A Decent Proposal

As my last post has been silently declared a first day ‘box office hit’, I received an offline chat from one of my friends. It ran like this, 

“WHY DON’T YOU WRITE ABOUT 

YOUR UNLUCKY BUT HIGHLY ENTHUSIASTIC 

AND SINCERE FRIEND?”

It was from my friend who was with me during the trip to Alappuzha houseboats. Apart from his sincerity, enthusiasm or unluckiness, what makes him one of my best friends is the fact that we have got some common nuts loose. It is true that I used to write about my close ones, and ‘Alwa and Jagan Jugg’ was a result of my sister’s request to write about her. Now, I am also planning to write the second part of ‘Love Messenger’, as Renu the Blogger demanded it in the comment section of my last post.

“What will I write about you, when you are my friend?” I mailed him.

“Write about me. We have so much college memories, right?” he replied.

“But, see, I want some sudden inspiration to write about a person or an incident,” I tried to explain.

“Ok, when you come next time home, meet me at the city. I hope that I can give you something inspiring,” he said.

So that was fixed. After a few months long interval, I visited my native place and went to the closest city.

“Ah, the city has become developed further. New buildings, new youth, fresh faces,” while walking towards the vegetarian restaurant in the newly built posh looking shopping mall, I attempted to bring nostalgia to my mind imitating some classic characters in vain.

Waiting at the restaurant, which was packed with many handsome teenage boys, I ordered my favourite chilli paratta. While eating the poorly prepared chilli paratta, I watched a teenage girl stepping out from the family room to the hall where we were sitting. Seeing many young boys there in the room, she hesitated a little, turned her face smilingly to look her parents who were after her, gained some more confidence from their return smiles, and walked past the boys haughtily. 

When the supplier approached me with his politeness to check whether I wanted something more, I started to teach him like a veteran glutton,

“See, it is not like this that you should make a chilli paratta. Be careful while...,” I started and at the same time my mobile phone blasted with Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and I saw on my mobile display a blinking ‘X-EN-Tric calling’. I saw my friend standing at the door looking for me.

After the formal greetings and wishes, he asked about new occurrences in my life. When I asked his, he persuaded me to tell mine first as he has something very auspicious to tell me. I said about my boastful adventures I had on my journey to there and he patiently listened to everything I said. 

After my words, he declared that he was going to call a girl right then and would propose her on phone. I went silent.

I witnessed him pulling out the phone from its sheath, dialling a number and asking over the phone in a sweet voice,

“Hello are you there?”

“......................”

“Oh, is that so? Are you with your friends right now?”

“.....................”

“Ok, let me tell you one thing frankly. If you don’t like this, please forget it. Okay?” 

“Oh, please tell me without creating suspense” (it was my guess as her reply).

“Let me propose you? Can I marry you?

“Oh, what are you asking? How horrible? Have you ever thought about its consequences?” I guessed.

“See, both of us are matured now. I think now that I have enough money to lead a happy life with you,” he cleared his stand.

“But, what about others? Won’t your parents object it?” I guessed like this.

“Ah, my parents won’t object any of my decisions. As far as my mother is concerned, she is ready to accept whoever I like as her daughter in law”, he said.

“But what if our parents think about caste? We are from two distinct castes, right?’ she might have asked like this. 

“Forget caste. Of my four grandparents, only three were Nairs...,” he said. The fourth one was a Brahmin, I knew. 

He continued,“...see, I don’t want an immediate reply. Take your time and think about it well. Please give me an answer within the next week. If, you like it, say yes. If you don’t like it, you need not to say no. Just say nothing. I will take your silence as your non-willingness. And behave me the same in the office in the coming days also. Even if you reject my proposal, please crack jokes at me in the office as usual”

After switching off the phone, he smiled at me. “How is my courage? Won’t you appreciate me?”

Shaking his hands, I said, “Thanks for giving me a subject to write upon!”

“What? So are you going to write about my proposal?” he asked breathless.

“Obviously,” was my reply.

“Ok...well...if you write about it, write that my eyes were bright while I proposed her. Write that I was all the time smiling while talking to her. And also add that your friend is a good looking tall guy with confidence and optimism. Won’t you?”

“Yeah, sure, I will do it,” I said.

Dear friends, and here is one more post from me for the readers to guess the end. I don’t know the future of my last post (Love Messenger) which had a twist of suspense at the end. But, in the case of this post, I can assure you that there will be a second part as she had to answer his proposal within one week. So, obviously (To be Continued)

PS: Read the combined second part of The Love Messenger and this post Here.

The Injection Enigma

About twenty years back, when our protagonist guy was just a small boy on shorts, a team of nursing students visited the school as part of social health check-up. The kids were asked to go to the staff room one by one to receive injection to get saved from any sort of fateful diseases that might have caught them. While standing in the queue at the door of the staff room, waiting for his turn, he heard his friend who had just gone inside, screaming out of pain while the injection needle piercing the vein. Already he had seen many of his friends coming outside of the room weeping forcefully and wiping their tears.

It was his turn the next. As soon as he stepped inside the room he faced the sisters who were filling up the syringe. In a proud manner with boosted up chest he declared,

“I won’t cry!”

Curiously the sisters looked him, and one of them asked him with affection,

“Ah, that’s good, but why don’t you cry dear?”

He had no answer to that complicated question. However there was a soliloquy, (I am Tomz! Tomz doesn’t cry!!)

He was telling the truth. He didn’t cry that day.

