Stupid men FALL in LOVE!!! Intelligent men RISE in FLIRTING!!!!

PS: All Characters, places and events in this story are completely fictitious. Any resemblance with any person living, dead or even unconscious is truly intentional…oops unintentional!!!

Tweet-Tweet, Tweet-Tweet rang my sms ringtone. It was around 9 o’ clock in the evening. I was already trying to soak in the aroma of the food that was getting ready to be served for dinner. I looked into my cell phone and saw the message. It was from Priya. I thought it would be some hi-hello message that we generally shared. But this was different. “Tanmoy, I think you are totally dateable and I should totally date you” is what it read. My thought shifted from the delicious food and my ever hungry stomach for a while as I typed in a reply, “Are you ok? What was that?” That’s what I said. Huh! What a stupid reply to a beautiful sexy girl wanting to date me. Its because I have been always like this. Fear of commitment and the lack of availability of any extreme beauty who would have reversed my fear of commitment, had never got me in a relationship…well a serious relationship that is. I was devouring my food when the next reply came. Well no prizes for guessing, I completed my food before I went to look into her reply. All these things can wait, food can’t. She just said she was sleepy high and didn’t say anything more. I guess my reply made her feel bad. Well you cannot make a beautiful girl feel bad, never. I got into my flirtatious self after having done with dinner and started texting her sweet and cute replies, the ones in which I have probably done a Phd. I asked her what suddenly made her realize this and all kinds of questions to which I was expecting answers that would praise me and give a boost to my already inflated male ego. It did. She said how she always liked me right from the first time she saw me! It pleased me…it would please any dolt if a pretty young girl said she liked him. I was feeling sleepy and had to wind up the conversation so I made her understand that it was probably an infatuation that would pass on with time and that for something really to happen there is a lot of time left and blah blah blah!!! She was intelligent and I guess, as big a flirt as I was. Good this would be fun I thought and fell asleep.

We started talking almost every day since then. We chatted, flirted, shared our experiences of the day and also made each other jealous by narrating incidents of how people asked us out but all of these in good humour. She liked me, it was pretty evident and I liked her too. So we were in a kind of flirtatious relationship. But I hate relationships. Any form of it. Phew! What a beautiful girl can do to your principles. We went out together to cafes, caught up with the latest movies and also went for drives just to spend some time together. Thank god she herself opted to share half the expense otherwise I would have been pretty broke by now. The only added expense I had to incur was of my car petrol which I didn’t mind as it was paid by dad. She was very sweet and lovable. I guess all girls who pay half the bills are. But it was fun to be with her. I think I started falling for her. Well that was dangerous but I guess feelings cannot be controlled. That’s what the philosophers say but I never believed in them as I had been successful all this while to control my feelings. But then they haven’t become great philosophers just like that. It had to be me who was wrong. I told her that I liked her more than a friend and even proposed to her in jest more than once however getting the timing wrong every time. That’s what happens when you are not serious about relationships. When she didn’t respond to my proposals as I would have liked her to and told her about the mercilessness of her rejection, she told me about the wrong timing and said she hadn’t turned me down. I don’t know how I had this uncanny ability to ask her out when she was low. I kind of got used to doing it and she probably saying no to me!!! But it didn’t bother me much, as I was sure I liked her and not loved her still.


Suddenly one day in the evening, it was the familiar tweet tweet of my sms tone that beamed in capital letters the name PRIYA. I opened it to see the following words, “You bloody moron, I love you.” Now what was that supposed to mean? With all my Phd in flirting sciences, I have never encountered such a unique problem. Was she abusing me or was that a word of affection? Maybe she liked morons. I didn’t know if I was supposed to be happy. Who would be happy to be called a moron? But again it was followed by the words I love you; the three magical words or maybe the cursed, I knew not. I texted her to enquire and got a reply that she was drunk. Gosh!!! Both the times she said she loved me, was when she was high. Once sleepy high, and the other time…spirit high. How alcohol and err…sleep have this effect on her. I guess I would then like her to be always high on alcohol or maybe sleep, whichever is convenient. Nevertheless she forgot about her love the next day itself when the alcohol wore off and I was left to wishful thinking of her getting drunk again soon. But that didn’t happen anytime soon.

In the mean time she flirted with other guys and me with other girls. Somebody has rightly stated, “Habits die hard” and in our case it saw no scope of dying at all. I went out with other beautiful girls (But this time had to pay all the bills myself) and she with other guys (Didn’t ask her if she paid) and came back home to discuss our adventures. It was kind of a commitment without a commitment. I have no clue what that is supposed to mean though. Everything was going pretty well between us when her father, a stout Marwari businessman found out about our relationship if there was any, and raised a huge hue and cry about it as I happen to be a Bengali. What am I supposed to do if I am a Bengali and she is a Marwari? Well I happen to be an ardent chicken eater and it would be almost impossible for me to give up non-veg food. But that was it. What is there to make such a noise about caste and creed and sect etc.?

