The Junkie and the Teddy Bear - Part I

It was a very lazy night – the kind of night during which one does not have much to do. The kind of night that seems to be getting ever more frequent in my life these days. But I digress. The nub of the issue was what happened on one such lazy night.

This was a lazy night that came along during a period when lazy nights were rather a scarce commodity. Being diligent students of engineering, we had very little time for lazy nights. We had to think of several important things – like AI classes (or to be more precise, what the hot lecturer would wear to the next AI class) and Graphics classes (whether fortune would continue to favour us and engineer another fall of the Graphics lecturer’s pallu).

On this lazy night that I have spoken at length on, I decided to call a few friends over. Among the many headed who graced my house on that fateful night was Gandhi – the Machiavellian blighter who is undoubtedly familiar to regular readers of my blog.

As the clock ticked away the precious minutes we had left of this lazy night, and we became less and less conscious of the clock (and several other things), Gandhi spoke –

‘Ahem….’, said he, rather regally.

I ignored him, and continued to sip on the blushed hippocrene that makes these long, lazy nights bearable. If only the rest of the idiots had, the lazy night would have wound itself to an uneventful close.

But the rest of them did not. In spite of having proven himself to be a rotten swizz in the affair of the Mysterious Prank SMSes (not to mention his being a mercenary who enjoyed dropping unsuspecting fellows into boiling broth), the rest of them idolized him.

It was as if a thunderbolt had struck. The mane of shaggy hair that was Gandhi, the dreg of Eastern civilization, had spoken.

‘Yes, Gandhi…’, said an over-eager blighter, the very same who was responsible for my unfortunate predicament in class a few months ago.

‘Let’s do something….’, said Gandhi as he gulped down another glass, for which he had not paid his share.

There was a chorus of agreement from the inebriated souls who surrounded him, drowning the only voice of sanity in the room.

‘You know that female Lakshmi of our class….’, said he, rather unnecessarily. For Lakshmi was a girl who, while having all the smarts of a dodo, had the assets of a Pamela Anderson. That the rest of her reminded most people of E.T and Close Encounters of the Third Kind was not something that concerned the average Indian engineering student – whose definition of female beauty amounted to anything that dressed in a salwar.

It was therefore hardly surprising that a couple of tongues lolled as Gandhi continued,

‘We should play a prank on her! It’s 5 in the morning...’, said he, drawing our attention to the fact that we’d spent all of the night in a Bacchanalian orgy of Roman proportions.

‘….and being the pious (&^&*^*& she is, she’s probably just done her fertility rites for the morning.’

Gandhi’s opinion of most women amounted to the unprintable – being of the kind that would elicit a loud guffaw from the average prurient male, and fire from the nostrils of the average feminist.

‘So’, continued he,’ someone calls her up and tells her that he’s head over heels in love with her…’

‘Oh shut up, you piece of shit! You’re drunk’, I said, and continued my one eyed survey of the ants climbing up the wall.

It was unfortunate that I did not look the part of the sober uncle counseling sense to the drunk young men (and looked more like the drunkest of the drunk young men). That is why what happened happened.

A couple of his apostles tried to stuff waste paper into my mouth as Gandhi ignored me and continued his discourse, ’Now, just being in love with her is not good enough – there are a hundred other bastards who’d say that to get a piece of her. The ardent lover should have turned to drugs in his unspoken desire for the young woman.’

The crowd, which even in normal circumstances was very unlike the crowd that discussed Mathematics in Princeton, was rendered particularly slow by the organic compounds that sloshed within them. They were befogged and managed to say as much.

‘You drunk retards’, said Gandhi, in that condescending and patronizing way of his, ‘Siddhu is going to call her up and tell her that he’s on dope because of his unrequited love.’

I looked up, startled. The ants would have to wait until I could resume my one-eyed survey of their migratory practices. Gandhi was hatching one of his vile schemes that usually spelt doom for the pure-at-heart who loved a quiet life.

‘F*** you’, said I, but was unfortunately ignored again.

‘Siddhu is ready, alright! Hell, he looks ugly enough to be a junkie!’, said he, to a loud chorus of approval.

‘Balls, f*** you *&(&)(&( , no f****ing way!! I’ll do it over my dead body!!’, screamed I, forgetting all about the ants.

A few minutes later, I was punching her number.

To be continued...