This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 27; the 27th Edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The topic for this month is 'Once Again'.
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Once
again I have lost my girl-friend. I lament about this to my friend and he comes
out with an Oscar Wilde quote, “Losing one may be termed a misfortune. Losing
two can only be sheer carelessness” and laughs immoderately. Such is the
sympathy of friends!
But,
really! I cannot see why this happens to me. Thanks to an industrious dad, I go
around in up-market cars, wear designer apparel and am a generous party animal.
I look good enough to eat, as my current ex-girlfriend remarked very frequently
when she was still my girlfriend. My expressive eyes have been the talk of all
the girls. Though they seem to have expressed very little to men, the way they
pop out when they see a beautiful girl must have been very eloquent to the
women.
Above
all, I have a great sense of humor. In fact, both my former girlfriends were
drawn to me by my sense of humor …… or so they said.
*
* * * *
“I
really love your sense of humor”, said Nita looking meltingly at me. I melt
very easily when it comes to beautiful women. Nita may not be the sort that
draws wolf-whistles from street Romeos but if you get up close to her and look
into her eyes, you would find it difficult to think of anything else.
From
then on, Nita and I were practically inseparable. Friends used to joke that
someone had stuck us together with Fevi-kwick and, when I say I actually
regretted that such a thing had not happened, you can realize how far gone I
was.
One
day, Nita came over in a sari apparently gifted by an aunt, who seemed to have
quaint ideas not only about the sort of apparel but also about the colors
preferred by young women. The poor girl also had to parade in it in order to
satisfy her aunt about how much she liked the gift.
“This
sari makes me look real ugly”, lamented Nita. With a sort of dirty gray sprayed
irregularly over a psychedelic green, that sari would have made Helen of Troy
look like a gargoyle.
I
could not resist it. I looked her up and down and said, “You look no
different”.
All
the friends erupted in laughter but, somehow, it seemed that Nita did not find
the joke funny. Yeah! Well! Sometimes people are slow on the uptake and find it
embarrassing to laugh when they do get it half an hour later.
Two
days down the line, Nita came to me and said, ‘You don’t love me any more, do
you?”
I
was shocked. “Of course I love you.”
“No!
Is it Sheetal? Or, maybe Mala?”
“No
darling! There is nobody but you”
I
proceeded to express my love for her with my lips – not by speaking of course! She
seemed to shed her doubts and things reverted to the way it was before - except
that, every now and then, she used to cast speculative glances at me
particularly when Sheetal was around.
Nita
was upset that day. Our entire group was congregated in the college canteen
when she burst out, “This photographer is really an idiot. How can I give such
awful photos to prospective employers?”
“Ah!
Nita! The camera can only capture what is there” I said in my usual jovial
tones. Once again, Nita did not seem to get the joke. For a person who loved me
for my sense of humor she was pretty slow on the uptake.
For
the next five days I did not see Nita. On the sixth day Anil and she were
walking towards me and I called her. She came over to me and said, “Harish! You
know you don’t love me. I don’t want to hang around your neck when you want to
be rid of me. So let us just be good friends.” From the tone of her voice it
seemed like she thought that the only good friend was a dead friend!
“But..but…”
I stammered.
“It
is OK, Harish! No need to make excuses for breaking off from me. I understand”,
she said and walked away to join Anil in what looked like the start of another
Fevi-kwick relationship.
Can
someone tell me whether I dumped her or she dumped me? It seemed as though I had broken up with her but, for the
life of me, I cannot remember having done so.
That
was my first girlfriend.
*
* * * *
“Your
sense of humor is fabulous”
There
must be something to feminine intuition. Sheetal meant nothing to me when Nita
expressed her suspicions but, apparently, I meant something to her. If Nita’s
was the sort of beauty that grew on you, Sheetal’s beauty thrust itself into
your notice, if you know what I mean. This, then, was the girl who was saying
that my sense of humor was of the stuff of fables!
Sheetal
as a girlfriend was far different from Nita. With Nita we were stuck to each
other but she preferred time apart from the crowd. Sheetal, however, could not
do without a crowd of satellites and, thus, we were always at the center of a
boisterous mob.
One
day, Sheetal came over with her curly hair straightened out.
“How
do I look?” she asked us in general.
“Of
course your looks have improved. Any change could only have been an
improvement”, I joked. Guffaws of laughter erupted from our crowd. Sheetal,
strangely, had a frown on her face. I don’t know what it is with girls. They
cannot understand the simplest jokes!
That very evening,
Sheetal came over and said, “Harish! It is all off between us. You have no
empathy, no consideration for my feelings. I don’t think I want to spend time
with someone whose love is so shallow” and stormed away leaving me with the
eternal question of the male species - “But what did I do?” - still hovering on
my lips.
So, once again I
had lost my girlfriend!
*
* * * *
Can
someone please tell me what is going
wrong?
Because,
you see….
Once
again, a girl is absolutely in love with my sense of humor. I don’t want to
lose her too!
* * * * *
