Love Hurts

I have a close-knit group of friends. We like to think of ourselves as a biker gang because—well—one of us knows a lot about bikes, a few of us own bikes, and the rest of us look good in riding jackets! The last couple of times that we've ridden forth on bike trips we ended up having a couple of unfortunate accidents. So for now, the biking frenzy has taken a back seat to a mailing frenzy! That's right, when we're not a biker gang, we're a mailing list. We send each other a dozen mails each day on assorted topics; women, the latest cars, colleagues with funny names, colleagues we want to kill, and so on. And, yes, on some dreary days when the conversation isn't flowing all that well, we discuss the more mundane things, such as lost loves and a loss of innocence.

And we realized that it is quite a Pandora's box of horror stories that we have now collected! Stories that we can look back on now and reiterate over a couple of dozen bottles of beer, laughing uproariously at each other's crappy luck!

So, we have 'S', a short-tempered, jolly south-indian chappie who once had a relationship with a rather good looking catholic girl whom he met at Church. 'S' enjoys music and since he had quite a few catholic friends, he found a means for giving vent to his creative instincts—playing the guitar in the local church choir. And that's where he met his lady friend. Things went great—for seven months. But then religious ardor put a spoke in my friends wheel. Seven months into their relationship, his lady friend realized one day that 'S' was not a decent, catholic boy but a non-catholic! 'S' found it hard to convince her that he hadn't intentionally kept anything from her; after all his surname was 'Pillai!' His only fault was that he'd assumed that after seven months of seeing each other, his lady love probably knew this tiny detail and it didn't bother her! But it did!
And so ended a beautiful love story.

Then we have 'A,' an overly caustic individual at the age of 29. But not without reason, as you will see. Back in his college days, 'A' was a different person from his present "sarcastic-bitch" self (that's what some of us have lovingly christened him!). He was a more trusting and innocent soul. Thanks to these admirable traits, when his college crush told him that she had to end it with him because she had a fatal disease, my friend deciced he should let her 'move on' in peace rather than become a bother to her. Imagine his torment then when he found out that his crush was involved in a relationship with her step-brother that was anything but 'sisterly!' Since then 'A' swore never to trust anyone again, no matter how severe a disease they claimed was going to claim them!
And so ended another beautiful tale.

And then there's me. I find it a lot difficult to look back on this episode in my life and laught at it, no matter how many beers I may have had! My saga goes thus; I met this rather pretty woman back in college because of a stupid dare with a friend who claimed he could talk with any woman at any time. So I asked him to stop the first girl we saw and ask for her name. As it turned out, the first girl we saw would later put my heart in a blender and hit "Frappe!" Once he got her name, my friend, who had an ample amount of luck with the opposite sex, thought that this was too good an opportunity and too good looking a woman to pass up on. So he began trying to get to know her. He even introduced her to me because he (and I) thought I couldn't do much damage to his chances, what with my total lack of conversational skills and good looks! But like I said, my friend was a lucky guy, and his luck held true; the monster actually took a 'fondness' to me!

And I fell hard! So enraptured was I by her beauty and the surprising yet obvious chemistry we shared that I allowed myself to be bold enough to think she would actually leave her boyfriend for me. After all, the guy had been cheating on her all the while and didn't she deserve better? Well, to cut a long story short and steer this tale away from the "blood and gore" bits, after six months of writing numerous heart felt love letters that included (what I thought at the time were "meaningful") lines from Boyzone numbers, I found myself out in the cold. Why? Because my lady love had decided that her cheating boyfriend couldn't be done away with that easily, since he was her first love! And being her first love, that made him her priority! Personally, I thought about gifting her a copy of Webster's dictionary and marking out "Priority" for her own perusal. But by then I was too busy filling the cracks in my broken heart, with beer (I got some interesting beer stories too!)

And thus ended another loving tale!

Stairway to Hell

This is a little something I wrote today about the travails of working from the sixth floor of my office building. Not a very pleasant experience, as is obvious!


If hell were located at the top of a six-storey building, do you know how many steps it would take to get you there?

114.

That’s right! Exactly 114. I should know; I’ve counted them. I count them every day as I walk up to my own personal hell — the sixth floor.

It’s the start of a fresh working day. I get to work and the day begins with a “by-now-expected” phenomenon. The lift’s not working.

I suck in my sagging gut and prepare for the task ahead. By now, I know what to expect, as I get closer to the fiery pits of my very own version of Mount Doom. The air gets thinner and the temperature begins to rise. There are a LOT fewer women to ogle at.

I struggle past the fifth floor, almost on my hands and knees now. I know that somewhere in life these long treks that I make every day now are going to stand me in good stead. But that is a distant promise. In the present, I’m too washed out to give a tiny rat’s ar*@!

Finally, I’m there. I’m so busy trying to catch my breath that I am not even shamed at the pitiful state I find myself in at 27! I walk in, and I’m suddenly slapped in the face by the all-encompassing heat. I look desperately at the AC behind my workstation; it’s still not working.

I wipe the sweat off my brow and get down to the day’s work. I have a review to incorporate, a storyboard to submit by the end of the day.

It’s mid-afternoon now and things are going fine. And that’s surprising considering I am in hell! Maybe Satan’s called in sick, maybe he’s looking elsewhere!

Maybe I spoke too soon. The lights flicker. Phut. That was my PC shutting down. Just when I was on the last page of my review. The closest AC (situated at a football field’s distance from me) and also the only one functioning, wheezes out its last few breaths of cold air. The electricity’s done the bunk – again! A stink emanates a couple of bays away. Someone let rip a stinker — again!

I grind my teeth, bite my lip, sigh and leave my seat to take a break.

Ironically, while I know I’m going to have strong legs from all the walking up the steps, I also find myself drinking a lot more coffee, thanks to these forced breaks. I think I might also take up smoking pretty soon.

I’m done with my break. My breath smells of coffee and “bummed-off” ciggies. I move hopefully towards the lift. But no luck. Some poor sod’s stuck between floors — again!

I guess I’ll just walk up.

20, 21, 22…