The days gone by.........

The air was thick with tension. So thick we were all finding it hard to breathe comfortably. My body was stiff. I was trying really hard not to open my mouth and kept averting my gaze from the susceptible figure, the reason of all tension. The warm body next to me, allegedly my friend, Urmi, was as stiff as me.........rocking to and fro........no maybe not to and fro, well it was some sort of her own harmonic motion. She had her hand in her mouth and was biting it hard, afraid she might scream if she took it out. We were intelligently trying not to look at each other. The next warm (lets make it a bit more than warm!) body, besides Urmi, Aku a.k.a Akanksha was so involved in the tension her face had become a beautiful shade of red, almost as beautiful as the setting sun. And the person farthest from me, next to Aku, had her hands over her mouth and was shaking so hard that it was unbecoming even for the susceptible figure not to notice her, her as in Jyoti. The susceptible figure’s eyes then skidded on to Aku ,stopped a moment ,then went further right towards Urmi and came to a deadly halt on me who by then had buried my face in the ever glorious safety of my desk and was shaking so much , for a moment it must have looked I was having an epileptic fit. But my luck being as good as it was, it didn’t take him (the susceptible figure, of course) more than a few oh so precious seconds to notice that all this tension was created because of our supreme effort not to laugh (thankfully) while he was trying his level best to make us understand the importance of benzene reacting with H2SO4 (or was it nitrogen??? No no maybe HNO3...........hell, wish I remembered).It was then that he took the merciless bold steps towards us four with murder in his eyes and then came to a sudden dramatic stop before us, turned his eyes onto me and started blabbering (Hell why is it always my neck that’s on stake when the butcher comes all armed???) as if the other three didn’t even exist. But it wasn’t my fault really that I looked at him in utter confusion and tried to decipher what he actually was trying to say to me, which wasn’t very easy given the fact that he didn’t open his mouth more than 2mm at maximum (I know I am exaggerating).So it all ended with me uttering a big surprised WHAT after he finished his crap, which led to him opening his mouth 5 inches wide (I stopped feeling sorry for his wife at that moment) and telling me in no certain terms what my WHAT meant. And then he strode out of the class leaving me there thinking exactly how it would feel to feed him to a particularly nasty breed of crocodile, that too headfirst. And then I looked at my three friends intelligently and shameless as we were, we burst out laughing………………..

This is how I mostly spent my high school days with my group .Me, Urmi, Akanksha and Jyoti. Of the total 60 minutes in class, we spent half of it trying to (though we never had to try very hard) find a reason to laugh about and then the next half trying not to laugh. We were (still are) loyal believers of the fact that there is no safer place to discuss the beautiful course of life than in middle of an ongoing lecture (at least me and Urmi followed it with all out heart and mouth I suppose).Aku was more on the right side of being silent (but still she did join us often in our discussion of the course of life) and Jyoti well Jyoti........ummm….well she thought it was crime of the highest degree to open your mouth while any specimen of the susceptible figure breed was ranting away.(I suppose it was more to do with the fact that she found it hard to color co-ordinate her notes with her mouth doing a continuous closing and opening sequence ).Oh! But it wasn’t like we spent all the classes doing something of this sort, we did give our esteemed concentration to some of the blessed teachers which shocked the hell out of them and maybe us too.(Now!! Really)

I will miss those days. Now that school is over I will miss trying hard not to laugh, I will miss irritating my buddies with all those classic pj’s, I will miss driving Urmi up the wall, I will miss getting being reprimanded by Aku everyday (and by Urmi every few days) and I will miss competing with Jyoti on whose handwriting is more beautiful and who has color coordinated her notes better. Hell I will miss being with people who cared for me and with whom I didn’t worry about being myself.

I sometimes wonder if I will ever get a friend as funny as Urmi, as beautiful as Aku and as perfectionist as Jyoti (Guess I m going to get a big treat for so much of praise). I know I won’t .You don’t get friends like them day in and day out. Thanks buddies, for sticking with me through hell, and as for the heaven I will keep that to myself..........:d. Now I will conclude this with just a heartfelt thanks!!!!!!!
THANKU!!!!!