Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Beyond the Girl in Purple

I begin this entry of mine by making a quiet protest that I am not infatuated with death (The person who has accused me of this and about whom this blog is being written about will understand the context). This entry of mine is all about life and all its realities that make death seem like a fiesta at times ;). The camera pans back to an extremely uncomfortable couch in one of the the many CCDs on a rainy afternoon which was fortunately Floyd infested. The complete setting was so perfect that whatever happened subsequently was almost like an inevitability. A girl who is dressed in purple (a colour that defines her nomenclature in this entry) and a chain reaction of hysteria, excitement, helplessness and to a certain degree a comedy of the highest proportions. The melange of the characters experiencing these feelings was as diverse as it could be. The protagonist (the guy in red) possesses what he calls a “female terrorized” mind. Then there is the BW who is almost a married man. And finally there is me; the unbiased cog in the whole process to whom the job to analyze the whole situation in a mature manner finally falls. The setting was perfect, the elements were diverse, the girl was cute and the music was Floyd. That is how perfect it all was.

I am not going to narrate the entire sequence of events that took place. The protagonist has done in his blog (http://www.22crossroads.blogspot.com/). I am also not going to write down the contents of the napkin (which I wrote and the guy who marooed the “YOU will never get a GIRL comment and most other comments mentioned in the blog) because I believe that I will respect the privacy of “The Shy, Sophisticated Guy in Red” and also that I don’t really remember much of what I wrote. My job here is primarily to make a postmortem of all the events that happened and what are the consequences of that fateful afternoon. Disclaimer: If you are looking for a smart witty piece of writing, I strongly advise you to stop reading because I am not going to trivialize the whole issue.

All three of us in CCD that day have been friends for a long time and are pretty well aware of each others’ tendencies to react to social situations. The girl in purple represented a social challenge for us at a time when all three of us were lamenting about the fact that we were growing up too quickly. The female donned in purple and all the events that happened because of her represented what it was like when growing up was still a distant reality. Kevin Arnold (the kid in The Wonder Years) once said “Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers; the next day you're gone.But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul.” That afternoon at CCD we weren’t actually reminiscing about what our childhood days were like because our primal concerns were oriented around neo adult concepts like ‘pick up lines’ and their likes. What it all represented (I feel) was a shimmering reminder of simpler times when romance came without any of the mundaneness of reality. Th guy in red albeit a loser with girls is almost a hopeless romantic so will fail to see this point of mine. But for people like me who have seen and understood (Ahem!) the real romance at close quarters understand that it is overrated. But that rainy afternoon all such misgivings had faded away because we really thought that the girl in purple was this absolutely magical human being who could touch the life of our loser friend and maybe make a human being out of him. We even thought that she looked like Ana Ivanovic (To the guy in red: I was surprised that you did not write this in your blog). That girl had brought back for the briefest of moments the kind of lives we lead in school. Although we pretended that the complete basis of our actions were based on the fact that we were now old enough to go up and talk to arbit women in coffee houses; our excitement was still very congruent to the kind of glee we found in school under similar circumstances.

I don’t really care much about the girl in purple now. Possibly she is horribly devoid of any gray matter (who orders sandwiches in CCD? Bah!). But what I cherish is the times she reminded me of. I will always cherish the rainy afternoon when my friends and I relived the best days of our lives and had unadulterated fun under the dark clouds of pseudo adulthood. That’s all I really care about actually. I sincerely hope that the shy, sophisticated guy in red finds the one and lives happily ever after and may the girl in purple never have to haggle with the waiters in any coffee shop again. I also wish that by some happy turn of events all three of us land up in scenario like this again and next time maybe the protagonist could write a blog titled “The girl in the United Jersey who loved the way I talk!”. Cheers mate.

5 comments:

_manGO_ said...

hey mate ... i really wonder whose novel will come out first and whose will be a bestseller

amazing angle to the story ... and yeah i am a hopeless romantic (for the uninitiated i am the guy in red)

but surely ... much simpler times ... much simpler

Anonymous said...

It seems that the group at CCD is a bunch of budding writers who thought of some story and are now writing about it to popularize it .

But since I believe the guy in red(abt the story being true) so all the best to the guy in red.

ONE said...

very true..
we ALL miss those simpler times when romance was so uncomplicated..
(and a rejection could be brushed off at the end of the day)

a befitting prologue..

Udita Banerjee said...

now since i've heard the story before; i wonder... are you a better story-teller or an author?

Unknown said...

hey bab...feeling like reliving the days in ksms...