Chapter 3 - My Chintu and Our Amraayi !

Chintu, one of my best buddies from Pune apart from Ira, Pooja, sourabh and vishal -- is the craziest guy i had ever met!!! His bolts were looser than mine i suppose! And i am fortunate enough that i got friends exuding eccentricity all along ! I loved that.. and i enjoyed that! Chintu and i were also neighbours. His flat inside the four walls of Sun city ! He's got the best parents you know ! I miss Kaaku and Uncle. 

Coming to our short term love affair with riskless adventures.. Amraayi was one of them ! Amraayi in Marathi means 'Mango Orchard'. There was one nearby sun city. And chintu said he'll take me there. I agreed happily. We headed to the place. I remembered the cousins in Famous Five and Secret Seven going to some place to explore it, have fun, and finally solve some kind of mystery ! I was relieved that we would never have to solve a mystery ! I liked the idea of mysteries but solving them never appealed to me! So we put our jackets , wore our shoes and off we went, to the Amraayi...  When we reached the place, i instantly fell in love! It was like being in a wonderland.. Amraayi was so damn beautiful... Trees, Trees and more Trees.. Birds, Butterflies, Hay, The Sun interfering, and to top it all, a light  breeze! I felt so happy that i jumped around in joy !! We ran all over , like two little kids! And then, when we were tired we stopped to sit somewhere and chat. After a while, chintu got up.. went up to a pile of hay lying a few strides away from us. He stood there watching for a while and called out to me " Hey Annabelle come and see!! " Yeah , he had a wierd liking towards English names. I was Annabelle, He was Jeremy, Vishal was Patrick , Chindu was Evey.. etc !!! Anyways  i went upto the hay and saw 2 cute puppies, golden brown. They were naturally so cute and we got carried away with their charm. Chintu and I were so excited to find them there ! We started playing with them.. but then from inside the hay one more puppy came out, then another and then yet another.. Awesome, we thought !! Was there a plethora of puppies inside the hay ?? We were all the more happy thinking if there was ! But then , The puppies were probably missing their mommy badly.. they started crying and coming behind us. First we thought they were just playing with us. Then we understood that they all were quite serious! Chintu and I slowly realised the fact that these puppies were actually running behind us, because we were running in the first place! We screamed and ran for our lives because we saw their mommy also running towards us ! It was terrible. The moment in Amraayi seemed like 'forever' to me! I was so scared of dogs from childhood ! I think i ran and somehow climbed onto a mango tree, Chintu too ! After a few seconds of seriousness on our face, we both burst out into laughter ! The mommy and her puppies went back to the hay and they were nowhere near the tree which we were holding onto ! We got down after sometime and decided that we better leave the Amraayi before more trouble came our way. We chose a different path this time, to go back to our home. Got back to Chintu's home, described this to kaaku and had the beautiful ginger tea she had made along with some cookies! :) The 'Amraayi episode' will always be one which i cherish!

Chapter 2 - The man who called me Kunjikili..

The best things in my life have always come by as an accident..! Vishal is one of them! It was an everyday affair of my sweet roommates and myself to roam around the city in a two wheeler.. We used to end our journey with a visit to Dahanukar Colony, eat from Suditsu's chinese restaurant and chat with Bhaiyya.. until one day when aayi ( Bhaiyya's Mom ) found that these three girls were always hanging around late night.. And she warned Bhaiyya..so he warned us..! "You guys should reach your flat before 12 pm everyday no matter what.." We said "yes", but it was never a 'yes' yes! And bhaiyya very well knew it ! But anyways since this warning came up..we stopped going to dahanukar.. we restricted ourselves to other places in the city!
It happened that one night at our flat, Shredda, Priyanka and i were lazing around..not knowing what to do.. and it so happened that i wanted to see Emraan Hashmi's movie very very badly.. I asked my roommates what if we go and watch his movie?? Shredda and Piyu agreed happily! They were,like me, just waiting to get out of the flat! It was already 9.30, we thought we'll go for the 10.45 show. We got dressed up fast.. ran.. we shouldn't be late for the movie.. and the movie was 'AKSAR' !

We reached City Pride Kothrud right on time. But we didn't have dinner before we left home so we were damn hungry. We went inside, took the tickets and decided that we'll go have dinner and come back since we had enough time before the movie began.

When we were coming out after taking the tickets we saw three guys.. One of them had a smear of chandanam (Sandalwood paste) on his head and i immediately screamed to shredda and piyu "That guy is a South Indian!!" Those days i had this 'South Indian syndrome' when i would strike up a conversation with any south indian i met on the road..! So, this time, Shredda asked me to go and talk to the 'new south indian' that i found, but i was reluctant!

Anyways we left for a restaurant nearby to have our dinner, ordered our food, and started eating, when we saw those three guys entering the restaurant to have food. We were all smiles!! We passed some comments,finished our food and left for the theatre..

