“Please yaar, just half an hour more” Swapna was persuading me. I said “We have practiced and prepared enough Swapna, I’m getting headache. I feel like having a strong cup of tea. Let me go home”. She said, “Oh ok. Is it for tea? Wait for 5mins. I'll prepare tea for you”. Hmmm, at last!!! I was giving her all kind of hints like “It’s my tea time now”. “My mom would have prepared tea for me and must be waiting”. “If I don’t have tea at this time every day, I feel like my head is gonna kinda blast”. We were at Swapna’s house and sitting in her room. I didn’t want to go home. Even I wanted to stay and prepare. But I needed to have a cup of tea. Swapna was preparing seriously. She would definitely say “Not now, let us practice for one more hour” if I ask her to prepare tea. I had no other option than to blackmail her :P :P!! If I say I'll go home, then she would ask me to stay and ultimately prepare tea. She went to the kitchen. Saru looked at me and said, “You are impossible!!” I smiled and said, “You know my weakness, TEA”. She retorted, “It’s not weakness, it’s kind of addiction.” Again, the same thing. My mom, sister and Saru say I'm addicted to tea. But I was sure that I wasn’t addicted. I have it only once a day, at 4 in the evening. I drink a glass of milk every morning and before I go to sleep. I have tea only once, not many times a day. But if I don’t have it on time, it makes me very uncomfortable. No matter what or where I'll be at 4, I'll have tea at any cost. If in any case, I don’t have it at 4, then I come home prepare a large cup of tea how late it may be, drink it completely and skip dinner. I get a heavenly feeling when I have tea in one hand and a good novel in other hand. I feel like I need nothing more in this life than a cup of tea and a good book!!!! Today also I had to bother Swapna for my tea mania. She had no clue about I blackmailing her for tea. Saru knew me better. She gave me a stern look when I proposed the idea for tea. But I really can’t help it. I can’t concentrate properly on anything at 4 if I don’t take tea. Meanwhile, Swapna walked in with 3 cups of tea. I enjoyed every bit of it. After the tea session, again we started preparing. Our preparation was for interviews which were in next week. We were in our graduation final year and had campus selections and placements starting from next week. Since it was the first time that we are going to face interviews, we wanted to give it our best shot. Swapna prepared technical stuff, I took care of HR stuff and Saru was ready with company profile and details. I don’t know why I opted for computers in my graduation, but I seriously hate the subject. Almost all the combinations of subjects included computers, so I had to go with it. The lengthy programs, the instructions, computer languages etc etc were things I wasn’t interested in. It’s not that I'll not understand the concept if I try to, but the thing is I don’t want to. Everything related to computers sucks as far as I'm concerned. The only thing I like about computers is the Internet. As long as I get to use Orkut, Face book, Gmail and Google I don’t want to learn what is inside the computer and how it really works. The scope of I gaining knowledge about computer programming and functioning is beyond my reach. Something towards which I never worked or don’t wanted to!!! Even during the school days, I scored very well in all subjects and really bad in computers. I only used to learn the abbreviations like RAM, ROM, EPROM, VLSI etc etc. Even in 3years of graduation, neither have I listened to any computer class with concentration, nor have I at least tried to. I however, listened to English and Hindi classes with utmost attention. I was the favorite student of both the language teachers. In fact I even topped the whole college in both Hindi and English languages in my 1st and 2nd years of graduation. I have done quite a lot of reading on how to face interviews, how to answer tricky questions, how to mention our weaknesses with a positive touch and all sort of HR stuff in newspapers. In addition to that I'm very outgoing and had nothing like stage fear as I actively participated in every co-curricular activity in school. So, I took the responsibility of handling HR interviews. I was hopeless when it was about technical stuff and I was not worried about it even for name sake. I made up mind to attend interviews for only leading BPO’s like Satyam’s Nipuna, Wipro, Genpact, Infosys, and HSBC etc so that there will be very less of technical stuff in BPO’s. So, I didn’t bother much about technical thing. I was helping Saru and Swapna with HR stuff. They were not worried about technical round of the interview, so they wanted to focus on the HR round. Both Swapna and Saru were way better than me when it came to computer terminology and programming. After a thorough preparation for HR interviews, Saru and Swapna started forcing me to go through at least the basics for technical round of the interviews. I, after much pressure from them said OK. And till date I remember what I learned. I learnt the definition of DATA and INFORMATION and the difference between them!!!!! The very basics of computer. Seeing that I wasn’t interested to learn even the basics, both my dear friends gave up!!! Thank GOD. Now after a serious session, all the three of us needed to refresh. We decided to go to our favorite place in the whole colony. The pani puri chat bhandaar. My dad is a central government employee and we used to stay in Defence Quarters, which is the most decent place I have ever seen. We had all the facilities here. Shopping complex, Library, Parks, Table tennis court, cricket grounds, schools, temple and what not!!!! I was born and brought up here. I love this place. Every evening I used to meet Saru and we always go for a long walk together. Swapna used to join us occasionally. We had lot of fun together. We stood by each other through thick and thin and we are very close to each other. Wherever we went, we had loads of fun. We gossiped, laughed, teased, and commented at everyone. Life in quarters was so lively and memorable. We studied in the same school from our LKG and now we are still the same best buddies even in our graduation. We grew up together. We knew and we understood each other perfectly.
