Note:- There is a huge twist in this story. Read through the entire post and you will find the twist at the end. You will only then know how this write up is special.
It was just another day, I thought, reminding myself not to use the phone a lot and gearing up to talk endlessly as I packed my bag and checked my hair style in the mirror. Something seemed very out of place. A haircut, maybe. I rechecked if my camera and the additional lens were in their right spots in my bag and kick started my friend’s bike. It roared enough to awaken the whole neighborhood on that lazy Sunday morning. She was supposed to be meeting me at the mall. The rain clouds were gathering very prominently and I sped across the roads of Chennai; my Chennai. It has been two whole years since the bike I drove had kissed its streets and the feeling was just amazing as the breeze kissed me awake, prodding me to accelerate to the next degree. I parked the bike and came to the food court directly. She was waiting there, playing with her phone, making it ski on the table and catching it just before it fell. Nut case she is. I sat there, clicking a few pictures with my DSLR and posing for a few and making her take some, slowly relaxing myself and getting out of the sleep. This was about the second or third time I was meeting her and there was no need for either of us to pretend with each other. Being in my natural element, it felt good. As usual, I started bragging about the stupidity quotient of the mall we were in and she was slowly brimming with temper. I was beginning to enjoy it. After loafing around aimlessly in there, she finally made up her mind that she wanted to go to the bigger mall in the city. Women, I tell you. I always have this feeling that they know just exactly what they want and how to do a thing but they keep the men guessing and swear that they have no idea, hoping that all of a sudden we men could turn into mind readers and magician at the same time.
Some ten minutes later, we were driving towards the next mall, weaving our way through the traffic. She held my bag with my life, my camera in between and held onto some bar on the side of the bike’s seat. She kept shooing me off as I went on ranting about how Bangalore was a better place with a better climate and better looking girls to drool at. She kept telling me the directions, chiding me for not having listened to her to leave the bike and go by the train or bus. The sky was threatening to open up any moment and I was determined to reach the place before it started drizzling. The wind kept lashing my face with cold streaks of atmosphere and I shivered as we entered the parking lot. As usual, we headed straight to the food court and went around searching for the right place to buy food from. It wasn’t surprising that she pointed straight at the only vegetarian outlet there. It beat me how people could survive eating just green things – vegetables, greens, peas, fruits. Eew. I pitied them very genuinely and considered them very unlucky and cursed souls. But there I was, dragging myself to the vegetarian food. I ordered a plate of fried rice for the both of us and with one last sigh looking at all the chicken barbecue on the either side of me, I moved to the place where she was sitting, rotating her mobile between her fingers. Hardly 5 minutes into eating, she demands fried cauliflower and I go to wait in the long queue yet again. I could not get myself to say no to her. And it was just not fair because she seemed incapable of demanding anything that came with a huge price tag. I kept glancing back at the table and saw her concentrating very hard on doing something to the food on my plate. 10 highly irritating minutes later I walked back to the table with steaming hot manjurian and I saw that she had arranged the rice in such a manner that I could read her name between it. She smiled. I clicked a couple of pictures and ate the whole thing up, telling her how the manjurian reminded me of another girl in my past life and the story that related to it. She hummed at the right places and listened to me attentively. After eating at a torturous slow pace, we moved and walked around only to stop for ice golas. I picked up my favourite orange and she picked up a seemingly boring looking lychee flavor. Are girls always like that? They pick up the exact thing that will disgust guys and make them run for their lives.
We settled to some bench like thing where I spotted a really nice looking girl. After inquiring about the name of the hair cut she had and naming her as my dark parrot, I spoke more about myself. She was listening dreamily. She then clicked a picture of my tongue much to my horror – all of my mouth was painted in bright orange. Too many girls around. I couldn’t afford to look like an idiot. She had the time of her life, laughing at how much I could crib about my hair style and all my choices of sun shades that we tried to shop for me. We went through the movie hall waiting lobby, walked through practically all the floors, staring out through all the windows. Do women find pleasure in proving men that they are always right and not listening to them makes us men wrong? This one sure seemed to have some weird fun in telling me that I should’ve listened to her. It was raining cats and dogs outside and there was no way we could venture out of the mall. She had wanted to go to the beach and it didn’t look like she was looking forward to a drenching ride. We went down to the ground floor, to the centre of the mall where a gigantic Christmas tree stood with many hanging stream lights falling from the ceiling. It looked like all the kids less than 3 years of age in the city had been brought to that very place then. I was only too delighted to go clicking each of their cute expressions. She sat on some bench, tired of walking around for hours together.
I go back to the refrigerator to check if there’s any dairy milk silk left in there to on much on while I wait for someone from office to respond regarding the login problem I was facing. I come and read my last message on screen and some realization strikes. Some girls are not the same after all.
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