Diary of a 50 day old baby


Day 1:
Dear diary, I was so happy when I was inside, now I am out and it is kinda cold and bright outside. Met many strange people today. So tired. Need to sleep.

Day 5:
Have moved to a new enclosure. The bed is much larger and there is this lady who is at my beck and call 24 hours of the day. I am going to call her lunchbox. I like her obedience towards me. I am mighty pleased. But that doesn’t mean I wont cry my lungs out tonight. Will keep you posted

Day 7:
Dear diary, this is kinda embarrassing, I farted today. I think all the strange people in this house heard me and clapped and laughed like it’s some kinda miracle. I am beginning to like these guys

Day 8:
Today a strange man came. He looks eager to please. I like his service. He walks around the house at night to calm me down. Yes, I get very cranky. As eager to please as this workforce is, its not at all skilled. Communication skills need to be improved. They need to understand what I want and when I want it.



Day 10:
I like lunchbox lady. Every time I start crying I get fed. It is a lot of work for me but good to see that at least she gets me. The strange man has left today. I need to avail the services of another old human.

Day 11:
I think I got named today. They kept saying a name in my ear. It hasn’t even registered.

Day 12:
Dear Diary, I need to learn how to fart like a lady. Awkward!

Day 13:
Had a lot of gas last night. I think it might be my sedentary lifestyle. I don’t like that crying is not included as exercise in this part of the world.

Day 15:
Strange man has returned. I am beginning to see a pattern here. I think he’s here every 7 days or so. I heard someone call him daddy. I don’t know whose daddy he is, but he surely is a good ride. I am going to summon his services at 3 in the night today.

Day 16:
Such a busy day today was. I cried for 2 hours, then slept, then fed on the lunchbox lady for 1 hour, then slept, summoned the services of that daddy guy in the night and walked for 1 hour. So much calories have been burnt today I cant tell you.

Day 17:
Farted and burped at the same time today coz #YOLO

Day 18:
I did potty on the lunchbox lady today. Good fun happened. ROFLzzz!

Day 20:
I think that lunchbox lady has a name. Amma I think she wants to be called. Anyway, had a little game with her. Had potty in the diaper and started crying, she cleaned me and as she walked to the cupboard to get a clean diaper, I did Potty #2. Trust me diary, when you are just 20 days old it is not easy to potty on demand. The lunchbox used to smile when I used to do potty in the first week, now she doesn’t seem amused. Maybe I should increase my output. LOLzzz!

Day 22:
Saw the so called daddy make so called amma laugh. They were completely ignoring me and talking amongst themselves like normal people! I have a feeling that these two might have known each other for quite some time. But diary, I don’t like this union-baazi in my empire. I cried just in time and made them break their jolly gathering.

Day 23:
Dear Diary, I am in love. My boyfriend is the fan. He is there for me whenever I need him. Lunchbox amma has been working fine but recently that daddy guy has been corrupting her work ethic I feel. I should make him walk 2 hours tonight. But yes, the fan. He follows me to every room. Also he’s so cool. I have learnt to smile and all my smiles will be reserved for my sweetheart – the fan.

Day 24:
I did potty on daddy guy. After he changed his shirt, I did susu on him. This has been a productive day

Day 26:
Have realized there are many more people in this house. Amma lunchbox and daddy guy must be 100 years old. There are also their father and mother and one more lady (her greatgrandmother) who seems the most experienced. I don’t think she has been floored by my charm yet. She is on the radar though.

Day 28:
Got my ears pierced. I think I look awesome. There some friends of the adult humans coming tonight and I have nothing to wear! God! All they have been dressing me in is onezies! What is this? 1997? #fashionista

Day 29:
I hate massages. No diary, its not like the Swedish massage they show on TV. Theres this moushi lady who comes and just polishes me with oil. And so much exercise! I hate taking baths also. When I don’t get dirty at all apart from the occasional potty and susu (occasional meaning once every 3 hours), why do I need to take a bath? My boyfriend, the fan seems helpless in front of these people. He would have saved me from them if he could.

