An Everlasting Love Story...Brought to you by, Wills - Part I

The internal exams had just got over. It was a small period of respite in my packed first year when one could loaf around without much guilt. As I wandered about, I saw Bonnie sitting in the spacious landing-cum-balcony of our 3 storey hostel, enjoying the cool night breeze. I went and sat near him enjoying the calm and serene surroundings.

In retrospect, all this romanticism in the air was what gave us the idea. “Man, don’t we need to do something in college other than just study study study?” I asked, “Yeah man!” he replied.

I: I had such high expectations when I joined college…. about bunking classes, chasing skirts, what not!
Bonnie: Yeah, me too man! Me too!
I: F***
Bonnie: F***
Us: F***
Bonnie: Let’s do something about this macha.
I: Yeah, lets!
Bonnie: Hmm… let me think.
He proceeded to think with that constipated expression on his face and I proceeded to stare listlessly into nowhere… Ideas were never my forte.

Bonnie(now with a bright smile): da! Let’s romance two chicks in our class. We will make it a one month effort. At the end of which, we either get screwed or we get “screwed”….he he he.

I will not go into the details of my screwed up romance life then [and now…:(], suffices to say that it was screwed! I am really not a ladies man. For the 0 number of proposals I had done till date, I had got 0 replies and 0 rejections. All in all, a very poor state of affairs prevailed.

I(The eternal pessimist in romance): Just tell me the name of two “chicks” in our class. In 2 months, I haven’t seen any!
Bonnie: True! But then beggars can’t be choosers, so let’s select the best two from the worst and start off anyways.
I(Resignedly): Ok.

After a thorough search of possible candidates, we finally decided that I will go after Ramba* and he would go after Menaka*. The plan of action was pretty normal, start chatting, start calling, start dating and then propose.

I hate following plans. So at the end of one month, I had about talked with the girl in question once or twice and given her an odd smile. On the other end, Bonnie was spending hours and hours each day with Menaka.

“Speed thrills, but kills” is one advice that Bonnie never followed. He is not dead yet, but his romance is. Instead of building up a rapport, doing some hand holding and eating some ice creams before proposing. He went ahead and proposed at the end of the stipulated month, with disastrous consequences….:) Till date, he has refused to divulge the details of what happened during the “proposal drama”.

On the other hand, my life is an open book (blog?) as far as my romances go. Not because I wanted it that way, but because my romance was never a one man effort. I had the active support of my entire hostel. In fact, I am now convinced that as far as Ramba is concerned, it was not only me but my entire hostel that did the romancing.

There was a free flow of advice on what I should and should not do right from the beginning. One good piece of advice was to write small chits and pass to her. This technique allowed me to break the ice. I gave her chits and she replied back with chits. Then one day she wrote down the words of a Hindi song in English for me. I didn’t really request it, but somehow she did that for me.

I was extremely thrilled at this phenomenal change from lowly chit to Hindi love song. The song went like this “chup gaya badli mein jake chand bein sharma gaya , apko dekha to phoolon ko pasina aa gaya.. are mahi… (read are abraham….. ooo)”. I don’t want to show you my Hindi score card, but believe me, it could stop a train in its track with all the red. I was utterly stupefied by the words, I did not understand anything. The time, I decided was ripe for some active bluffing. So I went up to her seat and thanked her (with tears in my eyes) of how beautiful the words were. About how honored I was to get such a personal present from her.

Then, before she could utter a single word and call my bluff. I ran back to hostel. I had to see Nishanth, pronto! He was born and brought up in Delhi and was a natural with Hindi. He painstakingly unraveled the beautiful meaning of each and every single word, for me. To tell that I was elated when I understood the meaning of her words would be a gross understatement. It may never win the best song award, but to me, at that moment, it was nothing short of an ode to love.

Maan! me the loser had done it! I read the song a hundred times and even tried to sing it out loud. I was thwarted at that attempt though... My hostel mates don’t appreciate “original” talent…:)

This was a very important milestone not only in the love story, but also in my life. So, it was no big surprise that when the guys asked for a treat, I was at my obliging best! I bought everyone a dozen laddoos in the hope of impending success. Lesson learnt: don’t count your chickens before they hatch!

Now the romance went into full swing, I started chatting her up and even became friends with her friends. Just to be in the “loop” you see. I felt that the stage had been set for me to become a total Casanova. The only problem was that there were some other aspiring Casanova’s already hanging about Ramba. Bloody gits!!!! But this did not deter me! She had the softest spot for me, I was sure of that.

That is when the next exam came along. Our free time was cut short dramatically. As is the wont of first year engineering students who think too much of their exams, everyone fell into “Nerd Mode”. Naturally, my romancing took a back seat and our time together dwindled to almost nothing.

Once the exam was finished however, I saw to my absolute horror, that the other guys in the race had over taken me by far in the “quest” for Ramba. They taught her subjects, gave her notes**, carried her bag to the station, bought her free lunches in the canteen and pampered her in other such imaginative (read sick) ways. Gone were the days of innocent monopoly, now, free trade knocked!

*Names changed...:)
**Bethelites reading this are requested to refrain from even imagining what would have happened if I lend her my notes…:D