KP’s Lexicon: Port = Word!!

         This is yet another post about quirky KP. KP has been, of lately, hiding his files and folders in his computer using folder locks and passwords and stuff. All he did throughout the last week was try different softwares for locking folders and generate new incomprehensible passwords for protecting them. Now, those who had job placements in college were required to fill up certain forms and submit it without delay, and KP temporarily got distracted from his new venture. Now filling up forms is a boring thing to do. For KP, it’s a grueling thing to do. Boring or grueling, those who were placed in XYZ Corp were required to fill up tons of forms last day. There was this background check certificate where we had to provide details of driving license, passport, ration card etc. Look closely at KP’s form below:


Photo courtesy: My Nokia 7610 mobile cam (hence the poor quality)

P.S. KP was about to submit the form when Rahul saw the blunder and snatched the paper from him and ran away. I believe KP is still clueless as to why Rahul did that. Well, Rahul then came to me and without wasting any time I took the photo. For original copies, readers are advised to contact Rahul as soon as possible (Rahul’s life will stay as long as KP sees this post).

The Sleepy Tale Of Two Naïve Lads And Their Exam Ordeal

Disclaimer: The protagonists in this post are the innocent, fledgling, primitive versions of the current characters. Some resemblance to the current versions of the characters may be exhibited by these young protagonists which I guess is not coincidental.

          The scenario shifts back 7 years from now rewinding to the year 2001 when I was this innocent little guileless boy studying in the 9th grade. Those were the carefree salad days in Loyola when life was less complicated and the only things revolving in our minds were Sachin Tendulkar, Pam Anderson, The Undertaker and the like.

Scenario:

Bells, candles and cribs. Angels, gifts and Santa Claus. Yes, it was almost Christmas time. But not there yet. We had to jump this herculean hurdle known as Christmas exams to reach there.

Scene 1:

It was the eve of Geography exam. Time 6.00PM. There were 2 whole days for studying and I haven’t yet opened my textbook. While wondering how all my precious time was gone and cursing myself for my slothful attitude, I decided to phone someone. Now phone calls are a big time relief on the exam eves if you call the right person. A sense of solace pervades inside you when you hear that the person at the other end is in the exact same situation as you are (hey, I’m not being sadistic. I hope at least some of you can empathize). I would never call Rohit as he would invariably say he’s doing his 3rd revision (the overconfident brat!!) and I would never call Hari who says he hasn’t studied anything yet (the modest nerd!!), but my experiences suggest that, the kind of marks he gets when the results are out is totally contradictory to what he says during the exams. So, there is no point in calling these 2 buggers. Now there’s one person I can rely upon – JK!! So I ringed up JK.

Me: Man, I’m totally screwed. Haven’t touched anything. I might get digit marks tomorrow.

JK: Me too daa, haven’t started.

Me: Oh!, man, what are we going to do??

JK: Dey, I’ll come to your house now. We’ll do a combined study. If we have a night out, we will get X hours before the exam. Now there are Y chapters and Z pages to go which gives X/Y hours for 1 chapter and (X*60)/Z minutes per page. It’s still possible that we can manage to pass tomorrow.

Me: Hmm, seems like a good idea, but I haven’t had a night out ever in my life.

JK: Me neither, but it seems there are no alternatives now.

Me: Ok, I’m ready, you come here ASAP.

JK: Ok man, I’m on my way.

JK reached my home by 7.30PM, we ate our supper, had a chit-chat, and the time now was 8.30PM. Realizing that we wasted much time, I got a bit tensed.

