21st AUGUST 2017
***Morning***
The after-effects of a late-night horror movie generally used to be further insomnia and uneasiness out of fear. But this was in my previous avatar.
This morning, my after-sleep felt as refreshing as it ever used to be. Maybe a chance bumping to the girl of my dreams helped. Or maybe the progress I made in world’s most dreaded game of 2017.
I went to class as a man possessed. If my other classmates weren’t shocked, atleast Neelika was, as I coolly walked to her desk and grabbed the empty spot next to her. She looked dazzled and stared at me blankly. Oh she looked this diva up-close. But my spell was broken as she politely asked, “Err, Karan. Do you mind sitting somewhere else?”
I didn’t know how to react.
Her friend Shruti was standing there, waiting and rightfully expecting me to move from her spot.
I became the butt of jokes, yet again as I silently picked up my books. The whole class chuckled and few of them started throwing paper-balls at me.
Thankfully our professor walked in.
Amidst the next fifty-minute ordeal, I couldn’t help steal glances at her and thought to myself, ‘what a third rated jerk! Just a few hours back, she was holding my hand and acting as if she was my girl and now behaving so coldly. I think all these society-bitches have this same problem – they don’t want to be looked in public with an average-joe like me. But god she is gorgeous!’
Meanwhile someone passed a note to me. It was handwritten.
‘Sorry. Meet me behind canteen after class -Neelika.’ I looked at her. She avoided my gaze. I felt confused.
My mobile beeped with an sms tone – UPDATE: INR 100,000.00 deposited in A/C XXX1983…
“yesss!” I shouted, pumping my fist and grinning loudly. The professor glared hard; he himself didn’t believe his lecture in thermodynamics to be so stimulating that a second-year student would react like this. The rest of my classmates however, made mockery of me yet again, though this time I didn’t care.
One hundred grand was a neat sum of money, equivalent to three months of my father’s salary. I could watch horror movies all day and night if such rewards were bestowed more often.
***11:30 AM***
Sitting in the canteen, I eagerly waited with my browser’s chat window to look for him. He wasn’t there. Another window had the mailbox and the message arrived after agonizing seconds of wait. It was from the game.
Your Day 4 challenge is to write a status on your facebook, twitter, instagram and watsapp handle in as many words as you want – about the death of a whale. Write how predators like whales have to strand themselves on a beach, as they become incapable of hunting. Also explain how Karan Gehlot has the qualities of being a warrior and how he is ready to embrace the destiny of a whale if required. Do this task at 12:00 AM and let it stay on your social handles for the next twenty hours.
Honestly I didn’t understand. Either the admin is mad or the curator of this game is. Maybe the organizations funding them have excess liquidity, thanks to tax evasions, and they just don’t know what to do with all that money. Or maybe their main business is to sell drugs; but their own employees got addicted.
Either ways, I didn’t need to care. My confidence was bursting ever since I started this game. I was somehow feeling convinced of being a warrior from inside; however deep it may be. To top it all, I was making serious dough!
I wrote back – ‘Dear Administrator, Challenge accepted’
Half an hour later, Neelika and me were sitting next to each other in a small compound behind our college canteen.
It had this little patch of wet grass where I sat with folded knees while she rested a couple of inches from me. Her bare arms were almost brushing mine and her perfume diffused aroma never known to me before.
I didn’t know what to say in company of such an attractive girl.
“I am sorry Karan for what happened in class. But you just walked brazenly and stumped me!” she spoke gently. I nodded.
She continued, “See our friendship is new, till yesterday we were nobody to each other. We just happened to connect last night and I got to know you as a person. But don’t be mad at me for saying; your image in college is that of a timid and weak guy.”
She was right. I was naive. Any self-respecting person would have got up there and then and given a piece of his mind to her.
Instead, I kept listening with my head down.
“See I am not saying that we couldn’t be ‘good friends’, but acknowledging our new-found relationship in front of others would be too awkward for me. Instead can we just, you know, ease it and greet each other or talk a sentence or two maybe in public. Later on, things can get more evident and we can hang out in group etc.” she sounded so self-assured.
But then added, “You have to start dressing up better to really stand a chance though with my circle. They will tear you apart! I know you are not particularly beefy; but why do you have to wear such loose fitted chequed-shirts? And pants? Who wears them in college? Dude, get a nice pair of jeans and some polo-neck tees. Are you short on pocket cash, can I chip in?”
And then she said those chocolate-laden golden words, “If he doesn’t put effort into his appearance, he’s never going to put effort into your relationship.”
I looked up and stared at her in disbelief, “What?”
“What?” she replied, nonchalantly but with a mysterious smile…
Before I could say anything, she added, “Don’t get any ideas. I am just parroting from my Instagram-quotes’ page.” And then with a pause, added, “You can follow me if you want to…I will follow you back…”
Then she started getting up while cleaning her tight fitted jeans, “Come I am going home to get some cash. Then meet me at Lajpat Nagar market at 1, we are going shopping!”
“Neelika, wait.” I said boldly and brought out my phone and flashed her the bank message. She gleamed looking at the account balance and light punched me.
“You like to put a simple front, you dark horse!” and continued, “But we still must leave separately and meet in the market.”
She then pulled my cheek like lovers do and walked away. I kept ogling till she disappeared.
My phone’s chat box beeped with admin’s message.
@admin: Good day, eh?
@lowlife: best day of my life!
@lowlife: all thanks to you! You are my new best friend; do you know that?
@admin: Is it not her? 😉
@lowlife: she, she is more. She is special. But admin, seriously, do I stand a chance? Rana? Her other suitors I don’t even know of?
