Friends Freedom and Magic

It’s 12 a.m. of 15^th August2011.

Sharique is explaining to me about the pros and cons of a bureaucratic organization. What is the real meaning of bureaucracy and how bureaucracy forces the employees to work in their level of incompetency? You keep on getting promoted to the next level, if you are efficient in the previous level. And your promotion gets stuck or delayed at a level where you are most incompetent. So you end up spending more time at your level of incompetency.

This is definitely a privilege to be friends with an IAS aspirant.

‘Let’s go out yaar…’

‘Yeah sure… Let’s call Aariz, Chunni Babu, Naiyar Jaan & Sabahuddin.’

We reached Okhla head, only to find out that none of the faggots has reached there before us, and it started raining. As usual, Pillu bhai’s tea aggravated the sensible bakwaas that is always present in abundance inside my newly found cute pot belly. It was still raining, and that was slowly, but certainly killing the chances of our esteemed night out. We were hiding inside a shed, puffing out the frustration when I spoke.

‘You know something. When you give unlimited authority to someone, there are 100% chances that he will misuse it.’

‘Yeah…that’s true.’

‘See the case of God. We did give him unlimited authority. Now you see his cheap trial at ruining our night.’

‘Poor fellow…He does not know that our spirit can’t be shaken.’

‘Yeah…make a call to those faggots.’

He rang Aariz, who is still a male person.

‘You fucking bitch…why haven’t you come yet?’

‘Yaar…it’s raining!’

‘Are you a ‘maati ka putla’ that you will dissolve in the rain? You slut, come soon.’

‘Okay…15 minutes…Well…10 minutes’

Who says, only your girlfriends can be demanding? He did come within 10 minutes, all drenched, and suddenly, all my fears of getting wet, vanished. We voluntarily moved out of the shed and hugged each other. It started raining heavily. We started walking in the rain from Okhla head to Jamia College to Batla House to Zakir Nagar to Bharat Nagar.

Bharat Nagar was calm and silent except for the music of the rains. Strangely I was feeling as if I was marching towards eternal peace. We moved, splashing, jumping, and singing; rather yelling at the misfortune of those cowards who were rotting in the comforts of their rooms. We weren’t walking as if we were the king, rather as if we didn’t give a shit about, who the king was. It is one of those times when you really feel that you could conquer the world, but you don’t give a damn about the world too. You feel as if you are at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

We went to a shop in Zakir Nagar called ‘Javed ki famous Nihari’…famous indeed it was. Literally people were bustling and jostling to get the ‘Paaya’ and ‘Nihari’ as if this was some delicacy which would make them immortal. You could not buy it, you had to achieve it. We got a coke bottle, cigarettes and moved further.

That was one time of the day, I felt really free. If I wished to piss on that bottle and throw it at someone, I could do that too, though we didn’t do that. But we did piss to irrigate the saplings of trees, nicely protected by MCD officials, with both our arms wide open and looking up above the sky. I tell you, you can never match the joy of pissing like that in such a situation.

The rain slowed down a bit. We were walking silently now. A thought crossed my mind. I was just arranging the words to make a sentence, when Sharique spoke before I could.

‘Yaar…this is more entertaining than fornication.’

I was dumbstruck. A loud, but a half shout came out of me. This was exactly what I was going to say. Before Sharique could realize the amazing coincidence, Aariz yelled even louder, and this time a full shout.

‘God damn it…even I was going to say the same.’

We all started hugging each other in disbelief and frenzy. A loud shivering commotion followed. And then, we started enjoying silently, getting a feel of the chilling breeze. Some integral part of my body shrunk to a couple of inches, almost one third of its normal size.

Perhaps out of shame.

Perhaps I will always remember this night, when we celebrated the true spirit of Friendship, Freedom and ‘Paaya’…