This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 36; the thirty-fifth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton. The theme for the month is "and then there were none"“That looks wonderful”, said Ajay eying the frosted beer bottles greedily and licking his lips. I mean he actually licked his lips. I know we are all accustomed to using such phrases metaphorically but Ajay seemed to believe that the actions described in books had to be enacted. Accounts for the fact that he is yet to find a girl-friend though he was in the final year of his engineering, I suppose. Girls do like to be considered attractive but what girl would like a man literally drooling all over her? “Good! You have enough! We can make a night of it”, said the artist of our group. Sanjeev had none of the dithery absent-mindedness of the artist stereotype which showed in the decisiveness with which he opened a bottle and poured the contents into his glass. “Where is Rajiv? Stuck in some meeting as usual?” asked Sridhar as he hastened to fill his glass. Now this one was a nerdy caricature of the IT man to look at but a veritable vacuum cleaner when it came to drinking. Rajiv came stamping in. “Pour me one guys! I need one to get rid of the stink of your streets, Vinod. The garbage collection in your area is the pits!” “What can we do, Rajiv? We have been to the municipality often enough but nothing much seems to happen”, I said. “That’s the problem with the middle class. Always the someone-should-do-something-about-it syndrome” said Rajiv. “Yeah! True! No matter how much you gag as you walk the streets, you will not do a thing about cleaning it up”. By the realistic gagging accompanying the statement, a blind man could have recognized Ajay. “Actually, this street looks great for a modern art painting. If only you did not need to slip and slither on all sorts of waste” “Guys! I am going for my second one” Sridhar said, in line with his single-minded pursuit of mopping up the beer. “Say, guys! If you are all serious, we could ourselves do something about this mess. Ajay! Can you get a couple of friends over from college to help?” “I…I…Say, is it 9 PM already? My parents must be getting worried. I gotta go. See you guys” Shell-shocked was not the word for it. Hitherto whatever had floated on top of the beer with Ajay, it certainly had not been filial piety. “Sanjeev! You have that newspaper friend, do you not?” “Who? Hey…I forgot. My son has a maths exam. Got to coach him. Bye” That from the man who has to put in torturous mental effort while adding two and two and still manages to get four only one time out of ten! There was one kid who would radically reinvent mathematics for the future generations, if he was getting coached by Sanjeev. “Rajeev…” “Shit! You know Vandana does not much like these sessions of ours.” I had always known it but I had not known that he knew it too – at least, it had not shown in his behavior till date. “Got to keep peace in the family”, he said and left – and then there were none. P.S: I must bookmark this experience. It will come in handy the next time I seem on the verge of running out of booze!
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