Day 30
Just realized potty and party sound the same. Giggled for 15 minutes straight.  Amma lady kissed me and laughed too. Would like to abolish this kissing routine and have a more formal way of appreciating me, like a salute or something.

Day 33:
Met the children doctor today. He’s actually old too. Like as old as Daddy guy – 100 years, give or take a few. By children doctor I thought he must be a child with a stethoscope or something. Haha. I giggled another 15 minutes today. So funny I am. Don’t like the doctor one bit. He’s uncouth. Makes me touch my head to my knees and looks at amma and says - See, such a good baby! - like I was some kinda of paneer tikka. Cant wait to have Paneer Tikka.

Day 38:
Will people stop smelling my head already?

Day 40:
Talked to the fan for 1 hours before sleeping. I think I am in love. Daddy guy also said he loves me. I must be doing everything right else why would everybody fall for me like this. XOXO!

Day 42:
I have now done susu on everybody who stays under this roof. I feel 2 feet tall tonight.

Day 43:
I don’t like this mid-meal burping business this amma lady does. It’s like being at an all you can eat buffet and then being taken mid way into a sales meeting. I cry loudly and let my disagreement known, but for all the obedience, amma lady seems to take a lot of decisions on her own. I don’t like this defiance one bit.

Day 44:
Stop kissing my forehead in my sleep yougaiyzzz…

Day 45:
God, gained 600 gms since birth! I should ask the lunchbox lady if she has a low fat option for me.

Day 46:
Daddy fellow is eating my fingers and toes. I would have stopped him if it wasn’t SO MUCH fun.

Day 49:
This daddy guy and amma lady seem to be good friends. Chatterboxes ruining my beauty sleep. Shutuppp and give your attention to me!

Day 50:
Dear diary, it’s been 50 days. I can positively say that I have been pleased by the service rendered by these guys, esp amma lady lunchbox. I have many more kingdoms to annex. But right now, its 3 am and I have to wake up every person in the house coz that’s how I roll! XOXO
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Letter to my unborn child...

Dear child,

You will be here in a few days and I feel completely unprepared. I was, what I like to call "baby ready" right out of engineering college. I had begun liking kids and couldnt wait to have my own. I waited 8 years for you to come in my life. And now that you are almost here, I feel completely unprepared.

I have no idea if I would make a good father. I was lucky to have a really great set of parents. They let me take my own decisions, let me make mistakes occasionally, form my own opinions, in short, they let me be, well, me. What else are good parents supposed to do if not this? There is no set Key Result Areas for parents. There are no finishing schools, no second chances (per kid). My parents I think did a good job. And still, there were times when I was really mad at them. Maybe it is a sign of growing up or something. Maybe there comes a time when you realise that for the halo our society creates around one's parents, they are after all human and they are susceptible to mistakes too.

I guess, this is the reason why I am writing to you even before you are born. I hope that when you read this at 13, this letter will be still written by your 29 year old father. And maybe he might be more understanding than your 42 year old father who has salt and pepper hair and who your girlfriends think looks like George Clooney.

I am also writing to apologise in advance. I am going to push my dreams onto your shoulder. No matter how good a father I try to be, I might sneak in a few words about IIT and how you should try and get into engineering and how MIT has the best labs and you should work there etc. I am telling you now - I will love you no matter what college you go to or what you decide to be in life.

Interesting people, I have found, do only two things - They either create something or solve problems. The really interesting ones do both. If you are doing this, you are doing life right. Your looks wont matter, what car you drive or where you live wont matter. It doesnt matter what your friends say, or your relatives or even what I say. Being happy matters. Being happy is an art and like every art form, it get better with practice.

Your mother and I love you very much. We already love you, even before you are born. We loved you even before you were conceived. You know what? I was 14 when I first met your mother. And she was just 13. It must be funny imagining you parents to be little, no? I remember saying to myself that she had the prettiest brown eyes I had ever seen. I also remember thinking that she would make a good mother. Amazing no? That the 14 year old me would feel that a 13 year old girl will make a good mother? But tell you what, in all the years that I have known her, my belief in her has only strengthened.

