Desperately Seeking Courtney, The Ultimate Girl.

Beauty with Breasts, Brain!

 

Part 1. Guru

 

Guru was not willing to come with me. After a long cajoling he eventually relented and sat pillion on my motorcycle. 

Guruprasad, in short Guru was the college playboy and our in-house Love Guru.
Any one with problems in his love life comes to him asking for advice. Guru keeps a dedicated notebook in his college bag where names of all his girlfriends in alphabetical order and commitments of dates were entered. An extra pair of neatly pressed shirt and a good supply of expensive perfume were also kept ready in that bag.

“Never know when you might need them” he would say.

Guru had a completely different method of charming a girl, which trying to copy many realized a suicide mission would have been far more pleasurable.

Guru was not a chivalrous gentleman, but quite the opposite. He was always direct in his approach, never flattered any one and was rather crude. Guru was not a miser; but did not believe spending money on gifts and birthday cards. Every restaurant bill on a date was split to the last decimal. 

Yet he was a charmer par excellence!

Guru, if not out on a date, loved to hang out with me at the tea stall near the shopping arcade. He would often sermon me as we watched the college girls pass by.

 “It is very important to know the right girl for your date”.

And then he would let me have a glimpse of the vast knowledge he had on the subject.

“There are mainly three types of girls. But there are some avoidable ones.”

He looked around for an example and finding one he almost shouted pointing at the girl in the nearby shop.

“Aah, Look at that one in that shop!” 

The girl in the shop was leaning over the sales counter with her elbows on the table and giving a boobnosis to the sales boy. Her voluptuous breasts were plunked on the table. The low buttoned shirt made almost nothing invisible and the huge breasts were competing with one another to get out of their suffocating enclosure. The way she stood with one leg wrapped around the other made her two buns almost rip the seams off her pant. The sales boy across the table was having a tough time. His bulging eyes wanted to plunge deep into her cleavage, his body moved and turned but his head remained locked in one angle. The sexy siren very much aware of this was enjoying it. It was for sure she had no intention of buying that box of tissues at all. She was just toying with it.

“That’s the one which belongs to the attention seekers tribe. She will tease you with her pushed up boobs and her jerky bums. But you go one step closer and she will howl for respect”!

Guru sneered and said

“Do you know what I will tell her? Baby, shove your boobs in, tuck your buttocks and straighten your duck face. May be I will respect you then.”

 

He made a face of disgust, lit a cigarette and continued.

“If you want to spend your time with any girl then go for one belonging to the fun types. They just want to have fun and what else do you want? You are not looking for a soul mate for life here. Just have a fun filled night and in the morning she will squeeze your balls, get out of your room and say-

“Hey whatever your name was, you were good””.

Gurus paused for a moment, took a long puff, blew a ring in his usual contemplative style and continued again.

 “But you are not looking for fun girl. You want the intelligent type. I do not quite agree with your choice. I may not be studious type like you, but I am intelligicated.  In spite of that intelligent girls don’t excite me. Most of them are fake intellectuals. They go to the library to read 'Mills and Boon' but will carry a book of quotes with them. Instead of giving a straight answer to a question they spew quotes after quotes. The real ones may be are fun given a long shot.  She may even be a geek, but brainlicious types are a boring lot for me and I just ignore them. You want to meet a girl like that, it’s fine by me. But do you recognize them, No. That is where you fail. You need my trained eyes for that. 

He looked away from me, shrugged and said-

“But do you ever listen to me.?”

Part 2. Me the Sapiosexual

Guru would of course laugh at me and say-

“Why don’t you go and date the old librarian, she the perfect match for you”!

Old Mrs. Joseph was an intelligent person. But I doubt even in her younger version she would have been my kind of girl.

And then again I had no entry to the Library. 

My dossier was written in the library and that too in the history section. 

Those huge halls with intoxicating smell of books were my regular afternoon paradise. Though all my dreams were made there, the tall racks of books were not my prime interest.

I was in my lookout for Cleopatra in there, who one day would come desperately trying to reach the book on the top most shelves. I would march forward, easily take the book out and give it to her, and our lifelong romance would begin!

My dream did come true one day, and my romance really began; but unfortunately not with Cleopatra but Marilyn Monroe.

Bert Stern’s “The Last Sitting" was not a book all could comfortably leaf thru in public, so it was

tucked in the unreachable top shelf.

I never thought intelligence was the Sex Goddess's strong point. She had a nice pair of boobs

and that was her strong point. She often made her strong points quite visible and allowed

producers in their study room to soften them up a bit while making the scripts juicier.

I too was a boob lover and this book had plenty of them all over.

This book of booties rather than collecting dust in a forlorn corner of the library should be to

my collection where it will be more appreciated.

