Hiccups, page 23
“I don’t like the taste of alcohol directly, but cocktails are pretty good. They have different flavors and give you the high of having alcohol as well. Like… Sex On The Beach, it tastes sweet and a little tangy. Strawberry Daiquiri, which is another one of my favourites, that’s also sweet and has just a hint of alcohol in it, giving it a unique flavor. You want to try it?” she asked him, handing over her cocktail glass.
“No thank you” he responded with his hand raised in a gesture of refusal.
“Come on. Be a man” she said in an exaggerated tone, making him smile.
“I don’t think having a Strawberry cocktail is the test of ‘being a man’” he replied.
“Having Sex On The Beach definitely is” she replied with a wink.
“Nice try, but no thanks” he replied.
“Damn yaar!” she exclaimed with a hint of disappointment.
“Why are you so hell bent on me having a drink?” he asked.
“Because I want to see how you behave when you’re drunk” she replied.
“What?”
“Yeah. I bet, when you’re drunk you’ll spill out all your secrets and brush aside all your inhibitions”
“I’m already doing that naa. Over the last few weeks, I have become more chilled out than I’ve ever been.
I’ve told you so many things, I’ve even started to dance a bit.”
“Haan, but alcohol will fast track the process” she said excitedly.
“I can’t believe you are actually encouraging me to have alcohol” he said to her.
“I’m asking you to try it, not to become a drunkard who stalks women in dark alleys” she replied.
“Maybe I should try the ‘drunk stalker in the dark alley’ thing. Chances are that some other guy will throw a cycle at me and I can recover my costs” he replied, as they both shared a laugh.
“But you know what. Now that you make me think about it. I really do wonder how I’ll behave when I’m drunk” he said to her.
“It’s a fun thought naa?” she said.
“Yeah. What about you, what do you do when you’re drunk?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I’ve never been drunk!” she replied.
“What? Never!”
“Never. I always stick to my quota of two to four cocktails and that too mild ones. It just makes me a little high, never drunk. But yeah, I would like to find out what I do when I’m drunk… Hey, let’s make a pact. After we both get placed, we’ll get drunk. Somewhere safe. And we’ll record what we do with a cam. So we can watch it when we’re sober. What say?” she asked.
“Only if you promise not to molest me when you’re drunk” he replied.
“Aah damn! You’re asking for a lot, but I think I’ll control myself” she said to him as they both started laughing.
“So it’s a deal?” she asked, stretching her hand out towards him.
“It’s a deal” he replied, shaking her hand to seal the pact.
They hung out for a long time at Hiccups and were amongst the last to leave the club. Neither of them had transport worries, she had her car and he had his cycle. They went their separate ways and reached home safe and sound.
Even though he was at his hostel room, his mind was still at the club. He could not stop thinking about dancing with her. It was like being in a dream. The way she moved her hips, the graceful movements of her hands, the way her hair swayed as she grooved to the music, everything about her was flawless. He pulled out his diary to make another post under Thoughts about Her.
The night arrives just to watch her dance,
The moon peeks through the clouds, just to get a glance.
She was home and lying down on her bed, thinking about him. She had a quiet laugh as she remembered the way she had caught him admiring her legs and how embarrassed he had felt that time. The entire time after that she saw him make an effort not to look at any part of her except her face. Poor guy, she said to herself, too decent for his own good.
She thought about how much time the two of them had started to spend with each other. He was so different from all the other guys she had met. He was honest in his behaviour towards her, he did not try to act like a different person just to impress her. There were so many layers to his personality. The more she tried to unravel him, the more layers she found underneath. She felt glad that she was spending time with someone like him.
With another night of dancing and laughter behind them, the two of them fell asleep with their minds at ease.
Over the next few weeks, they spent all their free time together, travelling to the hill on Sundays and partying each Saturday night. They even went for the occasional movie together. People around them were beginning to notice how close they had grown. Dr. Roy pointed out how he always seemed to be in high spirits ever since he had started spending time with her. Suparna complained about getting ignored because she spent all her time with him. When asked, they denied having feelings for each other. But individually, they both knew that they had started to get attracted to each other.
He did not tell her anything about his feelings for her, because he was afraid that she might not reciprocate his sentiments and that would ruin everything. She had become a beacon of light in his dark life, he did not want to do anything to disturb their equation.
On the other hand, she was afraid that because of all the things he was going through, he may not want to get into a relationship. She knew that he liked her. She could see it in his eyes, every time he looked at her. However, she decided to continue things as they were and wait for a time when he would have lesser worries on his mind.