I wish I could insulate you from all that is wrong in this world. But I wont be able to do that. Come to think of it, maybe that is not a father's job. A father's job is to guide, I think, not cajole. If you find this to be incorrect, please let me know. There are going to be times in your life when you wouldnt know what you are doing with your life and where is your life going. Everybody will tell you to do what you love. But no one will tell you how to find what you love. I am sorry I cant tell you that either. Only you can find love, in work and otherwise. One trick that I have found is to listen to your heart more than your mind. Your mind is plagued with what they show on TV and what they write in the papers. Listen to what your elders say, including myself. But dont buy everything we say. Most 30 year olds I know dont know what the hell are they talking about. Extrapolate that to all other age groups. But do listen to elders and ask them questions. This is the only way to gain experience without experience.

We are people pleasers, your mom and I. There are very few who dont like me and I dont think any person in their right frame of mind would dislike your mom. Being likeable is not the same as people pleasing. Refrain from picking up that habit from your parents.

Make mistakes. It's very important.It's okay to fail at things. It is not okay however to not give your best. Think about it, if everyone halfassed everything what would the world be like?

Those who say luck doesnt matter are lying. But over time, I have found, luck evens out. Once luck evens out, only hard work stands tall. There is no substitute to hard work. At the same time, not everyone, no matter how hard working succeeds at everything. Faraday, found out the relationship between Electricity, Magnetism and light. One has to have some divine intervention to find that, I feel. But when Faraday was made to work in a glass manufacturing lab by his jealous boss, he failed miserably for 4 years! You might not succeed at everything. But succeeding at everything is not the aim of life.

Some of your friends are going to have better parents, maybe more educated or who earn more than us or they have better toys or have a good looking boyfriend/girlfriend. You dont know their story. You havent walked in their shoes. Dont be jealous. If you learn to do that, teach me how.

In closing, all I want for you if good health and a good life. Happiness and joy. Experiences and lots of trials and errors. Lots of love and an honest heart, my child, will lead you a long way.

Lovingly,
Daddy.



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Sri Lanka, amaze me!

If the aim of travel is enriching oneself, I had the most enriching trip in my life very recently. This was to Sri Lanka. And I say this after travelling to 14 countries round the world. Travellers always want to see places different from their home, and I dont blame them. It does seem like the best value for money.



So, please note that I say, SL was the most enriching of my trips, it wasnt the biggest bang for my buck. That, probably would be Hungary.

Anywho, when I got married, I, in all my naivety made a promise of at least one-vacation-a-year to the wife. She very subtly reminded me in August that we  hadnt made any plans and it was already past the half year mark. So we decided to go some place most Indians never visit (we were wrong about that) - Sri Lanka.

In my head SL would just be a poorer copy of Kerala. I was partly correct about that. As our plane swooped in to land, as far as our eyes could see on either sides, were coconut trees. Vast, literally forests of Coconut trees. So much like Kerala, but definitely not a poor copy.

Private transport across SL is super expensive. This in spite of fuel and vehicles costing exactly the same as in India. Heck, even their oil provider is Indian Oil (which is renamed IOL Sri Lanka, yeah, smart). On our way from the airport, as we entered the city, we did get caught up in traffic. Ah, good old third world country, I thought. Only, there was no honking, no rash driving and almost no motorbikes on the road (Could a SLankan answer why this is?)

Now the enriching part - The roads, barely felt a bump on the roads. The traffic! I have never had cars stop for me while crossing the road in India. There are just too many cars and too many people in India, I thought as I crossed that road in Colombo. I am like the mother of that naughty kid in school. Everyone says he a menace, but the soft hearted mother I am, I cant find faults with the kid. My attitude towards India is the same.

The beaches, they are beautiful! The heritage buildings, the monuments are all well kept. They all seemed Indian or British, which is obvious considering it was Tamil kings who ruled SL for most of its history apart from the British who came in during the 19th century.

