F.R.I.E.N.D.S

I am very selective while making friends and don’t bother to keep in touch either. So, I have very few friends at all points in my life. Now, I have realized that all my friends (except for my immediate circle in college) are either inaccessible (I mean they live somewhere near ‘The Cape of good hope’) or are loners.

Most importantly we don’t have similar eating habits, i.e., I have them and they don’t.

When we step into restaurant: the first words that come out of their mouth

1. I only eat homemade food.

2. I am counting calories (the reason I get a fit every time one of my friends gains a little holiday weight).

3. I am full.

4. I am boycotting the food processing industry for their overpriced rates and tests on animals.

5. I have a fast (dude, was this the only day you could think of to hang out with friends).

6. Friend: (looking at the menu*) hmmm

(half an hour later)

Me: (banging my head against the table) anything?

Friend: let’s go somewhere else**

7. I don’t eat (true story).

There are others like perpetual stomach ailments, germ phobia, and chronic indecisiveness.

This was until a week ago.

Present day

I met an old friend X..she was distressed and we met after a long time (a common friend also joined us). Although X knew what she wanted and there was nothing we had to do, by the end of the day I knew she felt better (and so did we). Just being around the people you love without the fear of being judged is in itself comforting.

The fact remains that I have a countable (by a 4 year old) number of friends (inaccessible and/or loners), but it is also true that they are the people who are special to me (and hopefully I am special to them) and that’s what matters.

In a nutshell, I used to think that the soundtrack of my social life was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY3kqRRzJP0 and then I realized that it is in fact http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULsXdDqOBo&feature=related

*contemplating laws of nature, ventilation, sunlight, background track and the crowd to calculate the approximate amount of time for which all the people in the restaurant can survive without getting bored in case we get trapped due to some natural disaster and also the chances of survival in case of a stampede

**probably because the estimate of the time calculated in * turns out to be less than the approximate amount of time for rescue to get there

Dooba Dooba

Today, I was bored sitting at home and doing nothing so I decided to go for a walk.Luckily, after a considerable amount of procrastination, yesterday, I charged(the battery of) my mp3 (yes, I am that lazy) and revamped my playlist.For some strange reason I did not remove the song 'Dooba Dooba'.

In the next scene, I was walking in my society courtyard listening to songs and then this song started playing, instinctively, I changed the song (I always did this whenever this song was played for no apparent reason).

I went back to the song trying to contemplate why I kept this song when I never listen to it.I thought it may be because when Mohit Chauhan (the singer of this song) came to our college and sang this song I was utterly delighted, only to realise shortly afterwards that this song was one of the disappointments that day and that I had even commented that the 'Dooba Dooba' guy of our college could have done a better job than him.

It was then that it dawned upon me, it was the 'Dooba Dooba' guy due to whom the song made it to my list in the first place.

Flashback

(two years ago)

I had just joined college and the much awaited (in a way) freshers party was to take place in the evening.All my friends and I got ready and left for the event.On our way to the Auditorium we heard a beautiful melodious baritone voice of a guy singing this song 'Dooba Dooba'.

While climbing up the stairs, the first thing that crossed our minds was that the Freshers' Party had started and someone was performing.Then I reasoned that had it been so, this would have been the showstopper performance and would have been placed towards the end of the performances.As we climbed the voice grew clearer.It had become clear now that it was just a recorded song playing.

And then came the point in my life when my blind faith in common sense ceased to exist.

There stood this guy on the stairs, facing away from me, singing this song without a mic and the only instrument that was playing was a guitar.The guitarist was sitting on the stairs facing him.I wanted him to turn around so bad and stood there in anticipation, not caring that the expression on the guitarist's face was like 'excuse me, can't we get any kind of privacy even on the staircase of a public college?' My friends noticed that I was transfixed and took me to the auditorium saying that he was not practicing for nothing and would obviously perform in the freshers (at that time we did not have any notion of the World beyond freshers' party).

As can be expected he did not feature in the Freshers' Party.I had lost all hopes of seeing his face in this lifetime until one day

(six months ago)

It was the second day of our annual cultural fest.I was in the ground floor of a Computer Science Department when I heard this voice.I was in the middle of something(can't remember what but definitely of the magnitude of balancing delicate glassware on my head) so I could not sprint immediately.As soon as I was done I ran all across the building following this acoustic like Paro in Devdas.Sadly, it ended like Devdas, he was gone by the time I got there.

(present day)

I smiled and disappeared into the dark listening to the close second to the melody that was.