@admin: Be a dude, seize the moment. She came to you, not that you went to her
@Lowlife: that’s sort-of true
@admin: Spend on her, pamper her. Don’t be a chump in the market and buy more stuff for her than you buy for yourself. Show her your big heart and very soon she will be yours.
@Lowlife: How do you get to know every, everything?
@admin: I know everything, I am god.
Anyway, Is this the time for it? Save yourself for some dating instead!
(admin logged out)
***2:00 PM***
From Lajpat Nagar we boarded a cab and went straight to nearby Select CityWalk mall in Saket. During the ride she spoke highly of the place as touted to be the luxury-shopping destination of Delhi.
She was bubbly and spoke of her last visit there with her parents when they had to call their driver to bring the second car from home to carry back all their bags.
I wouldn’t lie that I felt nervous hearing her. Her other stories were mostly about the affluent eateries where she regularly dined, or the lavish clubs she went to. She casually also mentioned her father’s affluence, sipping coffee later at Paul’s, an opulent bakery I couldn’t imagine to have existed in the first place!
The first store we went to had black denim hung on its show window. It looked stylish but as I glanced at its price tag, my breakfast came to my throat – 9999!
“Why don’t they display that extra 1 rupee and make it ten thousand? What would a customer save by pinching that penny?” I asked her. In reply she smiled and asked a sales clerk to get it.
If the sales girl wasn’t surprised, atleast the manager was as he hesitatingly asked me for my waist measurement. He sized me with a how-did-you-score-with-that-chic look and went inside to fetch the right fit.
Meanwhile Neelika had picked up few other pieces for me to try on. I really felt out of place.
After an hour and a half, my prize money from yesterday remained less than fifty percent as we took a break at the coffee shop (again!).
“I feel so out of place. It seems all eyes are on me here. These people, wearing their high-end clothes while I am in a 200-rupee shirt.” I remarked checking out the young crowd.
“These people come from wealth. But in life, it’s not important where you’re coming from. It is about where you are going. And you, I can see that you’re going places!”
Her pep talk worked. I found her too adorable to miss.
“Neelika, why are you being so nice to me?” I asked.
I felt more poised in her company by now. People around were busy in their own world as the place buzzed with noises of chattering and laughter. It felt right to ask her finally.
She kept her hands over mine, “You are a nice person and a good friend now. I feel so myself with you. All my other friends, including Neha are such showoffs that with them there is always a game of one-upmanship. You know, like yesterday she was saying – oh I went holidaying to Mauritius and it was so much fun, check out my insta and snapchat for the vacation pictures. And then others started blabbering about their own retreats at other places as if going on a better holiday than Neha is the most important thing in the world. Huh. I hate that bragging vibe. Only Shruti in my group is tolerable, but she is from a small town and a modest background.”
She sipped her coffee and left my hands. I pressed further, bending towards her and said, “But aren’t you also like that?”
OUCH, I shouldn’t have said it.
She tilted closer to me. We were looking right into each other’s eyes. She said, “That’s why I said I like you. You are so normal for a change. I want us to be closer.” And then blinked a few times.
If it weren’t a public place, I am sure she’d have kissed me. I smiled, leaning my head back on the couch.
I said, “you know how we have a mental image of some people by the way they talk and behave? I am glad I am so wrong in this case. You are not only stylish and chic in your dressing and personality, but you have a golden heart too.”
“Wait till you check it out yourself” she winked at me. My god she was mesmerizing.
Waving her goodbye as she boarded in an uber-cab outside the mall, I realized that events of yesterday seemed from another life.
When I was watching that horror film, I wouldn’t have given myself a one in thousandth chance of going on a date the next day evening and that too with Neelika. She was a real princesses; a bit high maintenance but royalty never comes cheap.
I immediately determined to pursue my task tonight in the most impressive way so as to earn the maximum reward. Ofcourse more moolah was needed to earn such dates with Neelika from now on.
I started thinking of heavy vocabulary to use in order to make my social-media-status strikingly extraordinary. I also googled about why and how whales die, on my way back to the hostel.
That night sharp at 12 AM, my Facebook page displayed an image of a large whale fish lying abandoned on a beach-shore with her tongue hanging out in a dramatic fashion. I had downloaded this image from the Internet.
The whale’s image was followed by below status –
‘If there is a god, there is life. If there is life, there are living beings. If there are living beings, there are animals, plants and yes human beings too. Everything is inter-connected to each other. God has made an expiry date for everything. But why are these large whale-fishes giving up before their predetermined expiry date?
Whales; more specifically blue whales are the largest animals ever to have lived the earth.
Bigger than elephants, bigger than mastodons and bigger than dinosaurs. Yet, as they grow older and wiser – they start to see the futility of living. Yes, there is stress underwater too.
When these whales cannot take it anymore, they start seeing through their water kingdom’s ecosystems and social stratas, and give up their life by stranding on the beach. In a way, they show their protest – that something is terribly wrong in their world.
When animals as large as blue-whale kill themselves, then what chances do we weak humans, 1/100th of their size stand? Is our race too doomed?
I don’t know about others, but Karan Gehlot was born with a stronger heart than that.
At this young age, I can see and understand a lot of wrong going around me, and this applies to almost all walks of life.
Right from our social systems to education, to income inequality and to privileged class’ feudalism. But I will not take things lying down.
I hereby declare my war against it. It begins today although it will be full blown into a world war III in another fifteen years.
I will rather die the death of a blue whale than surrender my soul and body to current world’s power structure.
A warrior is born tonight.’
***ROYALLY SCREWED***
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