My point being, this country, a small island, war ravaged for 25 years, a part of the Indian subcontient, was more European than Indian. Again, I love India. But Sri Lanka probably has all the beauty of India and its people minus the filth, the honking, the dirty and encroached footpaths and the deafening noise of loud speakers.

So, what are the Sri Lankans doing right?

1. They controlled their population.The population of SL, the entire island is less than one such island in India that is hundred times smaller than SL - Mumbai. The population density of Colombo and Berlin (one of the lesser populated cities of the west) is almost the same!

2. They made education compulsory. SL has amongst highest in 3rd world countries (98%!)

3. They made cheap medical care available for its rural folk.

4. Resulting higher value of human life and better pay for even menial jobs. In a country full of Coconut trees, coconut is still costlier than in Mumbai. The reason - the wage of the person who climbs up the tree in SL is much higher than in India.

On our way back to India, we stopped at Chennai. We went around a little bit. Chennai looks a lot like Colombo. Only it's not. It took us a few hours adjusting to that fact. Less than 1000 kms away is a city that is so much cleaner. How? While sitting on the beach, looking far out in the Indian Ocean, the same ocean that is shared by both cities, we thought what should be done to make our cities that pretty.

1. We cant reverse our population. But we can try to diffuse the population to other cities. We have to come up with newer better planned cities. We need at least 100 cities of the same tier as Ahmedabad and Mysore. At least 100.

2. We have to make 2 types of education available. We dont want everybody to become an engineer. But we want everyone to read and write and think for themselves. Most engineers from India cant.

3. Improve the quality of cheap medical care in India. Govt hospitals have to be run better.

4. Improve quality of 3 things in the public domain - Potholes free Roads. 24/7 Electricity. Potable water supply. That is it. It is not that difficult.

Or maybe it is. Either way, we cant stop trying. It makes no sense to be a superpower if we cant even have 24/7 electricty. in 2015!

We had to catch a flight back to Mumbai from Chennai. We were crossing the road at the slow lazy pace only a tourist can manage when a Tata Indica, honked at us and woke us from our slumber-like state. We were truly home.

Note: Every morning I wake up and open my window I feel great. I am proud of my country. It took me 3 months of contemplation to write this post, call my naughty kid, well, naughty.

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Daal Fry, bitch!

There’s a holiday in Germany when people eat goose, you know the bird we used to shoot at while playing Duck hunt? What is duck hunt you ask? Don’t you remember that awesome game on 8 bit Sega? What is 8 bit Sega you ask? When were you born I ask! And pity you.

 Anyway, that is not a good day to be a goose, I bet you. So we were at a party and everybody was served goose except yours truly of course.

You are a vegetarian? So where do you get your protein from? Asked a British friend of mine.

Daal fry. Bitch.

Daal fry. The most underrated dish on the menu card, bought only in conjunction with Jeera rice. I am a daal fan. I think to really rate a restaurant you have to taste the daal fry there. It is so simple, it doesn’t have the taste or texture of Paneer or mushroom, which I think is vegetarians’ way of understanding why the world goes crazy after meat. Daal fry, and not daal Tadka (yes there is a difference) is what I am talking about here. Daal Tadka has too much oil in it and is sometimes used to hide shoddy workmanship in the kitchen.

I have been trying since ages to perfect the Daal fry. There are no authentic recipes online which give the same dhaba/restaurant taste. I, with the audacity of a researcher, kept trying to perfect the Daal fry and this time, I think I tasted the daal closest to dhaba/restaurant daal.

So for the benefit for all you readers, and humanity, I present to you the most authentic dhaba style daal fry


Daal prep
Take 3 parts of tur daal (arhad) & 1 part of masoor without the skin. The reason we use masoor is that is offers a good balance against the extra starchy tur daal. Soak in water for some time, then put it in a cooker. Note that I am a guy and this is an art, so we are not going to go by grammage and such. Use any amount.

Cut a tomato in fours and put in the cooker. Put in some turmeric powder. Cook for 3-4 whistles. 

Open the lid. Use a whisker to whisk the daal into a smooth constant consistency soup.
Now starts the kickass part of the daal. The tempering.