An optimistic JK: Don’t worry man, we have the whole night before us, there are P hours and Q minutes still left. (Bugger again brings up calculations)

Finally we opened our textbooks. I’m still able to vaguely remember studying about all those different types of clouds – altostratus, stratocumulus, cumulonimbus; the different types of soils – red soil, black soil, alluvial soil; that was one hell of a boring subject. Meanwhile the clock kept ticking and time just breezed away. 10PM, 11PM, 12AM, 2AM, 4AM, 5AM, and now we couldn’t take it any more and finally succumbed to sleep. I think that was the longest continuous period of time I’ve ever studied in my whole life. We had brushed through most of the portions but we never thought about revising it. It was 7AM in the morning when Amma woke us up; I was too dreary and dizzy then and I guess JK was also in the same predicament. In those days, daily life was rather systematic, fixed sleeping time and waking time, and so I guess the sudden night out shattered our biological clock and hence the 2 hour sleep destroyed our equilibrium. Nevertheless, we set out to school after having breakfast.

Scene 2:

There was pin drop silence in the examination hall and the noiselessness further augmented my drowsiness. For a moment, I felt like I was actually floating in the exam hall. I actually knew many of the answers (had studied them the previous night), but I was so drowsy that they just occurred in my head and didn’t come to my hand; I guess the nerve cells in my head didn’t want to transmit the signals to my fingers. I just looked around me; Rohit was there writing his heart out, taking papers, papers and more papers while I was struggling to finish just one page. Hari too was eagerly writing, taking out his ruler and drawing diagrams, diagrams and more diagrams. Then I looked at JK; he was there comfortably sleeping, head buried in his arms resting on the desk. Aha! At least there’s one soul who’s more screwed up than me. After a while, our principal came to the hall for his regular inspection (Fr.Anikuzhy was the principal then). Princi sees JK and goes to him trying to wake him up. JK slowly wakes and looks up.

Princi: Hallooo!! There is an examination going on. Not any sleeping competition!!

JK: Aaa Saar, Faather, errrr, har! har!

Then he takes his pen and starts scribbling in his answer paper.

Princi: If I see you sleeping ever again I’ll simply chuck you out of the hall.

Princi (now turning to the invigilator): Ippazhathe pilleerude oru dhairyame. Sleeping in the midst of a serious examination!!

And he walks away saying something like “The standard of this institution is getting worse day by day.” We managed to sit there awake for the rest of the time.


Epilogue:

Unsurprisingly, both of us flunked the exams big time. That day, I made a resolution never to procrastinate and never ever wait till the last moment to study. But it seems I’ve broken that resolution a gazillion times, thanks to my “indefatigable” will power. Looking back at those times, it seems silly that I actually worried about some petty Christmas exams; that little innocent Thomas must have had a heart attack if he had seen the lackadaisical attitude with which big Thomas comes to attend university exams in engineering. Exams may come and exams may go, but flunking then and flunking now, is all that remains the same.

P.S. I had long forgotten this incident and it was JK who called me up yesterday and as we started speaking about our good old times, this exam ordeal came to limelight. And it was he who suggested making a blog out of this so that we can relive those moments for eternity. I guess I didn’t mess it up. JK, what say??

Update: I couldn’t resist but add an update seeing JK’s comment on this post. It’s too good to read the comment. In fact, for the first time I got an idea about how he viewed the incident through his eyes, though after 7 years. I have copy pasted the comment below:

Eda Thommu, it’s JK here,

Got to tell, that was awesome stuff. Did a great job with that. In fact, that was the first time I saw this incident from your perspective Thommu. I would like to add to this post how I had seen it. Now it’s time for some contribution from my part (This comment is going to be painfully long):

Everything about this story started with 'coincidence'. It was mere coincidence that both of us had planned our studies in a way that we finish mugging up everything else at the risk of Geography. It was sheer coincidence that both of us found Geography equally boring and the one to leave out. It was again coincidence that whenever we struggle with a subject, an exam or anything, we tend to think of the other's pathetic face. It was this same coincidence that ended up the two of us in the same examination hall, with one sleeping serenely and the other almost into it.