As placement week drew nearer, they put a temporary stop to their outings and parties. Placements in their college worked in a slightly long drawn out manner. Towards the end of Third Year, service companies like the major Indian IT firms were invited for placement week. Students were allowed to sit for as many interviews as they liked until they got placed in a company. As soon as someone got placed, they would not be permitted to sit for any other service company interview.
Then, towards the end of Final Year, the big guns would join the hunt. All the major global software and consulting firms would hold their interviews. The value of the package offered would decide which company got the first crack at hiring the available talent. The higher the package, the higher the cut-off GPA.
The safety first approach employed by all students was to ensure that they secured a service job as soon as possible and then wait for phase two that took place almost a year later. Phase two for most people was a make or break time, phase one however, was something that students took a little lightly; especially those with a higher GPA. The students with backlogs and low GPAs were the ones who looked the most worried during phase one, while those with GPAs soaring in the high 8s and 9 s were relaxed.
The situation got reversed during phase two, when the high scoring students looked tense about which company they’d end up in, while the low GPA folks were at ease, since they didn’t make the cut-offs in any case.
During the run up to placement week, students spent time preparing their resumes. Requests were made to seniors to share the ‘format’ of their resumes. That would be followed by searching their memories for all kinds of ‘achievements’ that they could list out on sheets of paper meant to sum up their nascent careers.
While some of the gifted students had amazing achievements like having stood first at the NTS exam or winning scholarships every year or having a lot of sporting medals and trophies to boast of; others had to embellish a lot to fill in the two page format. Entries like.
Participated in several National Level C contests and Shortlisted for a multitude of National level Paper Presentation contest – were the norm.
Any event, no matter how inconsequential would be billed as a National Level competition.
‘Languages spoken’ was another extremely abused section – some students would mention German and French as languages they spoke, even though they knew little more than how to say ‘Good Morning’ and ‘Good Night’ in those languages. Such students took their chances with the hope that the interviewer would not know the languages they listed.
However, the one place where students used all their creativity was in the ‘Hobbies’ section.
Most students had entries like – reading, sports, music, movies, cricket (despite having mentioned sports already) and blogging (even if their blog has just one post) on their resume.
A few misguided students added some unintended humour to their resumes –
One resume mentioned the following under ‘Languages spoken’ – English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, C, C++, Java (beginner level).
He had his resume worked out well ahead of Placement week, so did she. They reviewed each other’s resume and even prepared for aptitude tests and interviews together.
He despised preparing for service company interviews, they involved a set pattern of questions repeated year after year that were easily available on the Internet. Questions like the one below were the norm:
Write a C program to display the following output on screen:
*
**
***
****
*****
“How the hell is a question like this applicable to the real world…” he complained to her, “… anyone can mug up the program for this and spill it out. After three years of engineering, is this the sort of question that will get students a job? Shouldn’t there be a better way of judging a student’s calibre?” he went on.
“Shut up and learn the standard answer!” she said to him plainly.
“I won’t!” he replied.
“You want to write some original code in front of the interviewer, then be my guest. Just remember, some of the interviewers themselves don’t know how to code for nuts. They ask standard questions so they get standard answers which they can use to select or reject students. It’s the wrong time to showcase your brilliance” she said.
“I’d rather remain berozgaar than get a job by writing a C program to draw a right angled triangle made up of asterisks!”
“I bet you’ll be asked to write this program.”
“I won’t write it” he replied.
“Sometime you act really silly, you know that” she said to him and ruffled his hair.
He wondered how girls took liberties in making physical contact with guys without thinking twice. She had lovely hair that he wanted to run his fingers through, but if he did, she’d probably think that he was a nut-job and here she was, ruffling his hair and punching his shoulder at will.
What does this mean? Does it have any significance or is it just normal female behaviour with a familiar male friend? Why doesn’t someone teach this stuff in a book? Who the hell cares about drawing a triangle in C? Here’s a girl who I like and I don’t even know if she likes me or is acting friendly. Damn this world! There’s only one man who can help me, Dr. Roy – he thought to himself.
That evening he waited for Dr. Roy to arrive for the daily round. After the doctor was done examining his mother, he asked the doctor to meet him outside the ward.
“I need some advice” he said to Dr. Roy.
“Sure, what is it?”
“It’s about a girl” he said.
“The Saturday night girl?” asked the doctor.
“Yeah” he said with a tense expression.
He did not know how to put the question across to Dr. Roy. The neurologist was the closest thing he had to an elder brother, but Dr. Roy was a good twenty years older than him.
“Don’t tell me you did something stupid?” Dr. Roy asked, wondering why the youngster was looking so worried.
“No way! We’re nowhere close to doing anything remotely stupid” he replied, surprised by the direction in which Dr. Roy was thinking.
