Three ice-cream bowls in our stomachs, things took a turn for the crazier...a true chronicle of the events that followed...the finale to the series dearest to me :)...i especially love the ending...read on...
PART-3
The way to MTR is fraught with traffic, many diversions and one too many bright lights. It’s not exactly a pleasant walk, but the fact that I was with my best buddies and that we were doing absolutely nothing useful was catalyst enough for me to amble on. And pretty soon, just like that, we were there. We made our way to our table which, obviously, was empty. It knew we were coming.
We ordered our three hot chocolate fudges, and tucked into them soon as they were on our table. Somehow we weren’t satisfied with just one and decided to have another, then another. Now when that much that sugar has entered your system, you had better be prepared to find a way to vent all the resultant energy. Going by the evening’s trend of course, we didn’t know exactly what we were going to do next. Around fifteen minutes after we’d left MTR, I first felt it. Mama was talking to be about football.
‘Man U has too many supporters as it is you know? Half of them don’t know why they support them..’ he hadn’t finished.
‘YA MAN!! I support Chelsea only because I like the color blue. BLUE BABY!!’ I started shouting, interrupting him. Something told me I couldn’t, shouldn’t talk slowly or walk slowly for that matter. Everything had to be done fast and loud now; I was getting hyperactive. Mama looked at me for a while.
‘Are you ok man? What the hell happened to you just now?’
‘Dude I just feel like…you know...we’ve got to do something man!! Not just walk around man, let’s run a little, let’s sweat, you know…MOVE!!’
‘I feel the same way dude…’ Midget and Thangi corroborated my views. We all looked at each other for a long second. ‘LET’S RUN MAN!!’
And then we ran. For no joy, if you might like to ask. Thangi lived a few lanes parallel to MTR and so we ran in a general direction away from there. It would certainly do him no good to be spotted by his mother running on the streets like a rabid dog during Base hours. For about ten minutes we just ran, the only sound being our panting and our footsteps. People we passed by just stared as us in fear, thinking that we were eluding pursuit from someone. After that, we stopped to catch our breath, utterly tired but exhilarated.
‘Dude, look at that chick near the main road!’Midget shouted.
‘Where? Let’s run up to her and check!’ I shouted. And we ran all the way to the main road to see whether Midget had spotted well. Suffice to say we did not regret our decision.
After that it was back to some aimless walking, albeit with some residue of the sugar-induced craziness still resident in us. In one of the lanes, we found a huge, stray dog and an empty wine bottle lying beside it. I dared Mama to break the bottle right beside the dog and see whether it chased us. On another day, he might have flat refused me, but today nothing was crazy enough.
He took the bottle off the ground, and before I could tell him I was kidding, he broke the bottle right beside the dog. It awoke with a start and jumped aside with a yelp. We were almost relieved that it was not going to do anything, when suddenly I started barking and chased us.
‘Mother! RUN!!’ Mama shouted and we ran for our lives. A woman living in one of the houses lining the side came out shouting, disturbed by the commotion. But we were already far off from the place.
Five minutes after we had ran away and had calmed down; we finally remembered to take a look at the time. At was 8.15, fifteen minutes till Base got over! We had to get back in time, as Migdet had to catch a van from the place to go home. There were other reasons why he had to get there on time, but we won’t get into them, or he will strangle me the next time I see him.
And so we made our way to Base, reliving the whole evening in our minds on the way. Running away right in front of the base attendant, dancing in the rain on the road, standing on the flyover listening to music, the MTR ice-cream and the consequent craziness, the bottle-breaking…the day was memorable, if nothing.
As we neared the building, unconsciously a feeling of solemnity, of responsibility crept into us. Unbidden, the realization that this could not happen too often occurred to me. By the time we reached Base, we had calmed down and looked just like any of the countless students that were now filing out onto the streets. I turned to the others and said what I felt I had to.
‘We cherish this, because we are not doing this again. Deal?’
We all agreed that it was for the best. And so we went home that day, happier than we had probably been in a long, long time. The next day I came to Base again, only this time I was going to sit in class. I smiled silently to myself as I climbed up the stairs that we had run down yesterday. I made my way to class to find the other three sitting seriously and doing some problems. I sat down beside them and joined in. I was into my second problem when a hand fell upon my shoulder and I looked up to see who it was.
He was here, after such a long time. Another of our partners-in-crime, but one who we didn’t see much. You could trust him to be silent for long periods of time, and then say something that would totally crack you up. Like his idea of starting a show called ‘Pimp my Cow’.
Nikhil was here. He smiled at me and I felt scared. I did not want anyone to persuade me to bunk today and he was especially talented at that. He greeted all of us and sat in a bench behind us, with Thangi.
‘Guys I’ve already parked my vehicle somewhere else so that when we bunk we won’t get caught trying to take it out of there. So that’s been taken care of. Where do we bunk and go?’
We all laughed at his forethought and much as we tried to stop it, felt our resolve to study melt within us. Without a word this time, we got out of our seats and silently made our way through the exit before anyone could spot us.
And we were at it again. This time was almost as crazy, and by the end of the day we had managed to…
But that’s another story.
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