Pavakka Payasam

“And I stand at the gates of her home. She would be walking down that stone pavement anytime now, flashing that smile of hers. The pavement isn’t important. Her smile is. Her smile, the reason for all that is in existence-the reason why the sun shines, the reason why there are roses and violets and the sole reason why there is Christmas. In the bigger picture, I wasn’t so important either. All that ever mattered was her smile, really. She was the beautiful woman. Saying she was the most beautiful woman would be comparing her with others. That would be criminal. Period.

Anna is the woman you love anyway. You don’t find reasons to love her. She walks past you and before you could open your mouth and show how much of a loser you are, half your soul would have gone away with her and you would lose your breath and choke on your heart that would already be half way up your throat. Looks could kill. No seriously, yeah.

Let me now get back to my own loser self. I’m not a loser by choice. I’m a loser by design. Some would argue that it just means I’m a guy. It actually means a lot more. It means I love Anna. It means that I get to see her every day of my loser life. It even means that I get to secretly fantasize making out with her. Just so you know, we’ve done it 17 times. And the last time we were at it, she said I’m cute. If I rolled up my sleeve, you’ll see I still get goose bumps. Losers so rule!”

End of Dream. I get up, and am instantly surprised that I’m alive.

When you are travelling all the way from Pune to Trivandrum in a dingy second class coach of a Jayanthi Janatha trudging along the outskirts of Andhra, feeling lost becomes a routine you follow morning to evening and far into the sleepless nights. But that is also when you remember you had a life before all the stress of higher education had set in. I remember a time when I used to look forward to a three day journey on the Coromandel express to Calcutta with my family. That was the time I had to worry about impressing the new girl in class. Anyway, once you are off the borders of Kerala chances are that you’ll find yourself mostly in places where there is like one palm tree for each acre, lots of rocks and lots of hitherto unnamed hills. And weirdly enough, it turns me in to a romantic.

So this time, as I was sailing across the arid deserts of Andhra that weird romantic possessed me again. Looking around I mostly found bipeds that kept talking “blah blahh blu bli bloua!”. That is hell of a lot of perspective we are talking about. So, disappointed at having no one to take myself out on I resorted to thinking.
Remember that feeling of overwhelming happiness at the sight of your crush in 6th grade? Yeah, that was pretty much the only emotion I had for the rest of the journey. Let me clarify, Hunger is not an emotion. And to spice things up, I was reading Chetan Bhagat’s “The three mistakes of my life”. The first para that said about Vidya cranked me up to the point that I could actually create imaginary girls to fall in love with. Thankfully, someone I met a year back saved me all the trouble. Oh, it is a she. 10 years back I wouldn’t have had to add that info. Thanks to the developing world.

Frooti is like a really big gulab jamun( I’m not trying to be funny. It is not funny. She just happens to feed on frooti a lot). She oozes sweetness. And you will excuse me for actually trying to convince you that a girl can ooze sweetness afterall. She is the girl who actually makes me want to go out at night and check if her blanket is covering her feet. Of course that would also bring into the equation the Gurkha who guards her locality and his 12-inch long knife. If I ever had to buy lollipops for someone, it would be for her. In proper filmy style I could visualize her standing beneath every palm tree that was there, smiling, the dupatta of her yellow-something churidhar trailing in the wind by her side. No it is not Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum. It’s Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander for me. I should also confess the unsettling truth that I did see myself running behind the trees in slow motion singing “Pehla nasha…”. It was bizarre even for my standards.

I still had bipeds behind me talking away in bushmen language like there was no tomorrow. Really, there was nothing better I could have done. I am often accused of being a polygamy man. I don’t know why. It can’t be because I feel attracted to too many women at once. That really isn’t a plausible one. Now her birthday is coming. Last time I gave her a wicked surprise and it was filmy too. Somehow I’ve got in to the habit of taking standards from mushy Hindi films and improving upon them.

At one point of time I had saved up to 2000 bucks just so that I could make a grand proposal. Turned out, she was already chauffeured. And the arse that romanticism makes out of people, instead of spending that money on hoodlums to get the antagonist’s anatomy researched, I spent it on CCD bills. Oh yeah, their bills cost a lot. So one year and 2000 bucks later, I found solace in the age old philosophy,

“If the grape costs a lot, it probably is sour.”

At 3 in the morning, sleep deprivation can do strange things to people. The pleasure’s been mine.