A Short Story- Mickey Out of the Bag

Life is full of Happiness. It just takes a person to look around and find smiles all around him. A hectic year allows me to turn back and recollect a wonderful time filled with a million smiles and a thousand tears. The tears too; most of them borne due to happiness.

The man who has given a whole movie of experiences is Vikram. His story has drama, comedy, emotion, action, suspense and romance. Well how do I begin, Vikram comes to Mysore with a clear mind. He has to find a girl for himself or else he would be packed off with a girl chosen by his village elders.  So mission- FIND a girl. And there is divine intervention. Lighting strikes, The skies open, Vikram spots the one. She is dressed in a fairy white salwar and talks like she chirps. Its love before first sight. He claims to have seen her before, in his dreams, But we guys lay claim to have seen her before too, we nickname her Yana because of the striking resemblance she bears to Yana Gupta, the bolly siren.

Vikram is a man possessed. He knows this is it. He has to pull it off here and how? Vaibhav lands up a plan-“ Body bana aur impress kar daal” in true bollywood style.  Here we go. The entire team that includes me, Narendra, Divgikar, Siddharth , Tushar are all now bent on helping Vikram on whatever it takes. The feeling is two prone. A romance always lights up the hectic schedule and it adds a lot of excitement to the goings around. Meanwhile Vikram hits the gym in return for the perfect body. For all you know, Vikram is a lukha, and guess what Vikrams favourite hero Shahrukh had hit the gym in good earnest and had come up with what Vikram wanted - a six pack. But we guys sadly miss a ball boy for our cricket as training sets in and classes begin in earnest.

While Yana becomes a sideshow compared to the real agony of tests of modules. Vikram breezes through tests with great grades because as he says, mind happy, toh results happy. Vikram over time becomes great buddies with all in the group. He also gets a nickname- Mand, because quite evidently he is the tubelight of the group that too, a very low light one at that.

Cut to the emotion and part. I never knew that Vikram had it in him to be a roaring tiger.  But he so showed to one and all, when he took the phone in a fit of bravado and mouthed expletives at our project manager. Well we have a model project to do during training when all of us are expected to perform various roles. What do you do when the supposedly most important person in a project acts irresponsible? Like a true Hero, Vikram sways the swagger, He Gives it back in words to Samidha who doesn’t know how to react. Well thats for the time being, When Samidha returns to class, she is a mess. She walks slowly, puts her arm on her head, lies down in the table and and starts weeping, if crying buckets of tears/water had a better term, I would like to know, but Sammy is now cured, miraculously, She takes over the reins over the project, slogs the hours and as a team we finish the project very ahead of time. Hail the hero, bravo- Vikram.

Time for the love story to move forward, Vikram is now well connected among Yana’s friends. He knows most of her friends. Knows that her favourite hero is Ajay Devgan and she loves the song ‘Arre re arre yeh kya hua’. Vikram spends hours and hours at the park bench outside her building trying to find out more. Thats where the drama starts. Havent I told you yet? Vikram hasn’t spoken yet to Yana. Ably supported by Vaibhav, He decides to finally take the plunge now that all the body that can be made is done. He stutters, he stammers, finally breaks the silence, and introduces himself as Vikram. You are Richa right? I am in FT batch. You are in TL2 right, blah blah all upto Your mobile number is this, all in one bated breath. And finally, Can we be friends with an extended arm for a hand shake. What follows is a million dollar smile and a question mark thats longer than a face can take.

(More in next- to be continued)