heard two words whispered in my ears. When I turned back I saw her running back with tears in her eyes. She had said “forgive me”.

Note: I am not the protagonist….