I had been up since 1 a. m. (don’t ask…I’m an ‘insomaniac‘…yeah, I know that the politically correct term is ‘insomniac‘…but doesn’t ‘insomaniac‘ make more sense? I mean it is a mania after all…a disorder, an illness, to not be able to sleep). I was fiddling around on my phone, reading SKC’s old messages, thanking the makers of snake (not God, the people from Nokia) for inventing a game which never failed to challenge you, even at such dead hours…eternally bored.
At 1:43 a. m. precisely (trust me, it was precisely that, because bored individuals have the tendency to keep obsessive track of time) Bugs calls. I thought it to be very weird. He knows I go to sleep early (or, at least, try to) and I get pissed off if someone calls me late, not to mention get into trouble with my grandparents sleeping in the next room, who do not particularly fancy young boys calling me so late at night, who did not have secure positions at government institutions, which will give them an earning all their life and me too after their death in the form of a widower’s pension. The fact that I was not marrying most of these young “men,” (as I preferred to call them, rather than “boys“) although a few were certainly on the hit-list, and that private companies secure safer futures than government jobs these days and that I would be earning my own living and wouldn’t exactly have to rely on my widower’s pension, and that this was year 2008 (bold letters mean I’m screaming!!) was of no consequence to them.
Wow! Have we drifted… Anyways, getting back to out little story: well, why Bugs had called me at 1:43 a. m. (N.B.:this was the precise time) at night explained itself as soon as I received his call. I heard wind whooshing past (meaning he was breaking speed limits on some car on some highway), Kevin Little’s “Turn Me On” (meaning that it was playing on the car stereo…yeah, you probably guessed that, but I was re-reading this part and realised that if I was in your place I might not have understood, but then again that’s probably because its 3 in the morning and I haven’t slept at all for, well, a long time. But anyways, not wanting to take any chances, I decided to specify) and he greeted me with “Wussup?” slipping on the double-s. He was drunk.
“Hey come out on your balcony!” Bugs screamed (Hint! Hint! He was very drunk). Behind him I heard a few other familiar voices echoing “come out on your balcony,” “your balcony”, “balcony,” “…cony”… I identified Carl’s, Joe’s and yeah- that’s about it; realised that the mind is not at its sharpest at 2 in the morning.
Well, so I went out to my balcony in my Tee and underwear (fine! I admit it! Make fun of me if you want to, but I can’t sleep with any form of pants on. You have it now! Out in the open! And I’m proud of myself the way I am! So there!) I heard Bugs asking Joe which one my building was. Wow! What had he drunk? Cholai?
(a) He walked me home everyday (well, Jahaan really…oh because he’s in love with her, but since I lived across from her, he dropped me home too… an over-protective chauvinist)
(b) There was only one residential building along the whole of the A. J. C. Bose flyover (Hint! Hint! This one building was the one I lived in)
(c)He was asking Joe of all people?
(1) Joe gets drunk on a can of beer and they’d definitely drunk more than that today
(2) Joe’s never been to my place
(3) I hate Joe’s gilrfriend (and yes! This has a connection with Bugs asking Joe which one my building was! How dare Bugs ask someone whose girlfriend I hate, for my address? If not all the other signs, but this definitely meant that he was drunk!)
So, anyways, I’m standing in the chilly night breeze on my balcony in my Tee and underwear, watching a stupid looking yellow car going forward and reversing, then move forward and reversing a bit more for about 10 minutes. I realised that Bugs is trying to identify if I lived on the hoarding advertising Vodafone’s roaming services right next to my building or the 10-storied building next to the hoarding. Finally as enlightenment is received, Bugs realizes that a hoarding cannot possibly have a built-in balcony, and the stupid little car stops in front of my building. Carl spots me first and starts waving madly. I surreptitiously glance around to see if any male on the hit-list was around, turns out all of them are asleep at 2 in the morning. Thus there being no danger of making a fool of myself in front of them I start jumping up and down and madly waving back. Encouraged by my enthusiastic response, Bugs gets out of the car, starts jumping up and down and waving madly too, accompanied by, “Hey! Wussup! What are you doing? Look, look! That’s Trina up there!” (Hey! Nothing much. I’m waving madly at a stupid-looking yellow car. And that is me up here, thank-you very much).
After about 5 minutes of this act a few arms attempted to pull Bugs back into the car, Bugs clambers into it and the car moves forward, not reversing this time.
I come back into my room, switch my computer on and yeah…that’s about it.