Fighting to get close

Two people who apparently have nothing common between them at first can go a long way, for some very strange reason. Logically speaking, each friend one makes is a stranger before he/she becomes a friend. But then there are a few specimens in your friend-list, (not the Facebook friend-list....) whose presence is somehow inexplicable in life.. After reading the last sentence, I realized that 'this' part of my life is what I call 'overdoing'.

Two years ago...

It was  my freshman year. I was sitting jobless in my room, when a very close friend of mine(No.. I won't mention the fellow's name) walked into my room. We chatted and yapped for a while and everything was going fine, just that five minutes into our conversation, we both knew we were dead bored. We gave each other this blank look, both thinking "So what to do now?". This friend of mine can be annoying at times. He had collected the numbers of  'many a ladies' from all over the freshman year, some by asking the girls, some..... by hook or crook. He said "Let's prank the girls by calling them.". I still remember the twinkle in his eyes when he said that. I didn't exactly feel any emotion till the time it was my turn to make a call to a girl. If I remember correctly, at the time, there was this controversy around one of the teachers leaving the college for some very strange reasons. There were rumors all around about the same, but no body knew exactly what was happening.. Okay, that's my way of saying that I was probably the only one around who had absolutely no idea of what was going on.

Moving on.....

So, looking into the 'contact list', it was  a matter of pure 'eenie-meenie-minie-mo' to choose any one number, dial it, and press the 'Green phone button'. So that is exactly what I did. After I pressed the dialing button, I got this very strange feeling in my belly. But I couldn't exactly connect the 'strange feeling in my belly' to the weird feeling I was getting all over my body. I could specially not understand my sudden urge to fart. Hmm.. not good!

Suddenly, someone picked up on the other end.. SHIT!!! SHIT!! I sort of scrambled for words for the first five seconds. Then I managed to pull off my 'Robert-Downey-Jr.-baritone', which would have made me sound something like.... err... Mila Kunis... Never mind, it's all in the head. So I blabbered something.. Not sure I remember what it was I said... Oh yeah!! I asked her for her name. She told me hers. She asked me for mine, I told a fake one... but you see, not that it mattered(or so I thought...) and I asked her if she knew what the controversy about the soon-to-be-leaving-teacher was. I don't remember what she said about what she knew. She sounded a bit skeptical about who the oerson was on the other end, I suppose. She asked me who I was again... This time, I said who I was....or at least who I thought I was in my dreams....

"I am BATMAN!". I was planning on saying the whole thing "I am VENGEANCE, I am the KNIGHT, I am BATMAN!!!". But then, even back then I had the smarts to understand that would be a bit too much for her to handle.

So I kept it short, and pressed the 'red phone' button as fast as I could with my almost frozen fingers.. Somehow, I managed to not fart. So that way, I saved two people. Guess who? One's my friend(Duh!). The second one's the girl. She too would have died of the smell perhaps. So I really was a super hero on the day it turns out... Eh! Chuck it!

After my turn, my friend called another number and did his part of the bargain.

Somehow, I felt miserable for losing my time making that call. It did give a rush of a strange kind. But the excitement got killed at the end of the first call, and I decided not to do it any more. But the next thing I was planning on was a suicide mission. I decided to apologize to the girl I had called. But I wasn't up for doing that over phone. That would have just made things a bit too 'Phoney'. So I found out which class she was in, and decided to go to her the next day.

Come the next morning.....

I waited for the break session at 10 o'clock.  I was slightly hesitant about the whole 'apology' gig. For all you know, you never know when it's your chance to get pulverized to pulp at the hands of a lovely lady. After I saw who I had meddled with the previous night over phone, I was certain about that day being my turn to get pulverized at the hands of a lovely lady, To the extent, that I actually decided to flee from the place. It wasn't anything about her looks or anything. As a matter of fact, there was something extremely endearing about the way she looked.But it was probably my preparedness to get beaten up that helped me stand my ground. Strange thing was, she was nothing like imagined.

Here's what I had imagined: The person would be this fire breathing dragoness, who, if given a choice, would burn me to ash with her fiery eyes... I know that not a word of that sentence makes sense, but at the time, nothing made sense to me either. So we just started to talk... err... or rather, I just tried to apologize and get my sorry-ass out of there as soon as I possibly could, before she turned into the lady dragon I was afraid she would turn into. But she started smiling and talking back, and it all went fine. Maybe it wasn't all that big a deal. ORRR I was already in hell, sleeping, tied to a big log of wood, dreaming for the last time,  before those puny being in hell burned me in my sleep!!

Thankfully, it wasn't all that big a deal, it turned out. I even told her my real name after that.....!

And hence, the two of us parted ways smiling, I specifically smiling because I came out of it miraculously unscathed!

Two years hence......

There's this atrocious process called a pre-registration that my college subjects us to, each semester, without fail. And it would be absolutely frivolous to describe to anyone what the pre-registration is all about. Each and every student goes around the college to-and-fro about 2-3 times, just by chance if all formalities fall in place on time. Otherwise, forget your pre-registration

So, somewhere about 3 months ago, in my last semester, while I was running around the college to get my pre-registration done, I walked into a girl and asked her for what time it was... When the girl turned her face to me for replying, a current ran through my spine....

I forgot what time it was she told me. And then, she looked at me, squinted at my face and said "Hari, right?".

After taking five more seconds to register what she'd said, only one picture can describe how I felt at that moment.....

She remembers my name! Yeah!! Beat that!

 But then I realized that as a proof of how big a joke I would have made of myself in the Ladies-Hostel..... just because of a single phone-call...

Over the next few days, we kept running into each other at random. It's kind of cool to still realize that I am still alive, given that she has had sufficient chances to make a pulp out of me, but so far, has gracefully shown restraint to any such behavior that would be a cause of great humiliation to me. I mean, what will my friends say?? "Look at that chap! He got beaten up by a girl! Ha... Ha... Ha...".