******   ****** ******   *****  ******  *******  ***

After twenty years, our protagonist grew up. He came to the capital city of his State and became a Blogger! One fine morning, he started to sneeze and cough. He felt that he too was caught by viral fever, and so decided to visit the hospital.

At hospital, he peeped at the doctor’s diary while he was writing the prescription. He got worried seeing the doctor writing for an injection to be administered to his young client. As soon as he stepped out of the doctor’s room, he immediately ran to the pharmacy. Meanwhile, the young nurse who was guided to give injection to our protagonist got worried without seeing him. She chased him and finally found him at the pharmacy in a hurrying mood.

She asked him,

“Don’t you want the injection the doctor prescribed?”

“Oh, was there an injection? I didn’t notice. Was that so much important?” he asked creating an innocent expression.

“Yes, the doctor marked that it was highly important. Please come!” 

He had no other choice except to follow her unwillingly. At the injection room, he cried and screamed, whenever the nurse made a move to inject him with medicated syringe. 

“Oh...God...Jesus...help me...help me...!” he cried when the needle pierced his vein on his hip.

The nurse mocked him, “heee heee, this Tomz brother is too afraid of injections!”

So, one can’t go on with his pretensions for long is the moral of the story.

The Love Messenger

While associating with Ronnie Raj’s documentary, which he did about a renowned prolific Malayalam poet, I happened to listen to the poet’s recorded sound as explaining that every writer will face a creative block in his career. I was thinking about a Blogger’s block in my blogging life which has been preventing me from writing anything for the blog. Surprisingly, today I got a subject to write upon, which is actually the favourite subject of humans, the love. But, to rescue myself from the kind of embarrassment happened to me due to the publishing of posts like ‘Fragrance of Love’ and ‘My First Love’, let me first say that this post is not about my love, but about my friend’s.

While working in the Gulf countries, this friend acquired a few months’ leave from his company and came to his native place to try his luck in higher studies. Since tuition centre was in the city he came to our place where a gang of ‘full-bloomed youngsters’ were staying and where I met him. 

We had a very interesting time together as a gang, of which majority are in the initial stages of their professional career. Sometimes we played caroms till 2 O’ clock in the night making a sleep-loving young software engineer curse us all for not switching off the lights. Sometimes, we brought liquors secretly to the second floor without letting the uncle and aunt (the landowner and wife) know, but with the knowledge of their son, to celebrate someone’s birthday or a new job joy. (Somehow, I had acquired the image as a gentle drinker and thus eliminated from the risk of heavy drinking). Sometimes after one or two pegs, we turned on the music system in the highest volume and put vibrant steps on the floor waking up the uncle and aunt from their heavy sleep in agony and letting the neighbours go on with their sleep listening to the soulful music coming from our throats (especially mine ;)). The very next day we were threatened by our landlady that ‘this will not last long’ (she had identified my voice).

I happened to notice the happiness on the face of my friend every day after coming from his class. We had some casual talks and one day he approached me with a request to compose a sugary sms to be sent as a reply to a message that he received on his mobile. When he flattered me saying that since I was a writer I could write better than him, I helped by composing what he asked me to do. When I thought that the job was over, he again approached me to compose another beautiful sms as a reply to what he received as a reply to the former sms. So, the job continued with seemingly no end and only when he told me, I came to know that I was working as a love messenger between him and a girl he met at the tuition centre. 

So, their love flourished, as he had said. He daily described what happened between them at the tuition centre while the teacher was away for a few minutes. I began to habitually see a pink coloured scooty pep resting at our house’s parking space, which he used to take from his girlfriend during the lunch time to come to the house. When the classes were over, he prepared to go back to the Gulf. Let me say for your information that a marriage between them was almost impossible as they both belonged to different religions. And I think, none of them might have taken it as a serious relationship.

A few months after leaving for Gulf, he contacted me on phone. We had some formal greetings but nothing mentioned about the girl. He contacted me again and again and on one occasion I asked him about the girl and he said that he tried to contact her but she had changed her number. 

Yesterday, he called me again and after some formal talks, he directly entered into the matter of his old tuition centre affair. ‘Is he still thinking about that girl,’ I wondered though I had never seen her.

He requested me, ‘Buddy, the sweet memories of the days that we all spent as a gang there still stick on to my mind. Buddy, if you don’t mind, please do me a favour!’

‘What favour,’ I asked mercilessly.

“I tried to call her several times, but she has changed her phone number. Buddy, please go to my tuition centre. It is on the small by road that leads to the city’s popular TV channel. Before reaching that channel, you would see a two storied building on the right side and you will see a board something like ‘Lokmanya Tuition centre’. Please collect the phone number imprinted below that. I will call you tomorrow evening to ask you the phone number and I will try to contact her through my tutor. He must know her phone number”.

Today, after noon time, I started my ‘sincere bike’, and went through all the cut roads in the vicinities searching for a tuition centre, where two young lovers shared their romancing moments some months ago. At last I reached there and spotted a small board with letters ‘Lokmanya’ hanging on the second floor.

'So, it was the place which I envisioned as a closed lovely place while my friend was narrating about his puppy love,’ curiously I thought while writing down the phone number.

While kick-starting my bike, I also chanced to see two eyes watching me from the window of the Lokmanya tuition centre. The teacher of the institute. She might be wondering that why was this guy not visiting the tuition centre and inquiring about the coaching classes, if he really needed coaching.

('May be' continued) 
PS: Read the combined second part of A Decent proposal and this post Here