As per our pre-decided plan, AJ and me had decided to spent the day-out. So as per that we were to leave home early in the morning and come back home late in the night. We had not planned any specific things to do except our departure early in the morning.
But guess AJ had expected a bit
too much from me when he chose to depart at 8.30 a.m from home. It was till he
called at home on our landline and subsequently mom woke me up that I
remembered of our plan.
Seemingly he had been trying on
my cell which was on silent mode. I saw his “7 missed calls” interspersed with
5 minutes of each other. The grind of the vibrator was hardly a thing that
would put me off my slumber.
Not wanting to hear an earful
early in the morning, I told my mom to convey him that I would be at his place
in another half an hour.
“Beta, he has just woken up. He
has told you to be ready and would pick you from your place in another 30
minutes” She promptly delivered my message.
She replacing the receiver meant
he had acknowledged the same.
A few seconds later a coin-drop
sound suggested to me that I received a message. I sensed it was from AJ and I
wasn’t disappointed.
“Asshole! :-x” it read.
I replied back with a wink smiley.
I rushed through my daily
routine, had a quick breakfast, even skipped bath and hoped to rely on the
deodorant to save the day for me.
I bid good-bye to mom and zipped
down the stairs only to realise I hadn’t got the keys of my bike. I screamed
back from the ground to call my mom, who luckily was waiting at the window to
see me off. I gestured to her to throw the bike keys. She went inside the room
to return with the keys which she dropped way off into a small pool of water.
“Argh!!!!!!” I grumbled to being
able to vent my frustration at my mom as I carefully retrieved it.
Thankfully my pop had got the
bike serviced and just a couple of kicks down, it was roaring and ready to roll.
AJ’s villa was just a few blocks
down the road in a relatively plush area. But the condition of the roads
leading to it were not less in comparison to the surface of moon. Huge
craters dotted the stretch many filled with murky water. Any motorable roaf
left, if any was pre-occupied by the four-legged commuters.
Zig-zaging my way through this
and avoiding some over-zealous moves by the rickshawallas I reached the front
gate of his house which had a big board hung on it. It read ‘BEWARE OF DOGS’.
The picture of the savitating dog at one of its end was more scary, but not
more scary that remembering the dog-bite I had. I could not make up my mind as
to what was more painful, the three anti-rabies injection or the loss of my
brand Levi’s Denim.
Gathering my thoughts I called
out for Ajay.
It wasn’t until 4-5 on top of the
voice cries, that his father emerged on their roof-top balcony.
Aj’s father was an ex-banker. He
had availed voluntary retirement and he was in full-time stock market trading
and thus had made a fortune for themselves. They had moved from being our
humble middle-class neighbour to this up-market bungalow. I always sought to
follow suite but my parents likened share trading with gambling and kept an
arms length away from such traits.
It wasn’t a rare site to see him
glued in front of the computer screens looking at some weird charts all day
round. I was always fascinated and would ask Aj to learn the same from him and
then impart the knowledge of me.
“Who is it?” Aj’s father dismissively
queried.
“uncle, Its me. Milind.” I
replied.
“Isn’t Ajay no there at home?” I
added.
“Ohh. Why are you standing at the
gate? Come in” he questioned.
“No, its ok uncle. Can you please
call Ajay?” I requested.
“Come in Milind. Rambo is been
tied in the back-yard”. He replied. I could see a faint smile emerge on his
face. May be he recollected the dog-bite incident and the fun they had at my
cost that day.
Thus relived, I pushed the huge
gate and walked to the front porch. Uncle had already descended to the front
veranda, and Aj’s mom had joined him by then. Aj’s mom was a very nice lady,
always hospitable whenever I visited them. Like Aj, they had too never had the
airs about their newly found riches. They were very much rooted to the ground.
“Arrey Milind, long time no see”
queried his mom.
“Hello Aunty! Yes, indeed been
long since I visited you people” I acknowledged.
“I hardly get long vacation from
work. And whenever I do, time just flies away idling at home” I added.
“Hmm… I understand” She
said sympathetically
“So Milind, which company you
work for?” queried uncle.
“Consistent Systems…” I promptly
responded.
“Beta, kaunsa TENT?” Aunty
queried back totally perplexed.
“Consistent! Aunty, I work for
Consistent!” I corrected her.
She nodded back, the puzzled look
very much evident on her face. I could bet that she had not picked up the name
as majority of the people who dare to query me about the name of company I work
for.
‘Déjà vu!’ I thought to myself ,
but it wasn’t ending here.
“What does your company make?”
she aped all those who had asked me the same question zillions of times.
Initially I used to actually try to make them understand that we are IT
services company providing IT solutions to clients; but that would inturn open
Pandora’s box. So I had resigned to answering such questions with my trademark
reply.
“Computers Aunty, we make
computers” I said.
“Ohh… Good … Good…” she said
while weeding the rice in her hand.
“Aunty, where is Ajay?” I asked
trying to change the topic.
“He was waiting for you since
morning…” Aunty replied.
“I have send him to market to get
the Economic Times. He will be back soon.” Uncle intertwined.
“So you didn’t get in
Infosystems” added uncle.
I didn’t take any effort to him
how I actually work for a better company. Had it been some technologically sane
person, I could have given him some outsource product development funda and
like, but in this case I refrained myself by just smiling back to suggest
negatively. From the look on his face what must be running in his mind. He must
have thought “ What a loser! A second grade donkey”.
“So finally you are here” I heard
Aj shout it out as he entered from the gate.
“Yo man! Sorry for the slight delay”
I acknowledged as I moved towards him.
“You F*****!” he gulped his
explicit mid-way seeing his parents in the verandah.
“Dad, here is you stuff” Aj said
as he placed the bulleting and some magazines on the tea-table.
“Mom, I will be having my dinner
out. You guys need not wait for me” he told his mom as he suggested to me to
move.
“But, let me give Milind
something to eat.” Aunty pleaded “He hasn’t had anything since he arrived.”
“Ah…, its O…” I was to politely
decline the offer when Aj interrupted.
“I ll feed him enough” Aj winked
at me as we jogged towards the gate.
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