Tempering prep.
Mince a handful of ginger and garlic.

Heat a pan. Put in a dollop of ghee in. Let it get hot. Unlike oil, ghee has a high oxidation point. So let it get really hot. Throw in some mustard seeds and cumin. Let it splutter. 

Now this is IMPORTANT. 

Put in ginger and cook it. Yes. Cook the bloody ginger. This is make or break.

Now put in some hing (Asofedita something). Smell the awesome smell. Now put in some curry leaves if you have been brought up south of the Tropic of Cancer. Let them splutter with a vengeance. Some green chillies to taste.

Now put in Garlic. This is practically the last step and the shortest one. Don’t burn the garlic. Once you smell garlic, you know its done.

Stand back and pour the daal from the cooker into the mix. Be careful. Let the mixture simmer for 5 mintues.

You are done. Get ready to enjoy the best daal fry you have ever had.



Chaudhary out.
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If there was a way I could go back to the July of 2004 when I had just turned 19, in my second year of engineering, which till date remains my toughest year, what would I tell him? He’s at a tough time in his life already with over 4 hours of travelling to and fro to college and for the first time he’s not in the top 10% of his very intelligent class. And things are about to get worse from here on. I wish somehow I could go back and just, you know, tell him stuff that would make him believe that all of this will be alright.


1. The older you get, the wiser you will get. I know you think you know everything, and yes you do know quite a lot, but you will know more things when you are 25 and even more by you are 29. 

2. Money can buy most things in life. But there are 3 things money cant buy. Good food, Good weather and Good women

3. Good food is fresh fruits, vegetables, there are very few countries in the world that have access to such food, yours is one of them. Good weather is rarer than good food. Good women are the rarest of the three.

4. I know how much you have heard about Germany and how much you want to visit. You will work for a German firm right out of Engineering college. And yes, you will end up living in Berlin. It is an amazing city.

5. You know that girl you liked in the 11th Standard but didn’t have the stomach to approach? She got fat. Not that weight is the right way to judge a girl, but it wasn’t exactly her personality you were after.

6. I know you don’t drink and you shouldn’t, not such a good habit. But you will learn to love and respect good Beer and Wine as a form of art that it is.

7. For as much as you hate Mumbai right now, the more you go around the world, the more you will come to love the place. 

8. You will fall in love with Sour bread and Gouda cheese.

9. This year will be your life’s toughest year yet. I am 29 and I haven’t had a worse year that what the 19th would be.

10. But that’s alright. You know, easy years make for good memories, tough years make for good character

11. The older you get, fewer people will impress you, which is great, ‘cause that means you must be getting better

12. Remember how you wanted to buy a Skoda by the time you hit 28? Well, you didn’t buy a Skoda, but an even better car last year. And yes, it’s a German car.

13. You should exercise more, not to build biceps or anything, just to, generally keep fit. And anyway, I have found only 19 year old girls dig biceps. The rest you can charm with your stories.

14. Yeah, we write stories now. You will publish a novel, actually two. (Buy the second novel here)

15. You remember the World Cup last year? 2003? How sad that made you. Well, let me tell you this – We win the World Cup soon and that last ball six, I cant even… You have to watch it dude. It gave me Goosebumps

16. You are not going to have a girlfriend. Not till you are out of Engineering.  Don’t feel bad, it’s mechanical Engineering dude! What did you think? Think of this time as batting on a crumbling pitch, if you can play this out, you will score on your day.

17. You will buy a lake-facing house. It’s beautiful.

18. You will lose some hair and some of the others will grow grey but with each passing year they would bother you less than they did the previous year.

19. The older you get the better you are going to get at charming women. You know that pretty girl in Computer Science you think is out of your league? You will manage to woo women way hotter than her, like wayyyy hotter.

20. You will fall in love with your parents with every passing year. You will come to see them more as human beings susceptible to making mistakes. You will realize they did the best job they could do.

