Episode 2
The nubile boy and his expectations from a girl
Ashwin is from a lower middle class farmer family. It is
quite evident that a farmer’s son can be nothing but an honourable member of
the highly sought after lower middle class strata. He struggles hard to get a degree but his fault is that he
isn’t an engineering graduate.
“Which type of girl do you want?” I asked him after
succeeding in pulling the first bite of a lower middle class cousin of sandwich-
padapav.
“She should be a family person who respects the value of
relationships” he said sipping the tea. He had already gulped the vadapav with
a flourish of a regular connoisseur of this ‘tight budget appeaser’
“Okay, good.” I said diffidently as i knew he was asking for
the moon. “What happened with the girl you saw last week?” I asked.
“I rejected her. Actually she was a graduate in the arts and
too old fashioned to suit in Pune...” he said looking out at the street. The
chances were that he would be rejected by the girl. But i didn’t go deeper. Why
should i poke the fresh wound of my friend?
So I rather preferred to take a
mouthful of Wadapav to block the obstinate, restless words in my throat and
sent them back with the gulp.
“She was too old fashioned for you to suit in Pune?” I tried
rhetoric coated with euphemism in the attempt to hide sarcasm.
“Yes. The way she behaved she looked like an aunty, speaking a mugged lesson...” Ashwin said haphazardly. He wanted to say more but
probably couldn’t form the sentence. “...and she was undereducated...” he
concluded.
Now I had finished wadapav and beckoned for the cutting tea.
I looked at Ashwin intently and he fiddled in his seat.
“It means you want a well educated girl who will try her
best to be a family person while managing to be modern and suitable in pune...”
I said in one breath. I too wanted to say more but my raised voiced had already
raised some necks and eyebrows in the restaurant. So I kept quite.
My explanation hit him and he sighed deep and ordered one
more Wadapav. He might want to munch his obstinate thoughts with Wadapav and
tea.
“Don’t confuse me Viraag. I am already messed up” he said
and took the damn whole green roasted chilly between his teeth.
‘You can’t ward off the thoughts like that’ it was my restless
thought. I wanted to convert it into a yell then thought the better of it.
“So what’s the next plan?” I asked to take him to future as
the present had the dark shadow of the failures from the past.
“Pub” Ashwin said illuminating like a flickering
tube light which suddenly got a push of high volt. His eyes were moving with
something behind me, mouth half opened and eyes full of new young light.
When I looked behind me I found the topic of marriage running
way from the back door of my brain, as two gorgeous girls entering the
restaurant flaunting their divine epitome of beauty. For the next
don’t-know-how-many minutes we didn’t speak anything. The necks that had been raised
in contempt after my loud remark were now waving in admiration and moving like
cranes till the girls bought something in a parcel and left the restaurant.
“Do hell with the marriage for the time being. Let’s go”
Ashvin got up from the seat and reached the counter to pay the bill, anyway i am slow when it comes to head to the bill counter. The just disappered eye candies had ignited in him the idea of merging himself on the dance
floor with the booze and probably with fair sex strangers at the other ends of the
string of ‘no-string-attached’ relationship.
I sighed and followed Ashvin for my next episode.
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