Thus one by one all pages were slowly and neatly cut, removed and replaced by a center-spread of “Debonair” magazine or a blank paper whenever the magazine was not yet out in

the local book stores.

Almost all pages were skillfully smuggled out.

But just when the Marilyn was about to let the silky chiffon slide off her breasts completely, my

artistic endeavor  was discovered and my smuggling carrier came  to an end.

A photo of mine was enlarged, photocopied and placed all on the notice boards with instruction to stop me from entering the sacred premise.

In spite of not having the last photo, the book was reassembled, the spine glued and bound. The spare Debonair center-spread did make a reasonable cover. The newborn book was made to circulate in most of the rooms of my hostel. It was in great demand and some had to stand in queue for their turn.

                            

Part 3. Miss India.

Though the library door was closed for me, my quest for the eternal beauty with brain was not yet over. Kaki’s tea stall opposite the library became my new watch tower. I of course had to drink up a good amount tea in Kaki’s ‘half a cup’ size. 

And one day I saw her. 

She came in the most gracious way and entered the lane leading to the library. She was the ultimate balance of beauty and intelligence. There was a sheer radiance in her face; she was one who seeks knowledge. The thick horn rimmed glasses said it all! She was the one I was waiting for all of my life! She was the one who make you believe in love, specially the one that happens in the first sight, one sided of course; she wasn’t even looking towards me. 

Sitting at Kaki’s tea stall I observed her for days. At exactly four past ten she is at the library lane, never late. I have to meet her, talk to her. I was sure I will win her heart and she will be mine!

This is where Guru comes in. I wanted his support; he was of course not very enthusiastic about it.

Just as we reached Kaki’s make shift stall, she appeared on the other side of the road, punctual to the last second. She was wearing a white Salwar, a green Churidar with an orange Dupatta.

Guru had one look and before I could stop him he commented-

“Aha, There she is, I did not know you were looking for Mother India”.

“Hey Guru please, don’t be disrespectful. She is looking nice in that dress”.

“Alright, all right, I would rather call her Miss India instead”.

I gave up with Guru.

We crossed the road and I stopped my motorcycle right by her just when she was turning towards the lane. I wanted to say something to her but couldn’t think of anything. In my mind I had rehearsed thousand times but at this moment everything came to a blank.

“Hello, do you happen to be Vicky’s sister”?

What the heck was that?

She turned toward me and with the sweetest smile asked-

“Who is Vicky”?

Uh so who is Vicky really!

 “..That tall muscular chap who goes to the Gym across the road”.

“Well I know almost all the muscular guys in that gym, but there is no one called Vicky”.

Shit! Couldn’t there be at least one by that name? I had to change my strategy.

“Well I know there is no Vicky. I find you very attractive and just wanted to talk to you”!

That was direct and even Guru pressed my shoulder giving it a nod of approval.

“Ah that’s a better pick up line. You should’ve used it in the first place”. She said.

With much daring coming to me I went ahead with the conversation.

“I see you every day going to the library. You must be preparing for some important test. Are you planning to sit for the ICS examination, or may be IAS?

“ICS?  IAS? Huh! And who the hell wants to bury into those stuffy smelly books”? She replied with a sneer.

“It is those football and hockey players who come to exercise in that open ground behind the library. I am trying to sell them raffle tickets. You two can also buy a few. I will do even better than that, I will give you four books to sell, we will split the profit fifty fifty”!

My motor cycle was shaking; Guru was trying to control his laughter.

Alright Guru stops laughing. I made a mistake, wrong temple, and wrong goddess! I will find the right one day!

On our way back, Guru brought his face near to my ears and said-

“Do you think Goddess Saraswati too could’ve been a raffle player”?

Oh, Just shut up  and let me ride the motorcycle.

"Number Please”

A Letter I Never Replied...

With everything new that comes to your life, something old is always lost. Only the memories stay with us. Memories of some you let go, some you don’t, and some just don’t go away no matter how hard you try.

-Like those memories of my lonely childhood, where for hours I would gaze through my window looking at those telephone cables running into infinity, and wonder how did voices of so many people talking at the same time went across those thin wires.
How do they know which telephone to enter, or will the voices come out like a stream of water from a hose if I cut them?

-And those dewdrops hanging from the telephone cables, do they hear us talk?

May be some do, like the one that touched my six year old heart.

In a gloomy evening forty five years back, I was alone in our huge house, with my mom and dad at the uncles. The cloud cast sky suddenly became darker and it began to rain. The light bulbs flickered and went off plunging the house into total darkness. With every clap of thunder, streaks of lightening began to crawl up the sky like snakes with hundred heads. The dark silhouette of the tall trees around the house sprang up like monsters every time the sky got lit up by lightening. Scared I began to cry. 