While walking towards Citypride Kothrud, Shredda repeatedly asked me to go talk to the south indian guy. She was kind of daring me. I took it as fun and never really got the courage to go and talk, i mean, i felt it was unneccessary although it sounded fun altogether! The three guys were walking right behind us and laughing.. Just before we entered the theatre, i took all my courage and turned around to him like a whirlwind,and asked ' Excuse me. Are you a south Indian? ' ( aah .. what a silly way of striking a conversation with a handsome guy ! ) He held himself back, apprehensive, and with a tone filled with so much attitude, said 'Yes, i am' ! I was happy, obviously i would be, remember i had the 'south indian syndrome'! I asked him where he belonged to, He said Kerala, wow ... more than happy.. switched to Malayalam then.. Where in Kerala?? He replied, Trissur. Woowwww Bloody happy !! 'Me too from trissur you know' ! The guy seemed to be totally flabbergasted ! He must have been giggling inside!

well.. we spoke, introduced each others friends, and entered the theatre to watch the movie. After the movie too, we talked for a few minutes and then left for our homes.

Thus the friendship was born.. I do not know how to define it, in a way that everyone would understand.. He's one man i love, respect and care for.
The man who called me Kunjikili.

PS : Vishal is a lot more to describe than i can do here and i wanna write so much about him that this chapter is not enough. May be another chapter? :)

Chapter 1 - Ira and Me !

New life in Pune, I am sitting in the heavily crowded yet beautiful canteen of my college, breathing in as much air into my lungs as possible… you see, every time you feel alive you do that don’t you? Breathing in a lot of fresh air, feeling rocking alive and ready to charge! So there I was munching Wada pav and sitting there with Ira… Oh Ira? Well, met her in class just today, struck up a little conversation and thought that she was almost like me.. So we both went to the canteen during recess. “Are you happy?? “ Suddenly ira asked. I wasn’t expecting that question so it amazed me.. And I loved that feeling of amazement in me. “I think I am not??? “ I said with a confusion in my mind.. Well, I was happy in a lot many ways and not happy in lot many ways.. So I was really confused. Anyways that conversation was the beginning of a new friendship. Two lunatics! Ira and me.

We were this bunch of insanity. We were this partially irreparable spirits, optimistic about life and a lot adventurous. Adventure provoked us more. We planned and plotted several ideas which to this date remain buried in the minus degrees of Arctic ! We laughed and laughed and laughed a lot in class which almost threw us out from there ! I never bunked the class, never dared to but Ira was non hesitant about bunking classes. One day she somehow convinced me that we run out before the sir comes in and I was still wondering whether I should do it or not and there she runs out with my bag and screams “ run Indu run… “ like run lola run?? I didn’t budge from the seat I thought I will sit there instead but then I suddenly remembered that my book pen and everything else was in the bag. So I decided to run before the sir came in. I ran .. and all the boys in the class sang “This is not fair !! “ ( This is not fair ?? Are boys saying this , it made me laugh inside ) I ran.. and I bumped into the very sir who was to take our class. He just came out from the lavatory nearby ! He was coming from one side and saw me but I just ran.. I ran not looking at him and not giving him a feeling that I had seen him already! It was an absolute flight !

Then I joined Ira and we went to the canteen and passed our time, laughing ! The next day sir came in and when he saw me , sitting there with my puppy dog eyes , he said “Indu , yesterday you ran away from my class?? “ Everybody in class started laughing. I gave him this roughish smile and said “noo sir ! “
Obviously he knew, and I knew. Both of us knew. But he didn’t make it a big deal because this was a very common thing in colleges!

Anyways.. Hunger and poverty were the two things that followed Ira and me. We both usually came to college without having breakfast.. and by the recess we’ll be hungry enough to eat an elephant.. But we would get satisfied with a chai and wadapav or a bread paattis.. But when there is no money and its just the transportation charges we have with us, we kinda linger around at the food counter and dip our hands inside the sauf (jeera coated with sugar) bowl and grab some and eat it… We made this a regular affair. Whenever we didn’t have money we would go and take a handful of sauf and munch on it happily.. But atlast they found how so much sauf went missing ! And sadly for us, they stopped keeping it on top of the counter… instead they kept it underneath.. we laughed about it , I remember.

Money was a goddamn problem. Without money nothing is possible. We would discuss. We thought like that because we were always window shopping at deccan.. We didn’t have the money to buy things sold at the beautiful Deccan area other than the corn chaat and some posters saying “ MY ROOM , LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT ! “ But still we loved Deccan.. We would always hang out there… walk about in malls , walk by the road, read a book for an hour at the roadside book vendor’s small makeshift shop and finally hear him swearing at us because we didn’t buy the book.. and so on…

Ira and i fought once, it was supposed to be a big fight. We stopped talking to each other for some days. Friends in class started asking me "what happened? " I would say " nothing " Then one day Sudarshan Bhaiyya tells me "Arre... are you people in L K G for heavens sake..?? Not talking ?!! " Bhaiyya calls her up and talks to her after me repeatedly saying NOOOOO.. he gives the phone to me.. i talk to her and she talks very happily and talks as if nothing has happened... I start crying and she gets surprised by that ! She said " Arre.. i am sorry yaar... didnt mean to "
That was our first and last fight !

Then we would just meet, roam around , see ajji ( grandma ) at her home, spend time talking with her, eat rotti dal chawal and everytime i would find a hair in it ! I hated it ! And she knew that i hated it ! :-)