21. You remember that girl from school you used to find cute? Well, she’s still out of your league.

22. And btw, you married her. It is awesome. But still, out of your league

23. Petrol will become three times as expensive in the next decade

24. I know how much you love the Reebok brand. You have so many Tshirts and shoes. The 29 year old you doesn’t own a single Reebok product. Sorry, I just grew out of it.

25. Enjoy your jeans and Tshirts. Casual Friday is a big deal when you start working.

26. You know how you wish you weren’t so shy? Well, you have made some amazing friends. Some of them would give their lives for you. The amazing part is, for all your selfishness, you would too.

27. If I told you my salary, you are gonna freak out. But don’t, remember what I told you about petrol? Everything’s more expensive in 2014.

28. You will visit more than 13 countries. 

29. No matter what you think about life right now, if you keep at it, earnestly, it would get better. Much better than you ever imagined. Life is tough, 19 is a good age to realize it. 

So thank you for everything you have done till now. Right now, I wouldn’t wanna be you but I wouldn’t be me, if at some point in my life I hadn’t been you. So, thank you.

29 things the 29 year old I want to tell the 19 year old meSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
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Of Orkut, confidence and my girlfriend...



"Tu orkut pe hai?" asked Rahul Bhat or Bhatti as he was known. Puberty had hit him late and in his 2nd year of engineering this genius of the class was asking me if I was on Orkut.

I kid you not, I thought it was some sort of software, something related to mechanical design or analysis or something. The year was 2005 and I wasnt too much into anything those years so you could forgive me for not knowing what had already started to become a phenomena in India back then. I called it the #1 thing that changed India in the last 10 years. You can read that blog post here.

But this is not a nostalgic post highlighting the good old days of Orkut and superior privacy and how they didnt conduct experiments on its users. This is a post about how Orkut empowered guys like me. How it made us more confident among other things.

I was a shy guy. I would never be able to walk up to anyone and say hi. It always had to be the other guy. If it was a girl I had a crush on, she would never know till many years later by which she would have already changed two boyfriend and the newest one would have a CBZ (its a bike, kinda big deal back then)

There's this song by Boyzone, dont remember all the lyrics, but it goes - It's only words, and words is all I have to take your heart away. -- Those words could be spoken words, or thanks to Orkut, these words could now be written. Much simpler for guys like me, we could write things down, without having the fear of shot down or laughed at. You like a girl in your class? Or Computer Science class? (if you are an Mech Engineering student) Send her a friend request. If she accepts it could mean only 3 things -

1. She likes you back
2. She has no idea who the hell you are but shes nice so doesnt want to seem smug
3. She just wants to increase the number of friends.

It was usually the 3rd one. But that was okay. Boys like us were one inch closer to girls. Maybe the girls will say hi the next time they meet in the hallway. How could they not, we were "Orkut friends" after all. Even if they didnt, it was okay. We could always send them a scrap - You looked very nice at the freshers' party. 3 other boys would paste the exact same thing below. Demand supply mein problem hai actually...

I found myself on Orkut. Though a late adopter, I was hooked immediately. It was so much fun. You could form communities, troll your friends, scrap each other and the best part - Write testimonials. There were 3 types of testimonial writers -

1. Who write testis only for friends out of genuine respect for friendship
2.Who write testis expecting a testi in return
3. Who write testis only for girls, praising them, hoping they would notice them and talk to them, heck even go out with them.

Mostly 3rd type.

I am thankful to Orkut. It made me the cool guy that you see today and wonder how he can be so awesome. But seriously, I got my long time girlfriend and now wife on Orkut. No, no, I didnt send her a frandship request or anything. We were friends in school and then she moved to the United States. Somehow she found me on orkut and added me.

She was always out of my league. Today, for as awesome as I am, I still think I am striving to be better everyday so that I can deserve her. If I feel that when I am so full of myself today, had I met her in person back then, it would have been impossible for me to woo her. Orkut and the distance between us made sure we didnt meet face to face too much and I got my written words to do the talking for me.

