The Corner

There is a corner in front of the movie hall in Saket and Priya reserved for Dhruv and me. It’s not demarcated by urine nor will one see jingoist flags fluttering, claiming the land, but if ever anyone notices two lean, dorky guys leaning on each other and splitting like school girls, in much the same way serious engineering students don’t, undoubtedly that’s us. Every now and then, whenever there’s an extended weekend or I have unwashed laundry, I hop onto the warhorse Haryana state transport bus and come to Delhi. Since IIT (where he studies) is a govt. institution, synonymous with holidays, and Dhruv’s house is at a glancing distance, these brief visits are usually spent in his company. The third/fourth member alternates between Rohan, Siddarth or Rishabh or in fact any other unpaid, out-of-work member of society who doesn’t think time is money and does think that parents are teller machines. However, our pair is quite constant and our friendship rock-solid, since we have no girls in common. We hang-out and part, easing our moods and our wallets.

The dilemma we face in most (or all) our outings is in fact metaphorically, the aforementioned corner. Our plans are wonderfully simple (since they’re random and coincide with movie listings) and have none of the unnecessary baggage of curfews, transport, prior engagements, or the added snobbery thrown in for effect that comes along with the company of girls. Nor is there any consternation about not showing up or turning up too late that gays crib about. Our plans are elegant and convenient, happy for both of us.

But I digress from the point, more correctly, the corner. As I was impressing, our plans include a movie, whose ample reviews would have been collected by Dhruv, and lunch afterwards. The movie would be in English, less than two weeks old and generally interesting. Lunch, without fail, would be at Jerry Wong’s. Now that might sound like a high-end affair with an award winning gourmet chef, mood lighting and waiters with accents, besides the ostentatious food which doesn’t fill one corner of the stomach. And in all fairness, it is an executive fine dining place with pleasant Chinese food and a view of the fair Punjabi nymphs of Delhi strolling with chunks of beef wearing designer clothes. However, we’ve succeeded in extracting a fulfilling lunch of tasty Chinjabi food, suited for our crude Indian palates at barely a hundred bucks. This is their philanthropic scheme called Happy Hours in which cash-strapped, scavenging villagers such as ourselves lift our dhotis, sit trepidly on the cushioned chairs and stare sheepishly at the cutlery before attacking the plate (and then we steal the napkins, but that’s another story).

The post-lunch period is where the trouble begins. Watched the movie with the cannibalistic black dictator, laughed on our sealed fates over cheap lunch, now what?

We walk aimlessly from one corner to another, inspecting the shops and counting our steps. In true adolescent fashion we point out buxom babes using our superior engineering knowledge- ‘37 degrees, 54 m, turn anticlockwise, x-y plane, you’re the origin. No, not that hag, her daughter you idiot.’ When after this brief tour we become wary of the fact that people might mistake us for a couple or losers or both, we retrace our steps to the entrance of the cinema hall. And then for the next forty five minutes, like Adonis and Hercules, Legolas and Gimli, Paradorn and Srichapan we assume various poses-both hands in front pockets, both hands in back pocket, one hand in front pocket and other hand stroking chin, hands folded, hands on the side, weight on one foot, weight on the other foot, Hulk pose, GI Joe/He-Man action figure pose, Ganguly nail-biting pose-we practice for when our sculptures will adorn parks, and birds will have another stand to shit on and couples will have another piece of public property to leave their heart punctuated signatures of undying love. Occasionally we comment on how desirable the girl (or her twin sister) passing by is or what a lucky dumbass their bodyguard is. We laugh at ourselves over how utterly jobless we are or how any human folk passing by we know who give us looks of faint recognition (or looks of look-away-you-stalker). We curse our conspiring fates because of the no. of girls we have in or contact list and how many of them look like bloated pigs. We laugh at the decision of branding ourselves as geeks and the glitzy, luxurious lives that the dumbsters from commerce and humanities live. We grimace at our foreign-settled friends and our upcoming Infosys jobs.

In that little corner of Saket or Priya, we throw back our heads, pass each other meaningful, cheeky glances and laugh at life. Then we sit in an auto, and go back home, planning for the next day and not thinking about the anarchist, cannibalistic black dictator we just saw on screen.