We nevertheless continued with our commitment free relationship not bothering of whether to eat chicken or paneer until one fine day the realization dawned on me that I seriously felt for her. I don’t know what happened to me but I said that I love her and this time with all seriousness for a change. Well this is when the problem started. I did not even have the slightest idea about the mistake I had committed. She in her impeccable girly ways said that she was never serious about me and had never felt “that” way about me and that I had mistaken her flirtatious ways. She didn’t forget to add that she loved me as a friend and that wasn’t a lie. Wow! All of a sudden she had no feelings at all? Just because her father wants her to be with a grass eating maru businessman? Or maybe she had outgrown my necessity. I heard girls have these mood swings, but lady this is not right. How can these girls be such heartless creatures? Suddenly she stopped replying to my messages and taking my calls. The “You don’t even bother thinking of me the whole day” and “How much did you miss me?” kind of smses that used to fill my inbox if I did not text her one day had suddenly no meaning at all. I was left brooding, was I really in love or this was just another of those phases? I felt bad, very bad but did not know the reason for my being low…or maybe I did not want to know. I stopped talking to her too and tried to not even think of her but she was all over my mind. I dreamt of the good times we had and then the dream turned nightmarish when her words echoed that she did not ever like me more than a friend. I got angry for small reasons and shouted at people for trivial issues as this was getting on to my head. I felt like kicking myself hard for getting into this. For a week or two I remained indoors and cut myself out of the world. All the girls I had never been serious with and unknowingly hurt came to haunt me in my dreams. They seemed to say that all these served me right. I felt dejected, heart broken and extremely low. I narrated my ordeal to a cousin of mine who had already guessed something was amiss with me and took me to a club for a change in my moods.

I was very reluctant to go to the club but finally gave in to her request. I drowned 5 of the exorbitant tequila shots and felt an irresistible urge to dance. Although I have two left feet and am a very bad dancer by usual standards but the spirits awoke the Michael Jackson in me and I danced the night away. I forgot all my worries and pains and was oblivious to my surroundings when I spotted the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life. She was as if an angel who had descended from the heavens. Her beautiful face stood out in the crowd as she stood in a corner. I walked towards her and introduced myself to her trying to accumulate the senses that got half drowned in the tequila shots. The smile on her face lighted up my darkened soul and suddenly I did not feel those feelings of love for Priya anymore. It was now only Joanna, this girl who took over my thoughts. The innumerable irritating sms forwards that say, “Love is for the weak hearted and people who are strong believe in flirting,” came to my mind. And I was back to my flirtatious best!! All the sorrows of rejection were now gone in a jiffy. It was as if these moments of pain never existed. The same relief we experience after relieving ourselves when an urgent call of nature had not been answered for long. As I was coming back from the club with Joanna’s number saved in my phone, my mind drifted to a line from a Bollywood comedy flick, “Chandramukhi ho ya Paro ki farak penda yaaro!!!” I did not spend much thought about the relevance of this line in my context but returned home a happy man.

Editorial I wrote for Graffiti '10, the college magazine of Techno India!!!!

What makes a college? Is it the high-rise buildings, the suave classes and labs, sprawling playgrounds, the boring lectures or just a big name? Is college all about studies, a 9 point something CGPA on the mark sheet and the best campus placement up the sleeves? It is much more than these mere ‘materialistic’ stuff.
Struggling on the footboard of the buses to waiting on endless autorickshaw queues at peak office hours to reach college on time for the first few months as a fresher soon gave away to entering class at the end of a class of two periods and being grossly surprised when the teacher asked the reason for the late arrival. Complaining about the lack of good looking girls in your class and trying to steal a glance at the stunning beauty that passed by while the teacher went along with the mundane lectures is commonplace. From Bunking classes to catch the first day first show of the Ranbir Katrina starrer with your newly crowned sweetheart to leaving the lab report unfinished till the day prior to the viva and borrowing your friends report and copying to the tee, you have done it all.
You are reminded of the semester only when the dates are announced and realize that you do not know a word of the subjects. You start cramming notes and Xeroxes and browsing through your savior, the one and only Matrix the day before the exams and come out of the hall cursing WBUT for not having the question you prepared best. The seven point GPA and the scolding from parents for not studying anything remind that you are still in that point of life where you ought to take studies seriously. But who cares. You come to college everyday, exhaust yourself completely in the common room, playground or the food court and if after that a little energy remains, you give that to your class. College is not just about classes, it is all of these things combined that make your college life eventful. The small incidents that make a lasting impression. Memories that will remain with you even after you graduate from here. It is here you have a sense of belonging. You can stand here and proudly proclaim it as “MY College.”
This is what we incorporate in our college magazine, Graffiti. It is all about us, the Techno Indians. It is not just a college magazine that has been put together with an anthology of stories and poems or accounts of current affairs or scientific documents or for the matter simply entertainment stuffs. It is a manifestation of all the talent that lies buried in the obscurity for the lack of a platform, the soul of our college that bears witness to what we believe in. It is basically a reflection of the restless minds of a breed of socially aware young people who know not only how to face the adversities of the present social scenario but also to raise issues that need to be redressed. It is in fact a reflection of US...