Delhi 7: Reporting LIVE!

30^th June, 2011

New Delhi is sweltering hot during the summer (roughly from early March to end of August, with a little bit of rain thrown in once in a while, which then piles up the humidity) with temperatures dancing on the wrong side of 40 degrees Celsius with unfailing regularity & biting cold during the winter (mid-December to mid-February) with the mercury stoutly refusing to climb above 5 degrees Celsius. What’s more, last year the capital recorded the highest ever rainfall in the last 30 years, coupled with the otherwise withered up and innocuous Yamuna threatening to unleash her swollen waters! Credit some really bad drainage facilities (that resulted the flooding of roads here, there, everywhere) and you’ll have conjured for yourself a rather lively image of my inebriated tango with this city so far. I have few non-familial acquaintances here (ergo, fewer friends), but if there is one thing that this city has given me then that is experience. (Well, to be entirely true, it had also given me splitting headaches and the subsequently diagnosed sinusitis last year, but I’m trying rather hard to keep the detractors at bay here!)

Trust. What does the word mean? Does it mean anything at all anymore? What’s that? “Yes”, you say? I find disinclined to agree.. “I don’t think I can trust anyone anymore..” How many times have I heard that by now? I think I’d have a better chance at counting stars! The most recent repetition of this over-used, bordering-on-cliché phrase came to pass on Thursday, June 30, 2011, at 01:12 hours IST. (Or, as we are more comfortable with it, at twelve minutes past one at night.) It was one of my MIB classmates, oh yes. A girl. As a matter of fact, a girl who has recently had a bitter breakup, no less. Now, when I first came to know this girl halfway through my second semester here (I was blissfully ignorant of most of my classmates’ names –male and female - for most of the first semester and unawareness about the females carried on till the aforementioned halfway stage), I found her to be quite chatty & a fun person to hang around with. So hang around I did and, wonder of wonders, we became something more than acquaintances - she suggested we had become ‘friends’! (What’s the exclamation mark for, you ask? Well, you see, I used to be quite shy when around girls right from my school days, and since the very first day of attending a co-educational college, I’ve found it nothing short of a miracle every time a girl has actually become ‘friends’ with me. But, I see that I’ve digressed..) Right, so back to this girl.. Well, after she & I became ‘friends’ (once again, according to her, for I have the odd habit of taking a while to become ‘friends’ and I hadn’t yet begun to consider her as one), she told me that she had a boyfriend who was studying something somewhere (I only have selective retention capacity and I didn’t find this fellow interesting enough) and that they were going through their roughest patch yet in the four years’ commitment. Having nursed only one monumentally one-sided (albeit prolonged) ardour, I wasn’t much of an expert on the matter, but rough patches seemed to me quite commonplace in relationships. As I understood, things almost always got better sooner rather than later. Quite to the contrary, however, about a month later the girl told me – over the phone and in a fit of tears - that she and her boyfriend had broken up, (to be perfectly honest to her, she did say “He dumped me..”; quite frankly, I don’t see how who dumps who really matters either way if the relationship is discarded after all, but apparently such things are very important to people) as far as I remember due to the fact that he had told his parents and they hadn’t accepted it (or something as weak-willed and banal as that). I tried my best to console her and sympathize with her, but who was I kidding? I’ve always been a rabbit in headlights when it came to being around crying women, and this was not much different, I admit. Anyway, I did what ‘friends’ are expected to do, I guess – told her to keep a stiff upper lip and all that, told her that she didn’t deserve a spineless wimp like him (which I did think he was), told her that she’d find someone much better (which is always probable) and soon (which, truth be told, I had no way of knowing; but such things need to be told at times likes those, I gathered, and proceeded to do the needful). “I don’t think I can trust anyone anymore..” came her tear-stained self-realization.

               

Surprise, surprise! Within a fortnight of having suffered what she identified as a “shattering, life-altering” heartbreak, came this one day when we were out having pizza (courtesy good old Dominos) when she started flirting with me! (Yes, you read it right.. ME, of all the people in the whole, wide world!) Not buying it, you say? Good joke, you think? Not to worry. I couldn’t believe it myself! I mean, why on earth would any girl flirt with me?! I’m positively a woman-repellent! But, tell me, what else can “I didn’t think I could ever trust anyone anymore when _______ broke up with me, but I now know I can trust you with anything.. I think I can more than trust you.. In fact, you know who I think is the right guy for me in class? I’d tell you, but I’d only embarrass you.. I only wish you’d feel the same way about me, you know.. It’s hard for a girl to ask a guy out..” with her hand on mine (which had been lying innocently on the pizza table) possibly mean, right?! (If it wasn’t flirting, however, I plead guilty; having never attempted to ‘flirt’, so to speak, it’s one more of those entries on that ever-burgeoning list of things that I remain largely distanced from.) Thankfully, humour is my one (although sadly, only) forte, and I was able to laugh it off before it indeed became embarrassing for me.

Days later, this adventurous daughter of man went on a ‘long-drive’ with three boys and one girl from our class (none of whom have the best of reputations), got high on beer, and got kissed and groped by two of the said lads (while the third was making out with the other girl present). When this plan had originally been drafted (of the five of them going on the drive, i.e.), she had called me to ask if I thought it was safe for her and whether I wanted her to go or not. I remember telling her quite clearly that it was not in my place to want, not want, allow and/or deny her from doing anything, but that I felt that she would be invariably better off if she opted out of their company. It goes without saying that she turned a deaf ear. Eventually, she called me later that fateful day of their little escapade, crying and feeling disgusted with herself, and said - (Yes, no points for guessing..) “I don’t think I can trust anyone anymore..”

Within a week of that episode, she called me up to tell me that she and one of my male classmates had started dating, mentioning quite clearly that she had suggested the idea and that he had accepted. She further told me, in no uncertain terms, that it was a convenience thing – the two of them travelled to college by the same Metro rail, lived in more or less the same locality – and that neither of them had any plans whatsoever for considering it as a serious commitment. “We are in it just for fun..” she had said. And, now, three and a half months after the commencing of their “fun” , she called me, once again, in a fit of tears, mumbling things like “He trapped me..”, “We were physically involved, you know.. Now I realize that he used me..”, “It was all a well-laid plan.. Girls are very delicate, and guys like him swindle us like this..” And, of course, the omnipresent “I don’t think I can trust anyone anymore..”

And they say ‘Dilli.. dil waalon ki!” As Obelix the Gaul would no doubt have said had he the fortune of visiting our respected capital city, “These Delhites are crazy!” Touché.