Catch me now @ NextKing

Time to move to a new home.
Catch me now @ NextKing

http://nextking.wordpress.com/

Hello Friend - 2

I stood in the hallway on that cold winter evening staring at room 567. It happened eight years back, I was hauled into this new school by my old man as again I had run into trouble in my last school. I have had problems with authorities, always. My old man was tired of moving me around and was giving me a change, the last chance to improve before he would disown me, that is what he told me when he dropped me there.

The army of helpers fixed things for me. I was too tired to take notice of anything around and slept off. The next morning, I was surprised to see this scrawny little wretched kid ‘K’ sharing my room. He appeared too hesitant to break ice with me. Months passed and all we had exchanged were couple of sentences. Most of the times he was neck deep in books and would refuse to play or take anything I offered, it hurt me.

I could sense that he hated me for being privileged. Yes, I had everything and was ready to share it but he kept distance. I didn’t like the fact that he hated me because of my rich father and not because of who I was. I extended my hand many a times to be friends but he was never interested. I spend two years in 567 with 'K' and then my old man pulled me off to England to get better education.

Eight years have passed and I have waited patiently for ‘K’ to pass his high school exams. It’s time to have my revenge – I have offered to sponsor his study in England, all arrangements done. He has been brought up on doles and scholarship, let’s see if his pride and principles allows him to accept it.

Hello Friend - 1

 

 
I stood in the hallway with my bags and the tears streamed down my cheeks. I had got a scholarship to study in England which I so badly desired to start a new life and a new beginning. The deafening chatter that would have made me flinch on other days seemed to pass unnoticed today.  I stood there gazing at room 576. I had almost been in that room for eight years. 

The first day when I was led into this room, I remember gingerly opening my bags to extract couple of hand me down from a distant relative which I neatly labelled to avoid getting misplaced. I had no idea how stupid I would look in those ill fitting clothes until I walked into the class the next day. Sometime later in the day 'S' barged into the room. I was to share the room with him and he was what I was not and what I could never be.

At times 'S' was as cultured as one could be and other times as rotten as a sewer rat. He walled in with an entourage of helpers who did everything for him before they left. He didn't notice me as if I was invisible and he slept off in his shoes. That night I helped ease his expensive shoes and covered him with a blanket.

He was someone who defeated and belittled my principles. He was the smartest in the class and everybody wanted to be his friends; he enjoyed that attention while I avoided him. He never studied, almost never but still managed to scrape through exams. After holidays he would get me gifts which I always refused - it had become my habit to refuse anything he would offer me. I hated him for being 'rich'. He never showed off but he had it all which I could have only dreamt.

We housed together for two years before he was packed off to some rich expensive school in Europe. In those two years we hardly spoke and I never called him my friend. Today morning, I stumbled upon my scholarship papers in the Head Master’s office - my scholarship was sponsored by 'S'.

LOVE

LOVE

The time is ten and she want to rush home,
I hold on to her and we continue to roam;
We swing entwined arms like kids on beach,
She turns and kisses me on the cheek;
The feeling lingers while we walk slow,
I steal a glance and saw her eyes glow.

She frees herself reluctantly and go,
I stop and watch her flow;
I wish her to turn and smile,
She walks on with a tear in eye;
I turn around to go,
A loud noise makes me slow.

She lay on ground and shivering,
I hold her in arms she smiles her lips quivering;
Told you not to leave,
She says, ‘don’t grieve’;
The time is ten,
They waiting I shouldn't disappoint them.

Happy Reading

How was your day? A simple compulsory question of any nosy individual which is answered vaguely by 100% of us but it got Swami’s goat. He didn't answer it rather he shoulted back, 'how the f*** do you want it to be?' Question for question was not his style but his artistic mind had been quite restless that day. Everything in the room came to a stand still - the warm stale air stop moving, Raghu stopped chomping on his second burger, Radhika gaped and I apparently was smiling at the time the question was asked so it was natural for me to grin more. I found it unusual, not the outburst or the choice of words but the answer which apparently was a rhetoric - I could have an entire book on this choice phrase.

This incident happened in a meeting of an artistic club. This club, 'royal artists' has been in existence for six months now with seven uncommitted members or should I call wannabe artists-  they ranged for rockers to painters to poets to bloggers (thats me). And the founder, president, owner of the basement which housed the club was Swami.

Swami considered himself a struggling artist and lived and behaved live one though he had a rich father who he mailed a cheque every month as rent for the use of basement. The trade he plied was poetry. He wrote lofty poems in english which other members of the club always waited patiently for weeks and then praised them profusely not because they were Swami's but because they touched them deep inside. He has written poems on his favourite shoe, the watchmen, and the stray cat that has made the basemen her part home and also one on the man on mars. The man was a genius in his intellectual capacity.

Let me come back to why he reacted that way. Swami was upset because someone semi-seriously told him that they couldn't get the poem - they couldn't get the poem that he had sweated on for months. The poem in contention is published in my previous post. Happy Reading.