Orkut gave me the confidence guys like me deserve. There are so many of us out there, ladies, its sad most of you would never manage to meet us, had it not been for Orkut. I feel the we live in a much better world now where most of us have a level playing field. And this is not just for romantic relationships.

Now that they are shutting it down, I feel sad. It seems like yesterday Bhatti had animatedly asked me to come on Orkut. I want to thank him for the idea. I havent logged on to the site in ages. But I didnt think they would turn it off. For me, it was something I would show my kids to -- this is where it all started. Maybe they would read this post one day and marvel at the times gone by.

But for this moment, all I wanna do is, save and read my testimonials again and again and again...

-Arshat Chaudhary
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Short story

STRANGERS:

"Oops"

She bumped into him. It was like bumping into a brick wall. She had almost forgotten how strong and fit he was. Well, maybe he wasnt all that fit. It had been quite some time she had been in a man's arms. Even a teddy bear the right size would do right now.

She wore a loose brown sweater, like the brown of her eyes he had said. It wasnt even that chilly. She hadnt worn this since a long time. Who would she dress up for now anyway?

He looked at her apologetically. Like it was his mistake she had bumped into him. Like it was his mistake that they had lost each other, like on a deserted island. He held plastic bags in both his hands. Bags full of tomatoes. He was going to make Pasta sauce at home. Cooking got his mind off her. And he was ready to do anything to get his mind off her. Known each other 7 years. 7 years! Now strangers.


LOVERS:

"What do you want for dinner?" he asked.
"Nothing with tomato in it" she said.
"What? Look at them" he said holding two medium sized tomatoes in his hands - "They are looking at you. They want to be eaten by you" He brought them close to her cheeks. "See? Your cheeks look just like them? Red Red"
"What? My cheeks look like tomatoes?" She hit him with a cushion. "What compliments you give! Wah!"
He pulled her close to him. She felt his strong arms engulf her in a strong embrace. She liked his strong arms. 5 years they had been together, 5 years! But every time he held her like that, she felt like it was the first time.


FRIENDS:

"Dont write like that, the professors going to know it wasnt my mom who wrote the letter." She said.
"Well, I cant write like a girl. I have man hands and a man's handwriting."

She had been bunking classes. He was in the athletics teams and there was a track and fields event. Professors single handedly try to kill every love story that has a chance of blooming in college. They probably share drinks and talk about how many love stories they foiled that day.

So one over zealous professor had seen her cheering her friend at the event. And he wanted her to get a note signed by her mom. That is what it was all about.

"If I get caught in this mister, I am going to kill you," she said punching him in the arm.
"Well, I didnt ask you to bunk classes, did I?"

The lack of chivalry in him made her wonder how did they become friends.

"Well, if it wasnt for my cheering, you would have never won."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, Lady luck dude."
"Actually, I almost lost cause of you."
"And how is that?"
"I get very distracted" He said looking at her, not a blink.
"'Cause of me?" She said, a smile peeping out of her lips.
"Yeah. You are pretty. Didnt I ever tell you that."

Not a blink.

She looked away.

They had been together 2 years.. 2 years... And now the idiot makes the move.


STRANGERS

It was the first day of college. Uncannily chilly in that part of the city. Maybe it was too early. Or the anxiety of having to make new friends. She wore a brown sweater.

Trying hard to not get raged on her first day at college, she made sure she kept looking at the ground, not making eye contact with any of the seniors.

"Oops" He bumped into her. She was soft, like a pillow, for the lack of a better analogy. There werent many soft things he owned. No teddy bears and shit.

"Sorry," he said, quickly diverting his brain from the softness of things. "I didnt see you there"

'Such a terrible thing to hear from a guy. He didnt see you.' She thought.

There was a moment of awkwardness. Then he said, almost trying to fill the vaccuum in the timeline -
"You should wear brown, makes the brown in your eyes look even prettier"

She smiled.


END


I read a line somewhere - Strangers. Friends. Lovers. Strangers.
It made me kinda sad and I wanted to write on the topic. So I wrote in the reverse order, coz that be more challenging. 



Lovers. Strangers. Friends. In no particular orderSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend
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