I was almost in a state of saturation when Thommu called me. Red soil, black soil and all that. Haven’t wondered about so many colors even in my crayon application class at kindergarten. The phone rang while I was trying to spell 'cumulonimbus', reading it for the first time. C-U-M-U-L-O!!!
As soon as I heard his voice, I asked: Dey, What is this Cumulo....Damn!!
Thommu replied: Mmmm. It is…is...It's a cloud.
His condition was better, I thought. But it didn’t make much difference actually for his next statement was "I heard Rohit mentioning about such a cloud last day. The complexity of the word interested me." I did nothing but laugh.

The combined study lasted until 5 am. I was delighted. For the first time in my life, I was able to see the clock hands in such a position with the sun yet to rise. The stage of presentation followed - the Examination Hall. I still remember the expression on Rohit's face when we wished him luck. He was talking about 'Vegetation in the rural parts of Madhya Pradesh' with Hari. I turned to a confused looking Thommu and said "Don’t worry! It’s the second last chapter and we haven’t reached there." The first few minutes (the only time I was awake) forced out the fury in me. My eyes were paining & Rohit was laughing after seeing each question. Hari had a reason to stand every time I look at him - either for extra sheet or question confirmation. Thommu and I cut a sorry figure. We looked into the eye of each other and failed to blink. From that state, Thommu's eye lids gradually moved to the centre of the paper. My eye lids had just one way to go and that was vertically. I saw darkness and blankness take over. I didn’t get a chance to hold on. It was some time in the middle of my sleep that I felt some pointed object striking against my fairly sensitive skin. I had to open my eyes when the intensity of the instrument increased. I half opened my eyes when I saw someone dressed completely in milk-white outfits. I realized it was Princi with the kind of words that emanated from his mouth. I had to write the rest of the exam. Try to write, in fact.

Every year, from then on, I could never forget this day. Even if I forget the significance of Christmas Day, even if I forget to smile at Santa Claus, even if I forget to celebrate on New Year's Eve, I could never forget this day. It was these small incidents that made our 'Loyola days' special. Moments that made us laugh. Moments that would never come back!!

The Despoilment Of A Scheming Plot

       The most frequent posts in this blog so far are the ones labeled “character assassination”. In fact I have written 8 character assassination posts; all of them based on true incidents. These were real life gaffes made by real people that I know and were not figments of my imagination albeit I have added some spices and special effects accordingly. For the uninitiated, the characters that were victimized by my verbal crucifixion so far, in the reverse chronological order, are: royal Raja, confident Gutso (post no:2), confident Gutso (post no:1), macho Botsu, cool Muniyandi, brilliant Sasi, exaggerative Nambi and last but not least quirky KP. Except for Gutso (who’s in CET), the characters are from my very own batch of 2008 Electronics in SCT.

       But it’s of lately that I came to realize that these characters and other chaps around me are plotting gruesome machinations to cast doom on me and that my life is in real danger (for blindingly obvious reasons). Now the inspiration for this post is a scrapbook conversation between Botsu and Thavala that I happened to read a few hours ago; thanks to my brilliant spy work in Orkut (Botsu’s scrapbook has always been savored as an object of my spying). For the uninitiated, Botsu is a victim of my character assassination post and Thavala is another foxy brat in our friend circle. The conversation goes like this:

Thavala: hi botsuuu!!
Botsu: machoo!!
Thavala: dey, this Thomas is hunting newer and newer victims for popularizing his blog. And I think I would also be a victim one of these days. Avan ninte goa ile kathakal blogil publish cheythittum nee avane onnum cheythille?
Botsu: Da, we have to do something about him.
Thavala: Thatti kalanjaalo!!
Botsu: I’m ready. You know of any place we can dispose off the body??
Thavala: Allenkil vendeda, atra violent path veenda. We can break his hands, pinne type cheyyullallo.
Botsu: Che!! That’s boring.
Thavala: Eda, Thomachan is online, and most probably will be reading the propaganda against him. Namukku avane thatti kalayunnathinte details pinne parayam da. We shouldn’t spoil the surprise for him.
Botsu: You got a point there.

