Mithas "The Café"

It was unusual day of monsoon, it was partly clouded, partly sunny, it didn't drizzle but it was cold.

After walking for about 3kms I reached near her college. My throat was dry and scratchy while I have been walking. I knew a cafe existed somewhere near , a cafe I have been hearing about since few years in stories of my friend but never had the opportunity to visit, and now I am so close to this cafe and the college but my friend has already left it. She is gone somewhere and I don't even know where. Some people in all of our lives are like wind, we never know where they are coming from and where they going to, but for the time they are around the feeling is exhilarating. And it is said so that everyone has their reasons; she might have had some of her own. One way or the other I was missing her, I was not very close to her and had met her few times over 5 years, but a good friend is a good friend and it doesn’t matter how many times you met someone, you do miss a friend if it meant anything at all.

 

It all happened by chance that i cane in contact with someone new, who studies in the same college, and i had never been to this area but i was feeling i know a lot about it. I was thinking while I was walking towards the . It would have been great if she was here. As I reached near the stories started taking shape into real life.

Girls sitting at any place possibly they can, guys hounding around in bikes and cars, some couples scattered here and there, a few ladies in sari who appeared to be a bit mature possibly the professors of lecturers of the college, a hawker selling chole kulcha, and one more selling pani-puris. There was a group of girls sitting at corner of market, everyone holding a smoke and enjoying the drag, though I usually find girls smoking to be disgusting but today I was in a different mood. I had come with an open mind and wanted to absorb as much as possible. What attracted me was a tattoo an angel with wings spreading out on the leg of a girl, not sure if it was permanent or temporary. The tattoo was as beautiful as the girl, definitely on a chubby side and not so attractive with her stick, but behind the smoky screen she was pretty. May be she took up smoking to lose weight, god help those girls who undergo all sorts of weird stuff just to lose an inch of waist.

 Trying not to stare at her I just kept walking across the chirping group towards the . Definitely it was not how I had imagined the  and imagination seldom comes true when it is baseless.

I went inside, “ Yaar ek bisleri dena” ( Give me a bottled water )

Bisleri had become a synonym for bottled water, but I like saying bisleri because it’s definitely shorter way of saying pani ki bottle (bottle of packaged water) or mineral water. I quenched my thirst and came out without even noticing the interiors of the . My eyes were forced into meiosis by the sun which found gap in the clouded sky.

A girl was standing by the stall selling cigarette asking for a lighter was taken back when the vendor asked if she just wants a light or she wants to buy it. A bit hesitantly she replied she wants to buy it. And my wicked mind smiled, she is either new or experimenting. She may want to try it in seclusion.

I am an avid thinker, my brain never rests. Not even in sleep. At times I get up in morning after 8 hours of sleep and my brain will be all clouded with spurting ideas whose origin I’ll be hapless to figure out.

At times I do join a few of them which could make sense to an alert mind and apply them somewhere, so while I was standing there and watching that girl buy a pink colored lighter which cost about so less that you never have to think to buy it anyways. I was thinking how did it ever happen for a cigarette shop to exist in a place which is in front of two leading girl’s college.

As the area has Girls College it’s one of the reasons for the  to run are the guys hanging out there for the girls, with the girls or looking for the girls.

I remembered few stories which my friend told me about earlier how they would bunk classes and sit at the  for hours chatting and how guys would come and hit on them or how’ll they stare at some guy who by a far coincidence would be there. I looked at the vacant chair outside the  where they’d put a shed. I imagined her siting there on one of the chairs chatting, laughing and having fun with friends. As soon as I imagined it I was distracted by a girl because of her fluffy bunch of hair clawed behind, I had to ask myself if her hair would be soft or wiry, I wanted to rub my face against her odd looking impressive hair just like a cow will rub her face on a barbed fence to relieve her itch.

I have felt that girls have a better vocabulary than guys and they use words that guys hardly ever speak. One reason being their life style, they have more words to describe their clothes, accessories and themselves which in a way makes them interesting of me. Like a teddy or a baby doll can just be a stuffed toy and a plastic doll respectively or they can be a sexy piece of lingerie.  And any guy who can learn these things might be a huge accomplishment, because if your girlfriend demands a teddy you can just buy naughty lingerie and plead innocence that you thought by teddy she meant the other thing.

I had few more sips of water and took some deep breath avoiding the smoke being carried away by breeze. I wondered if I could become part of the gang just in case I took smoking.

With a huge sarcastic smile spread in my mind and a grin on my lips convincing myself that its good I never took up smoking not even experimenting I walked away taking a last glimpse of the angel tattoo.

It was time I made a phone call; I’d waited too long already.

“Kahan ho aap?” (Where are you)

Aa rahe hain, 2 minute. (Coming, just wait for 2 minutes)

“I’m at the entrance of your college.”

“Just be there.”

When I turned around I saw my new friend walking towards me with two of her friends, smiles on their face. And for the first time in the entirety of my life I will be entering an exclusive campus of a girls college.

The “Mithas” in the day had just began.