“Stand up you three from the last row”, roared the lecturer.
“What was so funny? Come on! tell us the joke”, he continued with the same pace he started with.
The same hackneyed sentence, which our teacher had fired, almost killed the spirit of ludicrous comment on which we were actually laughing.
We stood solid at our place, like scarecrows in a stark landscape.
“What was the joke?” this time he almost screamed, giving me an ominous feeling.
We were at loss of words.
“Get out from this class”.
Akshat welcomed his decision with alacrity and thus we were obliged to do the same. We followed his footsteps and just when we had almost lined up at the gate and were on the verge to bid goodbye to the lecture, our teacher interrupted again, “Why it seems as if you all were waiting to go out?”
It is obvious that nobody wants to attend lectures of a teacher who writes esoteric terminologies on board, doesn’t speak too much, and mostly involves himself with those sycophantic robots who sit on very first bench, nod at almost every word a teacher spills out of his mouth and enjoy penetrating every drop of ink into their registers to echo those same words during sectionals.
Giving this answer could have won me a thunderous applause from the whole class, except obviously the stoics of first bench, but not without inviting a significant trouble. So I, along with others, remained tight-lipped.
“Proceed. I have better things to deal with,” concluded our teacher pointing at the gate.
***************
“See, I am not going to ask you the same thing again and again”, said Anubhav, probably for the sixth time, “what you both talked about?
We were at college canteen, grabbing the bite of cold patties, complementing it with hot cold-drink.
“She asked for an outing…That’s it”, I replied.
They began looking at each other in disbelief.
“That’s it?” said Akshat, who was looking as perplexed as Abhinav, “Come on! Let’s not dilute whatever you got. Savor it. It’s even better than an unlimited dinner at Le meridien.”
Anubhav burst into a cry of laugh. Had it been few decibels more, it would have out of hearing range of normal human being.
“Let’s see yar. We are not couples. She has no friend, I have no friend. Nothing better to do on Weekends, so she might have decided to ask this. Why it is so hard to believe?” I said.
“You have no friend? Ladki aayi doston ko bhul gya, aur ladki to abhi aayi hi nhi, aane ka bol ke gyi hai. Good my friend, thanks for hurting two Casanovas sitting here”, said Anubhav and started acting like a sobbing bahu of some typical daily soap.
I couldn’t been able to say anything further.
There are still 5 days to go. This week is not going to be an easy one.
to be continued…