UNO(1)

“Ranveer, take good care of yourself.” Those were the last words said by my dad before I boarded the Volvo from Banglore to Infosys Mysore with Varun. Varun and I met via Orkut. We planned to meet up in Bangalore and go together to our dream world ie INFOSYS. Varun was from Delhi - a typical fair, good-looking Punjabi. We landed up in Infosys after having a argument with autowallah. Here the auto ppl know only two words “kaha” and “150rs”. Autos here don’t run on meters, it runs on the convincing skills of the individual who’s obliged to use it. The very same day we met Neil. Neil is from Bangalore, one of the most confident guys I have met in my life. The confidence in him spoke everything about him. He was an all-rounder. All dat took to break the ice was football. Neil was an ARSENAL fan and I was a MAN UNITED fan. Expletives followed soon after this was discovered. I – a boy from the city of dreams, Mumbai, and was looking forward to an independent life…

In the next week we made many new friends. Some of them were really interesting. In one of the ILI sessions – these are meant to improve one’s soft skills and behavioral skills, as if we are nomads or have come from medieval period. Some say that you couldn’t blame them with thinking that way about Neil and me because of how we looked but anyway - we met Shagun. Shagun, how to describe her flabbergasts me. She was one of d prettiest gals of our batch. Every guy will have a second look at her. At first I found her arrogant, but as we got to know each other, I started to like her. We became very good friends and so Neil, Varun, Shagun and I started to hang out together…

Days were going on as usual, we were all hanging around jai mata di dabha, the local dabba outside infosys campus which offers food way better than most of the food courts inside. Neil and I were always hunting, eyes open for some pretty face. Varun has a girlfriend (colloquially referred to by us at the time as ‘gf’) back home, so did shagun…I mean a bf not a gf (before u start thnkng), Shagun’s bf from her college days was in Infosys only. He had joined a month before we had. Rishabh (popularly referred to by us as the time as ‘chutiyaa’) was a kinda of geek, a parochial guy. Most of the time he was busy with studies, so Shagun used to hang out with us. ”Ek paneer masala,ek malai kofta aur paanch naan,jaldi laana” was what Neil said to the waiter in his heavy tone. Service here sucks, we have to wait at least for half-hour before getting what we ordered. As usual we were chit-chatting, when I noticed someone, a gal with an Infosys tag. I was bedazzled. OMG she was very pretty, she had eyes of an angel, smile of a kid and lips were as red as a rose. Her smile could suck up all d remorse in the world. It could have made Himesh Reshammiya quit singing. Such was her aura. My eyes became glued to her face, obviously she was looking somewhere else. The first thought that came to my senseless mind was wish she was my gf. ”Paneer paas kar re”, Neil’s strong voice interrupted my beautiful thoughts. Bastard. d fcker had to interrupt then only. Shagun noticed how I was staring at her. She just smiled. Anyways “you r beautiful” started playing in my mind and thus her thoughts filled my mind. I started to think (ya me and thinking,my mum would be so proud) that maybe this is THE END of me being single. Before I could put more strain on my mind, d food arrived and it occupied all my mind space.