The surprise is spoiled, you bloody duffers. Anyway, I'm going to hire some body guards.

Regal Raja’s Royal Bloopers

        This is yet another post about a lad from my college. In fact he’s a prince belonging to the Nilambur Kovilakam, a royal family in Kozhikode. For namesake let’s call him Raja. Yeah, you guessed it right, the tall, fair and lean guy in S8 Electronics A-batch of SCT. Like any prince, Raja is obsessed with riding horses, but since horse-riding is not permitted in the congested streets of Trivandrum, he bought a blue Honda Unicorn 150cc bike as a proxy (unicorn literally means a horned horse and blue is the colour of royalty), and is now a tad too haughty when on his royal machine. Also, Raja is known as “world bank” in college, owing to the fact that his purse is filled with a minimum of 1000 bucks anytime, anywhere, anyhow. In short, he lives in a royal humungous palace, sleeps in a royal king-sized bed, eats a royal sumptuous meal, rides a royal blue bike, and writes with a royal blue fountain pen with royal blue ink. So let’s address the bloopers made by Raja as royal bloopers.

Royal Blooper no: 1

Once Gokul, Anif and Kishore went to Raja’s house. Raja was seemingly surprised.

Raja: How did you guys come?

Gokul: 2 bikes undaayirunneda.

Raja (using his full brain power): Oho, appol ningal triples adichu alle!!

Royal Blooper no: 2

It was the 1st class in IMS and SK sir paired the students into groups of 2. Students had to interact with their partners and then come to the front of the class and describe their partners. Raja enquired and learned about his partner in detail; interests, hobbies, family and stuff. Raja started explaining the profile of his partner to the class. After initially describing his character, Raja casually switched to the details about his partner’s family, and that’s when he made a twist of tongue:

Raja: As usual, he has a couple of parents!!

Raja had a black eye after the class.

Royal Blooper no: 3

Raja went to this shop in East Fort to buy a headset having a budget of Rs.500/-. Unfortunately the shop had only headsets in the range of Rs.150/-.

Raja: Cheta, enikke 400 inum 500 inum idayilulla nalla headset veenam.

Shopkeeper tried to convince him that the Rs.150/- priced headsets were really good, but Raja was quite obdurate in his stand. Shopkeeper then said he’ll check the vault for more headsets and went inside. Luckily for Raja, the shopkeeper found a Rs.450/- priced headset and Raja immediately bought it. Raja and shopkeeper parted happily. Raja reaches home and switches the headset into his computer. Raja is heartbroken; one ear-piece of the headset not working.
Flashback: Shopkeeper says he’ll check the vault and goes inside, takes out the same Rs.150/- priced headset, sticks a new sticker with a price tag of Rs.450/-, returns back and with a sly grin hands it over to Raja.

P.S. Please don’t misunderstand Raja for a filthy rich arrogant brat. He’s perhaps one of the nicest, down to earth guys I’ve ever met. By the way, Raja was infuriated by the shopkeeper’s duplicity and went to his palace to take his royal sword planning to chop down the shopkeeper, but the guileful shopkeeper shifted his shop to another corner of the city hearing rumors from unidentified sources. Rumors are there that Raja’s bodyguards have started a massive man-hunt to locate the shopkeeper.

