Mistakes. They are the most beautiful thing the man has ever created. It’s my mistakes that have always helped me to grow, transform, love. Yet, like all others, it took me long to acknowledge what they did for me.
Man is stupid, who fears to make mistakes. I don’t understand why anyone would deprive oneself of a chance to learn. Of many such lessons learnt through my mistakes, one that I carved in my heart is: Deliberation spoils relations.
Relations are to be lived and not manufactured. You should be part of a relation; not the creator. The moment you try to be the creator, you end up disrespecting the indiscernible soul of that relation. And in my quest of being the closest to Aditi I committed this mistake; not once but thrice.
In life, some experiences, however bitter they may be, take us closer to a person. Sana should have been probably mad at me, or that’s how I thought it should have happened. But the next morning, she was different.
She came to me and talked to me like I was a very close friend of hers. She talked to me about her family, about what she thought about our classmates, and then, about Ankit.
Ankit was a brat from the other section who had been hitting on her from two years. An average built specy, filled with arrogance and vanity.
To be frank, he looked nothing more than a ‘mistake’ trying to act like a hero out of a B-grade movie. With at least, five sycophants running around him to lick the dirt out of his face, it was evident that it wasn’t his personality but the moolahs raked in by his parents that kept those ALs (ass lickers) around.
At such a time, when my relation was on a dicey ground, I was least interested in listening to what Sana wanted to say, but then I owed her an apology. I sometimes kept making an effort to listen to what she was saying, but was failed by the constant intervention of thoughts that kept pouring in. Thoughts about how I could ensure that when I leave the class, I leave with a belief that I haven’t lost Aditi.
A spider’s web is a perfect example of the situation where I was. The more I tried to free myself, escape; the more I got entangled in the web.
The Unit Tests were just a few days away, and I was spending more and more time with Sana. I knew that Aditi was a serious student; hence, it would be stupid to think that she would be attending all the classes till UT. After all, they were our first UTs in the new school.
For me they were actually UTs (Untimely Tests). Ten days later these obnoxious little weeds were going to separate me and Aditi, when I was in real need of a new physics law (or ‘one’ which I could invent) that could scientifically make everyday last at least 60 hours.
Time was running out. And since, I scored low (abysmal is the perfect word) on the style quotient, I decided to play a gamble with the resource I ‘thought’ I had in profusion –intellect.
After two days of long separation (I guess, which applied only to me) I squeezed time to sit with Kritika, Navjyot and Aditi. It felt like eternity when I saw her laugh at my lame jokes. There’s a strong relation between lame jokes and girls. They always tend to click with the girls who are friendly with you; but the same set of jokes, prove critically endangering when experimented with girls trying to repel you.
So in between those small chit-chats I teased Aditi by enquiring whether the ‘liking-percentage’ has increased or not. And very playfully to my bad-luck, she kept putting the topic off.
Finally, I decided to make the gamble. I challenged Aditi to out-score me in the coming UT and in return I promised not to prick the issue again. I was sure that I would score more than her. She was a silent lamb in the class; I was the one who shone in front of teachers. First she tried to disagree, boosting my self-belief, but quite reluctantly later agreed on the persuasion of Kritika.
Sitting on the dining table, I was lost in these thoughts, smiling at few occasions, when papa decided to take me out of my hypnotic world.
“Girish Bhaiya had called up today. Can you just go to his place on Sunday? He needs you there.”
‘Papa my UTs are just round the corner. How will I study?’
‘Oh jaise ki tu boht padta hai… tokri lejaani padti hai jab bhi tere results lene jati hu! (Like you study a lot… every time I go to get your results, I need to carry baskets) ’ mom joined the discussion.
‘Carry your books. It’s just for a day. Anyways, the apartment is holding a Jagrata. So you can study at Bhaiya’s place. You used to love staying with him. Is everything alright?’ dad sounded concerned.
“Arey, dad it’s just that I want to score high…”
“Oh, don’t take tension. You’ll just do fine! So he will pick you from school on Saturday.” Cutting me midway in my discourse, Mom completed the soft-toned command.
When mom makes such soft-toned commands, we all adhere to it strictly; because we all know that if we don’t the very next following sequence of things would be in this manner – anger, sobs, anger, sobs, again anger, more sobs and finally just sobs.
So in order to help her maintain her body-water-levels we always cut her at the first sob itself and give whatever she wants.
Sitting at the other side of a counter isn’t a pleasant experience, not when you are surrounded by beautiful ornaments shinning Gold. That tenses your muscles up, for you can never imagine when you might become a victim of Delhi’s criminal exercises.
It’s queer, because I don’t now whether I should actually thank God that no customers turned up that afternoon, or should I curse Him. After all, it was my brother’s shop; I would always like it to prosper.
So when you have nothing much to do in a shop, you have two options – gaze at the idiot box or call some idiot. I opted for the second option. I picked the receiver up and dialled Navjyot.
‘Fantastic! He’s busy with someone. Or maybe, it would be aunty.’ I murmured in disappointment.
After Navjyot, the only name that resonated in my mind and was tempting enough to be slyly given a call was Aditi. But then, calling her was sort of banned. She feared her dad, or at least, that is what me and Navjyot thought. The biggest fear for any guy is father of his girlfriend, and for girls, the biggest dragon is the mother of her boyfriend.
Nonetheless, I decided to give it a try. ‘If she picks up, I will talk to her, if she can. Otherwise, IF it’s her dad, then, I would simply say something and put the phone down. After all, he’s just a dad. How bad can a dad be? Right?’ I assured myself.
I picked the received and pushed her number. I must appreciate the Tata telecom department for their ‘class’ ‘You-are-in-queue’ recording, which wins hands down for using the most irritating voice; of course, after BSNL’s. Every time you hear the recording you feel the itch to throw the phone as far as possible. Now, that’s what we call deep understanding of customer needs
After few minutes of constant dialling, the phone finally rang. Before I could just rehearse my lines, a male voice grunted from the other side, “hello.”
‘Hello,’ I squeaked. “Er… can I speak to… (I thought for a microsecond)… Ramesh Sharma?” I thanked wholeheartedly to whomsoever the name belonged to.
“Don’t you have eyes? Are you blind? Are your fingers alright?” spat came the reply from the other end.
For a moment I went into serious cogitation, how is a wrong number connected to anyone being blind? Or was he working for some NGO that worked for the disabled? But thankfully, her father saved my time and energy. “Can’t you see what number you are dialling, moron?”
“I am sorry, uncle”
“What sorry?” he seemed in no mood to stop this. He was breathing fire!
Since, her father didn’t know me, I had nothing to lose. “Arey… I said am sorry, what else do you expect anyone to say. If you have installed a telephone, you would get miscalls, messages and wrong numbers. You have problem with that… sue me… or better, sue Tata!” and I jammed the receiver down. It felt like I had just won a war, peace overpowered me.
To be continued
TeenSoup- take it with a pinch of salt! 