Hi! This is the 18th part of the series – The Diary Of A Teenager…If you haven’t read the previous parts…go ahead they are all here.
_______On Your Marks, Get Set, Doom!________
Mother: a rare species of human who might act deaf to your loudest tantrums but notices every bit of inconspicuous changes in your life. For years I didn’t understood this definition. Not until the day I was about to embark on my first serious relation.
I woke up at five that morning, took a morning shower, that too in cold water; and was ready by six. Too conspicuous to breach my mothers eagle eyes! As I sat for my breakfast at the dining table, she asked me in a teasing tone of hers, “you are having a date today?”
‘Damn, I am busted,’ I thought. But like any other Indian middle-class lad I replied with a big NO …with a sustaining ‘O’. “Then why do you smell like my deo?”
‘Oh………… can’t I use it. I……I just tried it…that’s it…nothing special about it,’ I stammered throughout my reply. This tête-à-tête with mom cracked open the little remaining self-confidence that was left in me. ‘Man…how could I? Why didn’t I notice that it was mom’s deo I had put on?’ I kept cursing myself on the way to school.
My first attempt at proposing a girl wasn’t very successful one, and in that nobody cared about the success or failure of my relation. I didn’t had to prove anyone anything there. But here, there was a big monkey on my shoulder. My credibility, my conferred status of being a ‘love guru’, was on stake.
I couldn’t muster courage to go to Aditi and reveal that the mystery man was me (though, I had cast myself in for that role only some weeks back). I sat at my desk and just waived at her, which was very unusual from other days. Navjyot had taken the seat beside me; I was too lost in myself to even notice him.
“Are you going to propose someone?” he asked.
‘Yeah…huh? No…why?’
“So is it your birthday?”
‘NO…Navjyot just cut it out…tell me what’s the problem yaar?’
“You smell like a deo store. And it smells like a feminine one. Where did you get that?”
It was an ugly day for me. The fragrance hadn’t faded even in an hour or so. Damn these lasting deo’s.
‘Shit! Do I? … … … help me out mate.’ I almost pleaded.
“Well. The only thing that can counter this fragrance is… SWEAT. Let’s go to the ground and play soccer for a while.”
‘Are you sure? I don’t think that I should do that. And I am not in the team. They won’t allow me to play.’
“Hey don’t worry about that. I am in the team and besides, the selections are going on.”
‘Fine, then lets go.’
I was a lousy soccer player in my locality. The school playfield was full of boys of all sizes- tall and well built, tall and slim, tall and athletic; and I looked like a toddler among them, small in length as well as, in breadth. Coach wasn’t amused seeing me there, but he couldn’t deny me a chance; for everyone deserved a chance, even a bozo like me.
“Line up guys,” he shouted. Since Navjyot was already in the team, he was standing with his team mates. “Those who are here for the selections will take three rounds of this ground- non-stop. And hear this clearly- NO SHORTCUTS.”
I was panting like a dog by the end of third round, which reminded me about the day in my ex-school when we boys had to cover the whole ground squat-walking. Following the sprint, the coach made two teams out of the wannabe-players and made us play a 30 minute game.
By the end of it…I was smelly like a horse! In the vigour of playing, I forgot the real reason which had compelled me to be on the ground. I went over to Navjyot and stood with him as I tried to catch my breath.
“Now you smell terrible! Ough! Why do you over do things?” he said.
‘What am I gonna do now? I thought I would propose Aditi today.’
“Oh ….” He thought for a second. “I will be right back.”
‘Hey… Navjyot…where are you going?’ I said.
He ran over to Eshank and returned back with a deodorant. Fortunately, this time it was a men’s deo. Eshank was one of the coolest hunks of our school. He had style, charisma, Karizma (the hero Honda bike!), had many girls drooling behind him and was my classmate as well. But he couldn’t steal the girls who drooled behind me, for the simple reason that there were none!
In the whole first half of the day I couldn’t talk to Aditi, which was funny because till I got to know about my attraction towards her, talking to her was a piece of cake. Perhaps, that was the biggest change hindering me from confessing my feelings for her. Finally, I went to Kritika and told her about my feelings for Aditi. She stood there listening to me with I-knew-it expressions on her face.
Love isn’t everyone’s game. Even someone who had been conferred an epithet of being the ‘guru’ of Loveology, could face a tough time dealing with his own proposals. If you ask any girl what are the three most romantic things according to them, then, their answers would be: romantic songs, romantic dates, and poetry!
Of the list, the only thing I was sure I could do was – singing. But unfortunately, within the couple of week’s friendship I had almost exhausted my whole available list. Romantic dates weren’t possible because of lack of courage and strict home-reaching deadlines!
The last one, i.e. poetry – I had never tried my hand on this one. So the best solution in such times is….plagiarism. Lately, I had become a huge fan of Backstreet Boyz (mainly because she used to love English music). I lifted the lyrics of their famous number ‘As Long As You Love Me,’ as I understood it. I tore a piece of paper and wrote the lines:
“All the loneliness has always been a friend of mine,
I am leaving my life in you hands,
People say I am crazy in your love and blind
Listing it all in a claim,
How you got to plan this
Is a mystery I can’t get you out of my head.”
The bad news is- the lyrics though were hardly correct, she recognised the song. And she hated the wrong lyrics I wrote. So….she put it where it exactly belonged to…..TRASH.
By the end of the day, the synopsis of the day was my first real attempt went terribly wrong. The day was a disaster. The only thing that could be seen with a shade of optimism was – I was chosen for the team!