“Thank God. So what is it?” asked the relieved doctor.
“The thing is, we’ve become very close friends. We spend a lot of time together. We go out for movies and parties etc with each other and it’s all a lot of fun. But…”
Dr. Roy knew what his question was going to be and was enjoying the build up. Looking at the young man experiencing his first crush woes, reminded him of his own college days.
“… but now I think I’ve started to like her and I don’t know if she likes me. I don’t know if I should tell her and it’s getting so difficult. Every day I convince myself not to think of her as anything more than a friend.
But the moment I see her, I feel like telling her that I have feelings for her. What do I do?” he asked Dr. Roy.
“Alright, I think I got the picture. So here’s one question. Is this girl fairly balanced and rational?”
“Yes” he replied.
“Then you have nothing to fear. Just go ahead and tell her, but tell her nicely. Make it special” said the doctor.
“What happens if she says no?” he asked.
“I don’t know. But, I will tell you this; if you do tell her and she says no, you may regret it; but if you don’t tell her… you will regret it” said the neurologist.
He knew that Dr. Roy was right, and that he had to confess his feelings to her sometime. He decided to wait for the right moment.
That night as he sat in front of his study table, in the hope of preparing for the placement process that would begin the next day, all he could do was think about her and how all his efforts to prevent himself from getting attracted to her, had been in vain. He wondered how she actually forced his mind to disobey simple instructions like, not looking at her beauty spot or her shapely legs or her stunning figure. She seemed to do that without any effort, all she had to do was stand in front of him. And it wasn’t just her looks, he felt attracted to her personality as a whole. She had changed his life for the better. In the face of despair, she had become his one hope for a normal life.
Just as he was thinking about her, he got a call on his cell phone. It was from her.
“Hey, wassup?” he said to her.
“I am home alone… and bored… and not getting sleep” she replied.
“Why are you alone?”
“My aunt’s grandmother died. So she, along with my uncle and cousin sister have all dashed off to Bangalore.”
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that. Are you feeling sad or something because of that” he said to her.
“No not really. I’m just bored, had they told me earlier that they were going I would’ve called Suparna over, but now it’s too late.”
“So you’re just bored and not sad that someone died?”
“I’m not happy that someone died, but I’m not going to fake sadness because of it. I haven’t even met the person who passed away, I did not exist in her world. I bet her soul would not appreciate fake and insincere demonstrations of sorrow at her death. My uncle and all are actually going there because the old lady’s will shall be read out, they’ve gone to try their luck” she said.
“OK” he said, not knowing how exactly to respond.
“I don’t understand why wills are opened up after the person dies. They should open it before, when the person is getting old or something. It’ll save everyone all the suspense. Plus the old people can have some fun by giving the finger to the people they dislike by willing to them useless stuff like old socks or torn clothes” she said, making him laugh a bit.
“Why do you hate old people so much?” he asked.
“I don’t hate old people. What made you think so?”
“You have a tendency to come across as someone who doesn’t really respect old people too much” he answered.
“It’s not that I disrespect old people. But I do strongly feel that having white hair should not be considered as a criterion for respecting a person.”
“Hmm… I can’t really argue with that. So when are your relatives going to return?” he asked.
“Three days later” she replied.
“OK. Anyway, all set for tomorrow?” he asked her.
“I’m not doing any preparation, if that’s what you mean. I’m too tired of solving those aptitude test problems…” she said as he interrupted her.
“That stuff is retarded. It’s like going back to eight standard yaar. Ramesh, Suresh and Rakesh start running at blah speeds, how far will they get in five minutes. What the heck?
Then you have the ‘boat moving upstream and downstream’ question. Or some question like – a man moves 3 km east, then 5 km north and 7 km west, how far is he from the starting point? Such questions are an insult to one’s intelligence. What are they trying to asses? Whether we cheated while passing high school?” he stopped as he heard her laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked.
“It’s funny how you get so riled up about such things. I think all these quizzes have spoilt you. You’re like some addict looking for tough questions all the time. You don’t get a thrill from these standard tests; you want something exciting all the time. Right?” she asked.
“Damn it! You’re right” he said to her.
“I think I know you better than you know yourself” she said to him.
Immediately his mind recognized the truth in the innocuous statement she had made. She was right. She did know him better than anyone else, including himself.
“Can I ask you something random?” he asked her.
“Sure.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
His heart rate increased exponentially as he asked the question and waited for her answer.
She laughed silently when she heard the question. She hadn’t expected it, but when he asked the question, she found the hesitancy in his voice quite funny and a little cute.
“That is a random question. And the answer is no. If I did have a boyfriend, you would’ve known by now” she replied.
He heaved a sigh of relief.
