Auspicious Gossips

This is a continuation of my previous story of the Nuptial Pimple. I was attending my friend One-time Writer’s wedding. Though I was a total stranger among the bridegroom’s relatives and neighbors at his native place, I was fortunate enough to have the company of a common friend of us. They were college mates, and this friend known by the name Utham, had many funny tales to share about the boy who was getting married.

I think cracking jokes and chattering gossips about the bridegroom is an informal universal custom observed by his friends on the wedding day throughout the world irrespective of any sectarian divide. Though inadvertently, we both also have started to wag our tongues revealing some known and unknown tales about the one-time writer. 

As a college mate, Utham had some interesting stories to share about him. The one-time writer was an odd kind of guy, during the beginning of the college days. People considered him a simpleton. But when he started to attend camps organized in the college, the leader in him was revealed. He proved himself an excellent organizer and a skilled one in delivering inspiring speeches. After that, the people who initially considered him a stupid guy felt ashamed.

Another Interesting information that Utham revealed was about his writing attempts.

“He writes a lot, you know?” Utham asked.

“Yes, I know. I call him ‘the one-time writer’ in my blog,” I said.

“Your blog? Do you have a blog? Do you write?” Utham was surprised.

“Hmmm...not really, ah, then what happened next?” I said with a slight embarrassment.

“Ok, so your one-time writer once wanted to write a great story. He wanted to write only serious stuff portraying the real problems faced by the common people. He found that the fundamental problems faced by everyone across everywhere were the same. To experience the real nature of the problems, he wanted to travel” Utham said.

“Really?” this was a new information to me. 

“So, he wanted to go amidst the common people. He had heard about some tribal people inhabiting since the prehistoric era in the lap of the Western Ghats. With his organizational skills, he made a small group and went to the tribal people to live amidst them. His parents didn’t know about such a journey. So, they were worried without seeing their son.”

“Oh, then what happened?” I didn’t hide my surprise hearing a curious information about the one-time writer.

“After one week he came back. So that was the story,” Utham finished his tale.

“I will ask him about that. This was a first-hand information. I never knew that all the time, when he was appearing as a perfect friend of mine, he had some additional traits which he concealed successfully from me.”

After one week, when the one-time writer called me, I asked him about his one week visit to the tribals.

He said simply, “buddy it was nothing. At that time I wanted to write a story. Since I was an inexperienced guy, I wanted some more experience. So, I went to visit them,”

“How was the experience?” I asked.

“Nothing, they had a perfect social living system, except a sophisticated life style like us,” he said.

“Did you write any story out of your experiences with them?” I asked.

He said, “yes, the story was published in the college magazine and it got good reviews from the students in the college. I got a lot of appreciation from the professors as well,”

“Ok, tell me, in your story, how did you portray the life style of the tribals that you met during that one week?”

After a pause, the one-time writer replied, “Buddy, it was not a story on tribals. It was actually about the parents’ worry when their children go missing for at least one or two days.”