The French Connection (Gone Awry)

           The college looked desolated today and it was just a coincidence that I walked past the CGPU building when the Placement Unit head came and asked me whether I could attend a seminar at Hotel Classic Avenue. He said that the seminar was conducted by a group of French delegates from various universities in France for the purpose of awarding scholarships to Indian students to study there. Since I was just lazing around and had nothing much to do I agreed to attend the seminar. So I reached the Hotel with 4 of my classmates with the hidden intention of meeting some hot French ladies. The seminar was halfway through when we came and as I just got seated, I noticed this beautiful, blonde girl with a ponytail sitting in the 2nd row. She was cute!! The seminar got over within some time and it was time to meet the delegates of various universities. Now, each university specialized in certain engineering branches and we had to go to the delegates accordingly. The unlucky duffers with me told their area as Electronics and got appointed to some old French guys. I saw this beautiful, blonde girl sitting beside a table and I found that her university’s main area was telecommunications. I tactfully told the coordinator that I was an electronics engineering student specializing in telecom. Got appointed to the blonde girl and without wasting any time I went to her.

Blonde: Hi, Good morning!!
Me: Comment allez vous! (English: How are you?)
Blonde: Aah!! You know French?
Me: Not much. Just know itsy-bitsy pieces of French. (Yay! First impression made perfect)

          She told me that she was from Jean Monnet University at St Etienne and explained to me the core research areas of telecommunication and the availability of scholarships in her university. In fact she is a student in that university as well its international relations coordinator. The topic deviated from internships and job offers and green card to her life in France and her town and how she enjoys cooking. A little while later, I realized that I was flirting and in fact I was pumped up by the very thought that I was actually flirting with a beautiful blonde French girl. Actually, I wanted to deviate the topic to French kiss and how it got its name, but for the sake of decency I refrained from it. Man, I should tell she had a tantalizing smile and her teeth were so white.

Blonde: I’m sorry; I forgot to ask your name.
Me: I’m Thomas.
Blonde: Oh! My son’s name is also Thomas. He’s about your age.
Me: !!!!! (Boom!!! End of story)
Blonde: It’s pronounced as “Thomaa” in French with a silent ‘s’.
Me: (Ya, ya, whatever)

I walked out of the hotel with a broken heart and a crushed soul.

A Piece of Advice:

           Always remember, French women look way much younger than their real age. Don’t jump into conclusions. Also, don’t be misled by the fact that these are university students. Many of them come back to college to pursue their studies at their mid-ages. Aah! I learned so much today!

Gutso's Gaucheries, The Saga Continues.

         This is yet another post about Gutso (for the uninitiated, please refer to the previous post for an elaborate character sketch). Now, apart from confidence and guts, Gutso has this habit of conjuring up fake statistics out of thin air, to prove his points during debates and group discussions. He even fabricates “never heard before” real life incidents which are just figments of his imagination, to supplement his arguments and usually gets away unnoticed. But it’s of lately that he realized that tides sometimes change and numbers can go out of control.

Scenario: Classroom in IMS (yet again)

         The topic for our group discussion that day was a bit controversial and it was something like “Should women too be held responsible for increased rape cases in India, wearing provocative dresses?” I don’t remember the exact topic but it went something like this. Being the overly confident person, Gutso decided to take the side of the weaker faction in the discussion, that is, he supported the statement that women too should be held responsible. Excerpts from the discussion:

Gutso initiated the discussion by holding the very basic question:

Gutso: First of all, what is rape??

The sleepy audience now woke up hearing that. Heads started turning quizzically. Gutso explained how looking at the girls in Trivandrum is giving him kicks when they wear mini skirts and that women are solely responsible for everything that happens provocating the weakness of poor men. He even went to the extent of criticizing the attire of the girl sitting beside him. That’s when the girl got pumped up.

Gutso: Rape occurs in the spur of the moment usually. After all, to err is human. I think we should give the rapist another chance.

The irate girl beside Gutso: Yeah right, give him another chance to rape!

Gutso unrelentingly retaliated for every opposition argument. Incidents, anecdotes, statistics. Gutso is still smashing dialogues after dialogues, but somewhere down the line he made a twist of tongue:

Gutso: Every 2 seconds, a rape occurs in India.

That’s when the moderator interrupted the discussion.