Hmmm, back to present.
Swapna was the sponsor for the day. Every time we went to eat chat, one of us would sponsor turn by turn. She asked as usual, “Chat and pani puri, rite? I think 30Rs will do”. I and Saru said instantly, “What about softy ice cream?” Swapna gave a sigh, looked at me and said, “If this girl eats chat, pani puri and ice cream, she’ll surely skip dinner and aunty (my mom) would scold you and me for that.” Saru was thinking about what Swapna had said and was about to say NO to ice cream, when I interrupted and said “Arey Swapna, I'll not skip my dinner. PROMISE”. Saru murmured slowly, “I'm hearing these fake promises ever since I was a child”. I almost shouted at her, “What?? You said something. Can you please be louder?” She smiled and said, “I was asking Swapna to get ready so that we can go and have pani puri.” Hmmm. I knew she was lying. I gave her a sheepish smile and asked Swapna to get ready. She went to the bed room, came up with a 50 rupee note and asked me to keep the money in my purse. Then, we arranged her room which was full of computer text books and class notes. We were talking about what dresses we should wear for the interviews. I suggested that wearing cotton chudidhars with collared necks would be fine. (I had so many cotton chudidhars with collared necks!!!). Swapna suggested that trousers with formal shirts would be great. (She had so many trousers and formal shirts). Saru knew why we suggested what we suggested. She just looked at both of us and said, “You selfish brats. Wear what you want to wear. But first let’s go out and eat. I'm hungry.” As a part of our practice for interviews, we made it a point to speak in English. We carried it very well. None of us were speaking any other language than English. Swapna stood up from the chair to get ready and said, “I'll be back in 2 minutes. I'll face my wash”. Saru and I asked, “WHAT????” Swapna again repeated what she said, “I'll face my wash yaar”. We were unable to control our laugh, but to make the situation funnier; we again asked Swapna “WHAT? Where are you going?” She said with an irritating tone, “How many times should I tell? I'm going to face my wash”. That was it. AGAIN. I and Saru were in splits and laughing like crazy!!!! Swapna had no clue about why we were laughing. She stared at us and left the room. Both, Saru and I were in Swapna’s room still and going on laughing. After some time Swapna returned and said “I'm ready. Let’s go.” Seeing us still laughing, Swapna lost her temper and shouted, “What’s with you idiots? Coming or not?” We left the room as Swapna was looking angry. Swapna’s mom was in garden. Seeing us leave, she said “Hey gals. How did you practice? Come home tomorrow, I'll prepare some sweets for you”. Saru and I looked at aunty, then looked at each other and again started laughing really loud. Aunty was puzzled and looked at us in surprise. Swapna dragged both of us by hand and told her mom, “I'll be back in an hour mom. I'll have light dinner”. We were walking on the road and still laughing. Every passerby was staring at us. Swapna was feeling really uncomfortable to walk with us. Both, Saru and I were on the verge of rolling on the floor and laugh. Swapna was murmuring, “Shameless gals. Everyone is staring at us. What will they think of you?” We were in no mood to listen. We were looking at Swapna and still laughing. Laughing we reached the bhandaar. Swapna ordered for 3 plates of samosa chat. We had it really fast as it was our favorite item. After we finished our chat, we started gorging on the pani puri’s. Saru and I kept our laughter aside and were one by one enjoying the pani puri’s. We were in the middle of our 5th pani puri when all of a sudden Swapna exclaimed, “Oh I got it. It’s wash my face and I said face my wash!!!!!!” That’s it. Again we started laughing loudly.
This time not 2 but the 3 of us!!!!!