I needed someone to hold and hide behind every time the black monsters of the trees extended their bony hand to touch me.

I do not know why and how we had a telephone then. It rarely rang. May be no one who would talk to us had a telephone then. It just remained sitting there on the brass cradles, black, heavy and silent. There was no rotary dialing disc. You do not dial; you simply pick it up from the cradle and wait for the voice from the other end to come.

In my desperate moment I picked up the phone, wanting to here a voice,  

“Number please”. 

A cold and detached voice of a woman came through the earpiece.But that didn’t matter to me, it was a human voice and I wanted the comfort and reassurance in hearing one.
I sobbed and wailed into the phone- “I am scared.”

There was a silence for a moment before the voice came again. Now it was voice of a woman, a woman who cared.

“Are you alone”?

“Yes, and its dark at home and all these tree monsters are scaring me”.

I cried into the phone.

“Who said you are alone, I am with you, right here. Hold the phone in your hand and bring it closer to your heart, and you will know I am inside it. I will always be here with you. You can talk to me any time you want”.

I sobbed and went on to tell her how scared I was of lightening. She listened to me and then began to tell me how beautiful those streaks of lightening were, how they were like small silly girls trying to show off their dancing skills!

Slowly I forgot I was alone.

As my mom and dad came back I ran to open the door.

Dad later picked up the hanging telephone to put it back on to the cradle.

I never knew who she was; she was just a voice that came through the earpiece. But I began to lift the phone and talk to her frequently. She would immediately recognize me, and was always ready to listen. She became my only friend.

I asked her a lot of things which were puzzles to my young mind.

-"There is no air in water, then how do fishes breathe"?

-"Why all the months do not have same number of days"?

-"How does the moon become bigger and then smaller again"?

-"How do you do this math homework"?

The day dad tried to explain me the earth was round like a huge ball, I cried in frustration of not understanding why we do not fall off from the lower part of this ball.

I cried into the phone.

“Who told you the world is round. Honey, it is the way you make it. Do not ever let anyone else shape the world for you. Remember you are the master of the show. You want it flat, then it is flat, you want it round, so round shall it be.”

She was always there for me.

I grew up and was sent to a boarding school. In the initial days, staying in the hostel I did miss my home, mom and her pampers; but I missed talking to her on the phone the most.

Eight months later when I came home on my vacation I ran to lift the phone and talk to her. The phone now had a rotating dialing disc with holes for each number. No voice now would ask you- 

“Number please.”

I completed my High school in few years to come. It was then one day on my visit to the town I saw a new building standing where the old shack once housed the telephone exchange. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain of loss in my heart. I wanted to know who the voice “Number please” was.

People in the exchange now were new, and had no time to entertain a kid wanting to know about a mysterious person he was talking to five years back. No one knew her, except for the old janitor.

“Maybe you are looking for Pomi, the old grouch. She was a loner, never married and lived alone. She never talked to anyone.”

But she talked to me.

The janitor continued telling me more about Pomi. 

“She later had some mental illness and began to forget things. Thus she had to leave the job.  But she would for many months come here, sit in that corner of the room, gaze into the blank wall where once the control board used to be. Many would hear her talking to herself, saying someone would call asking for her”.

I knew she was waiting for my call. Something was choking me inside, I couldn’t breathe any more.I wanted to see her in person. I had to find her.

“She had a small room rented in some society about a mile from here”.

I found out the house where she lived.The land lady was very receptive to me. She listened to my story and sat there silently for some time.

“Pomi had a sad life”. The land lady began to speak without looking up.

“She never told anything about herself to anyone. But people say she was betrayed by the person she loved and it broke her heart beyond any healing.May be  that is the reason she showered all her love to you, without even knowing who you are and expecting nothing from you. But she knew you will one day come looking for her.

One day she just disappeared, no one knows where she has gone. Before leaving she came to me and gave me something. It was a letter, a letter for you”.

I couldn’t keep sitting any more, I wanted the letter desperately. The lady opened the cabinet and from the bottom of huge stacks of old papers and books handed me an envelope browned by time.I opened and read the letter. 

In those beautifully handwritten words she talked to me again.

My dearest, 

I knew you will find me.

I had to write this letter to you before I lose myself. 
Everything in my life is rapidly getting erased.

You gave me a reason to live. Thank you so much for that.

I know you will do all right in your life. 

Believe in yourself. 

You know you are the master of your show.

By the time you will read this letter I shall be gone.

But please remember, my soul will always be there for you, 

ALWAYS.

With love

Yours

“Number please”

The sky was getting dark as I walked back home. The moon was wafting across a patch of dark cloud. I looked up the sky and a sweet face of an unknown friend was in montage in front of my eyes.

I knew somewhere she is there for me.