9

                                                 9.

‘1 message received. Smarak’- my mobile screen flashed.

‘5. park’- it read.

                

                 It was a Sunday and we had 1 of our usual ‘khatti sessions’ at Vanivihar park. It was already 4.30 and I had to get ready as soon as possible as I had to travel 15-20 minutes on my 70cc scooty. The increasing traffic intensity of bhubaneswar made it difficult for me reach there in time and as usual, I was late,though 15 minutes only,this time. Everyone- sourav, smarak, anand , pratyush, amlan, dev- my school-time friends, had arrived,except me. I parked my scooty and rushed towards our ‘khatti spot’.

  


                

                 The ongoing discussion stopped at my arrival. Some of them gave me a smile and a few others gave an inscrutable look- which was difficult to decipher. I returned the smile and was waiting for the verbal communication to commence.

‘we need 2 flyovers- one at Acharya Vihar and another one at Vani Vihar, don’t we?’- finally I spoke, breaking the uneasy silence of 10 seconds.

‘Damn good idea’- amlan replied to that with a grin on his face.

‘well, I have 1 more good idea’- smarak waited for our reactions and and then started, ‘you need to upgrade yourself from a 70cc scooty to a bike,atleast 100cc’

Everyone, including me, burst out laughing and all of us were back to normal conversation, as usual.

The discussion varied from our college curriculum to the college girls, from movies to politics, every now and then changing its direction.

My mobile rang,in the middle of our discussion, unterrupting all of us. I took the cell out of my black jeans, as everyone lese looked at me with pin-drop silence.

The cell stopped ringing. Oops, it was a missed call!!!            

I took excuse from all of them and called back. It was pipasa. My conversation with pipasa went on for more than 20 minutes and others were busy in talking among themselves without giving a damn to my absence for such a long time.

‘call waiting. Dev.’- I read on my mobile screen and then I looked back only to find that everyone was looking at me and sourav,with his new 5mp camera mobile, was busy in taking my photos to upload in orkut.

Finally, I disconnected the call and came back to the group and found myself helplessly facing to the questions of others and making unsuccessful attempte to calm down them. At last, I had to tell them everything, everything about me and pipasa. All of them demanded to see her ohoto and I assured them to do that in the next meeting.

All of us were from different colleges, except Dev and me, who were from the same college,APEX. So they wanted a more precise description of pipasa from dev. Dev, pipasa and me- all were from the same branch-EEE