Friends Part 2 - The Fighters

I am continuing another set of nostalgic memories with my classmates. I should rather publish a book instead of writing this blog, as those memories are vast.

You would think why the name "fighters"? the mystery behind this heading is that this story again has three main characters including me, rather best buddies from my class in Abhinav College, Sahil and Abhishek. Basically, we were die-hard fans of Arnie(Arnold Shwazzeneger), and Sylvy(Sylvester Stalone). We always used to compare ourselves with each other and boast our muscles. My muscles were all hidden under excess fat, still trying to convince myself that no, something's still present inside. I still remember ourselves bluffing, Abhya and me used to bluff like rabbits are discussing how to eat a lion. Abhya was once boasting that, all the busses, on a bus stop he was standing, were forced back a couple of miles due to his sneeze. I was not a noble listener to his bluff and in my reply I told him that the earth rotates because I walk and jog everyday. We both used to have these chats in front of Sahil and I can still remember his expressions. We knew, we were childish, immature but the fun and humour was our bond. We didn't care how many people are listening to this rubbish. We were always happy.

Abhya is a bit darker in his complexion but lighter in heart. He was a muscular hunk in our class, full of rage and anger. I still remember his eyes when he had a quarrel with a guy. But gradually he changed, rather gained maturity with time and is more patient, calm than ever, now. We met in my first year, as destined to be best buddies we never had a quarrel, though a few misunderstandings were apparent as everybody does. But those never mattered in our friendship.

The best thing in our lives, I would never ever forget is that we were Karan and Arjun, from Rakesh Roshan's hit film "Karan Arjun". Abhya was Karan and I was Arjun. I still remember, everyday when we arrived in the college and saw each other, we used to pull our sleeves up in a disguise of checking something tattooed on our forearms, like the scenes in old bollywood flicks, and then shout loudly "Bhaiiya"(Brother). I used to shout, "Bhaiiya Karan"(Brother Karan) and he used to say " Bhaiiya Arjun" (Brother Arjun), resulting in a hug. We were supposed to be departed brothers from the so called "Kumbh ka mela". Sahil was our "bichda hua"(departed) third brother. We still do that when we meet.

Once, Abhya called me for a cd of windows xp. I didn't have it but I was reluctant to say no directly, so in a humorous tone I asked him to call and ask Billu(Bill Gates). His response was out of the world, the most gut-busting thing I have ever heard. He simply said that Billu himself had borrowed a pirated cd of Windows 98 from him yesterday. We were laughing for around 15 minutes on the phone. We also used to have giggly fights on comparison of his muscles and my fat. When ever he used to show his biceps after rejoining the gym, I used to call them as pimples. Both Sahil and Abhya used to call my belly fat as a huge packet of biscuits resting down, waiting for the right moment to tighten up.

We were, insane, inhuman and brutal sometimes in our humour. I still remember, we had ruined the names of all the people in our class. We had started calling all the girls, modifying their names to male names and modifying guys' names into girls'. For instance, I was called Ketaki, Abhya was Abhilasha and Sahil was Sayali. In girls, Amruta was Amrut, Sneha and Shrutika were called Suryakant1 and 2 recpectively and so on. Our final examination, the last examination of our group was hilarious, full of fun and serious, sincere work as well. Even if we busted all the people in our class with prankish comments, we never exceeded our limits.

Sahil, we call him, Sandu. He is a dude, a fine artist, in spite of being lazy and a procrastinator he was always the best in academics. Me and Sahil had one thing in common, we never attended classes on time. On an average we used to be 1-2 hours late. Once we weren't allowed to sit for the mid term examination as we had not managed according to the college timetable. We were simply following our own timetable. The next day, without any interruption in our personal schedule we were a bit early. The first day was 2.5 hours late, but the next day we were 2 hours late. Our professor was astonished by our courtesy to come half an hour early. He was full of anger, frustration and anxiety as well. He didn't know that we were fighters, we didn't even spare our graduation exam. There we used to be 10-15 minutes late, though it was much better than earlier.

Sahil and his Ambition. Don't get me wrong, ambition is his 135 cc, Honda bike, which suffered more than those starving africans. Sahil was an expert in wheelies, stoppies and accidents. I thank god nothing major happened and I pray that it wont. The best thing for him is that he recently bought a new Yamaha bike, which is eventually the worst thing for his new bike. I don't remember the name but its the recent one with 160cc engine and 73k Rs.

I still remember our graduation exam, we used to sit beside each other. We were always laughing, cracking practical jokes, shouting and also working at the same time during the exam. There was one classmate, Amruta Saraswate, who was sitting just beside us. She was continuously laughing on our comments, almost rolling on the floor. Later, she used to laugh if even our names were taken by someone. I felt, we were so much influential.

Broadening memories, I recall when Sahil and me used to talk about the world, currencies, and behave in such a way that world is running on our words. We used to call all the politicians, presidents and prime ministers as our friends and would do anything for us. It was hilarious when we boasted our views regarding ruling the world. I used to say that, I was actually going to run the American government but at the final moment, I wanted to concentrate more on my graduation, so I just opposed the offer. Sahil, after my statement would state in affirmation that, he actually passed the offer to me and it was him who was actually going to run America, showing his fake wholeheartedness.

Sahil and Abhya were again the best buddies from my class and the thing I adore again is our informality. We usually don't say "hello" when we call each other, but we tend to change the universal phone etiquette by saying "a bhadya". Sahil and Abhya were my best friends not only because they were humorous or we had fun together, but also because we also shared our life.

We actually are like three brothers, departed from each other in our childhood and Abhinav college was our "Kumbh ka mela", which brought us together.