ONCE AGAIN

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.

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“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.

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“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!

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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!

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