Mod (taking out a calculator): Wait let me see,

     2 seconds = 1 rape
=> 1 minute = 30 rapes
=> 1 hour = 1800 rapes
=> 1 day = 43200 rapes
=> 1 week = 302400 rapes
=> 1 month = 1209600 rapes

Wow, over 1 million rapes in India in a month! That’s interesting. Dude, when making up statistics, at least make it a wee bit more plausible.

        Gutso remained almost silent for the rest of the time in the discussion. Now whenever Gutso comes for group discussions, he hides a calculator in his pocket (just to be sure with the made up numbers).

P.S. Heard that the girls in his college is forming a union and holding strikes demanding the ostrasization of Gutso whereby he keeps a minimum distance of 100 metres from any girl in his vicinity. I’ve got only 2 words for girls in Trivandrum – “Brace Yourself” - Gutso is on the prowl.

Confident Gutso's Unwitting Faux Pas

          This post is about a dude I met in IMS one year back, who’s studying electrical engineering in C.E.T. The dude is a very self confident person with an extraneous amount of guts. He will be the first to jump out of his seat, be it group discussion or debate or role playing or any kind of activity. So for namesake let’s call him Gutso. In short, Gutso is active, pro-active, hyper-active, retro-active, radio-active, you get my drift right? But little did he know that, at times, not looking before leaping can land up in making some of the worst social gaucheries.

Scenario: Classroom in IMS

        The usual class was over and SK sir decided to conduct a mock interview session for us. Now hearing that Gutso sprung up from his chair zealously, volunteering to be the 1st participant. The interview began; SK sir started asking the routine, trite questions and Gutso is confidently retorting with the perfect answers. Suddenly SK asked an unusual question and that’s when the fun began.

SK: How many friends do you have?
Gutso: I don’t take count of my friends.
SK: How many girlfriends do you have?
Gutso: Not much. About 4 or 5.
SK: 4 or 5!!
Gutso: Not in “that” sense, they are just friends.
SK: Why don’t you have any girlfriend in “that” sense?
Gutso: Naa, I’m not that interested in the opposite sex.
SK: So you’re interested in the same sex???
Gutso: !!!!!!  (Boom!! End of Story for Gutso)

        The class became silent for a moment which was followed by a wild outrage of laughters and guffaws. Gutso slapping his head realizing the gaffe he just made. The ever confident Gutso felt a temporary draining away of confidence. Rumors are there that Gutso started receiving a lot of phone calls and anonymous messages from creepy gays following that incident. Anyway, the gusto in Gutso subdued, temporarily though.

Epilogue:

        The real inspiration for this post is a scrapbook conversation in Orkut between Gutso and Botsu that I fortuitously happened to read yesterday. Botsu at the time is really mad about the recent publication of his bloopers by me (which can be seen in the previous post), and is desperately trying to save his so called dignity. The chat goes like this:

Gutso: Hey Botsu , I read Thomas’s blog. Would like to see you in person for more details.
Botsu: I felt like ripping Thomas’s head. You didn’t believe anything he wrote, right??
Gutso: I did believe and lots of witnesses confirmed it. And I should say it was really funny.
Botsu: Funny!! Guess you’ve proved that you have a rotten sense of humour.
Gutso: Ya ya, great. Is the baby about to cry or raging with puny vengeance over his petty kindergarten shenanigans being known all over, take a break sonny, GROW UP, that look at you from a distance & improve your decaying “impress-chicks-concepts”; Only my humour is rotten!! What about your nuts & brains; I pity, even worse, it has decayed beyond recognition, not to mention your “who’s-the-man” ego.

Though I didn’t quite understand what Gutso meant (I’m sure even Botsu might have scratched his head reading the reply), I thought it would be worth posting it in here.

P.S. Gutso is in fact very much heterosexual as far as I know. The gaffe during the mock interview was due to a momentary twist of tongue, says he. So creepy gays out there, please leave Gutso alone, he's not interested.

An African's Tale of Bloopers

                   This post is about someone I know for about 6 years now. In fact, I first met him in my physics tuition class in the 11th grade. The guy spoke in a funny accent. Later I came to know that he was in Botswana (a country in the southern part of Africa) all these years and had just returned back, and hence his funny accent. (For namesake, let’s call him Botsu). Two years thence, by a quirk of fate, we both were in the same batch for engineering. Nice guy, good hearted, generous, magnanimous – these were my first impressions of him. Gradually I came to realize that these were all my delusions. Botsu – the man, the machine, who thinks all the girls on earth are gravitated towards him because of his macho physique and oodles of raw appeal (ya, ya, a muscular body sans spine). I suppose his muscles are due to the routine swimming in the marshy swamps in the tropical rain forests of Africa and I seriously believe he’s been kicked out of Africa as a result of being a perpetual nuisance to the teenage girls out there.

Scenario:

[It was the 5th semester in engineering. Our whole batch went for an Industrial Visit in Goa.]

Scene 1:

            Most of the batch had gone to visit Power Grid, and the rest of us bunked that and stayed in the hotel. The main purpose was to jump into the swimming pool in the middle of the building, and yes we did do that. In fact, Botsu was the happiest as it was a chance for him to show off his superior swimming prowess. But alas, the girls were all gone to Power Grid, and after some unenthusiastic swimming sessions, Botsu went back to his room. It was late evening when the girls came and we had just moved out of the pool. When I reached back in room, Botsu was there gluing his eyes on the bikini clad Baywatch girls on TV.

Me: Hey, seems the girls came back.

A shocked Botsu: You bloody crook!! Why didn’t you come and call me, you moron?

Before I could reply anything, the dude took a towel, ran off to the pool stripping his clothes, and dived into the pool. Splash!! But, the tired girls standing by the side of the pool doesn’t seem to be interested. What followed was a series of performances that would make even Olympic medalists awed. Butterfly stroke, back stroke, breast stroke. Straight dive, puck dive, tuck dive. You name it, he’s done it. But alas, only an American grandma is watching him so far. A disappointed Botsu returns back to the room.

Scene 2:

            Our room is shared by Sudeep, Varun, Botsu, and I. At night Botsu, Sudeep and I went to the pub. Botsu is a teetotaler as well as a non smoker and hence, as Sudeep and I ordered Vodka, Botsu in a mellow voice, “One full bottle of Pepsi please”. A little while later Botsu starts saying stuffs such as as Einstein was a womanizer and other crap like that. I confirmed that he wasn’t having Vodka. Meanwhile Sudeep kept on consuming alcohol till he was completely intoxicated. A sober Botsu directed both of us into the hotel room. Varun was fast asleep by then. It was about 2.am by the time we went to sleep.
                 
           The next morning Botsu gets up, takes his tooth brush, opens the bathroom door. Botsu is petrified. The tooth brush fell from his hands. Sudeep is lying flat on the floor drenched in blood coloured vomit. A frenzied Botsu came running trying to wake up me and Varun, but none of us responded; I mumbled something and went to sleep. Now, Botsu honestly thinks Sudeep is dead; he went back to the bathroom and stood there. Scenarios, Alternate scenarios, Counter scenarios. “Police, inspection, handcuffs, court, prison” - Things started flashing in his mind. “Run, hide, escape”- more flashes. That’s when Sudeep mumbled something. (Sudeep puked in the bathroom after we went to sleep and the vomit was reddish due to all the chilly chicken he consumed for dinner). Botsu slowly sprinkled some water on his face, made sure he’s alive, and then lashed out a plethora of pure African swear words that clamored all over the hotel.

           I can keep telling Botsu’s stories relentlessly forever and ever. But I think I did better stop now, you know, he will crush me with his rippling muscles when he sees this post. But I’m willing to take the risk. The tour is over now. But the “dead” Sudeep’s corpse will haunt Botsu for an eternity.