Blessing.. in disguise.!!

Two things every guy would hate to do the most in the world: Shopping with a girl (especially.. anywhere in the vicinity of t nagar) and talking to a girl who by her own conciet is a 'know-all' but in reality a dumb-know-nothing-moron.

I take immense pleasure in introducing to you.. my dear know-all friend..ok, i'll atleast have the decency to refrain myself from mentioning her name. For now, lets assume her name is 'gayathri', cuz miki often says that girls with that name are often morons. Who knows.!? Quite frankly, I could think of many such names.! :P

Gayathri and her mom think am a genius. The reason.. this one journal article they accidentally saw that I wrote a looooong time back. It was about women empowerment. Funny thing is, their understanding of the article was soo good, that, they even suggested me, I write about 'Men empowerment'. D'uh.!

Anyway, coming to the point, like I said, they're a know-all and in one way, that was to my favour.! They negated every talk about me being 'not-so-brilliant' , because they'd pictured me in their mind as a brilliant guy and not even a god-send could convince them otherwise. To be honest, I was quite happy about it. In some part of my 'brilliant-mind', the feeling that some girl thought I was brilliant tickled me.! :P

Gayathri has a bachelor degree in engineering to her name, and as the cliche goes..'waiting for a job that could entice some 'pakka-iyer-aathu-US-payyan' to marry her.! Gayathri's mom is a female whom I still regret meeting. She is a very serious lady who talks nothing but about topics that could equip her already overflowing brain with facts. Unfortunately, she happened to be my mom's friend. :(

One fine sunday, the one day when my plan to go to bessi-broken bridge with s***** and her bro had finally taken a realistic form, at around 11a.m , Gayathri and her mom came home. My mom has this 'philanthropic' habit of accustoming to guest's needs. She plays the host part really well, I must say. I appreciate it, as long as it does not disturb my privacy.!

Gayathri's mom.. though she had come in the pretext of 'dropping for little chit-chat' , had some 'kaariyam' that she had to get done. Bad part is, my mom can easily be cajoled into doing any favour. And the worst part, The 'kaariyam' G's mom wanted done.. involved me.!! :(

Yea.!, She wanted me to suggest some useful 'activities' that gayathri can pick up during the holidays ,so that she might both, spend time usefully and learn mannnnyyyy things, if not all in the process. Sigh.!

Am not going to mention the other crap that she talked about to my mom to convince her as to how useful it would be for me too in helping G plan her holidays. wtf? :X

I was actually not a part of the conversation until then, for I was in the other room chatting with Ram on how-to-spend-the-day-usefully. And, if you're curious about what we'd planned, well.. precisely, I go to his house, watch some movie and he comes back to my house , and we watch another movie.! :P And, there was this girl who looked up to me to suggest her ways to spend her holidays usefully.! Gosh.

For courtesy's sake, I invited her to my room. And there we were, The stupidest girl on earth waiting to hear from one of the many 'just-finished-engineering-vetti-guy'.!! It was she who broke the ice.. "What do you do da? lik.. in these holidays??". and thats one question any engineering student hates to answer. I mean, what am i supposed to tell her? , That I orkut for five hours, watch two movies a day, plan for the night during the day and plan for the next day during night?? Shit.!

But anyway, I had to answer ..and my answer was one of the most 'absurdest-stupidest-lie' any mouth could ever utter. I told her that I was indulging myself in many activities that help me improve my generic skills,personality blah blah. And yea, I was laughing in the back of my mind..I mean, All I did all day was wait for the night to come and vice-versa. We're engineers after all, what could we possibly do other than planning for never-to-be accomplished-actions.?! :D

But it was not all that funny to her. Because as i told you , I was a genius to her, cuz her mother had said her so.! Anyways, two or three meaningless conversations later, she finally asked me to suggest her some usefull ways to spend her holidays.! 'Useful way to spend time.. Asking that to me?? , Its like asking Illaya thalapathy VIJAY , 5 ways to improve acting.!' :D

Jokes apart, I manufactured a nod that could let her know how serious I was about suggesting a plan for her to spend her goddamn holidays. I was biting my lips, nodding my head up and down and doing other strange actions that could actually portray myself as a guy who was seriously thinking. Well, I must say that I atleast half-succeeded' for she seemed to follow my thoughts and was eagerly waiting for the first few golden words that were to come from my mouth.! Sigh.

And the words that followed purchased a 'uwac' from her. Cuz, I suggested her to take some sport/game and develop it. But it was a bigggggg no to her. She didn directly put a no to that, but the question she asked in return , made me rule out that option..She asked.. " Sports, Like you know, I play with my next door kid, every day, and I climb two floors up and down trying to catch the remote car that he operates.".!!!! Phew.!

My next suggestion was that she go to some 'foreign language course', the answer to which my head spinned two and half times around. She had a catalogue of courses that she'd attended during school and graduation.. Lik.,, 'Sanskrit in 10th, French in 12th, japanese during graduation, rashtryabasha in hindi........'. And I was like.. 'Is that all??, what about persian and mudhumalai singam baashai??'.!! :P

I then cleverly put forth a suggestion keeing in mind that she was week in math. I suggested she take the 'vedic maths' course in kk nagar.!! And her reaction was as though I'd asked her to run around the earth twenty five times. Her eyes galloped bigger than her mom's mouth and a grumpy " maths ahhhhhhh??? nooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuu" followed. Her arguement to justify her reaction was one of the most sweeping statements I had ever heard. She questioned the very 'Discovery of maths'. According to her, Ramanujam was a moron and a saddist. Moron because he invented her maths mark(you know what! :P) in unit tests and saddist because he finds pleasure in half the women in the world troubling their brilliant minds over elimentary math.!! :D

Her mention of the word ramanujam brought the ladies in the hall to my room. They were quite curious. The funniest part was, at the mention of the word ramanujam, G's mother thought that there was this highly-technically-extra ordinarilly knowledgable-talk going on between us and hence her 'ever thirsty' mind couldn let her not over hear it! She entered the room with the coffee in hand and enquired about how the talks proceeded. Now, as I've mentioned in my earlier posts, Women have a stupid way of using phrases.!! I mean.. "how talks proceeded??" Is this a G8 summit and am I the president? what the hell do you mean..'talks??'.!!??

But anyway, Gayathri, being another women, had an answer to that too.. she said that the talks were in the preliminary stages and that we've not yet reached on a definite conlusion. G's mom turned to me and asked.. "Is it so Manish?, I thought may be you could've come into a conclusion by now, you being experienced and all.." Now, what am I supposed to say to that??? Should I say sth like.. "Oh! yes mam, Its still in the preliminary stages, we're actually waiting for the state secretary's approval, so possibly, the deal should be done in a day or two.!" ?? Damn.!

And before I could say something, I was (thankfully) interupted by a 'baby laughing ring tome' from G's mobile. She picked the phone and her eyes widened again..so much ..that I for a moment womdered if the state secretary had really called her.!! But, thank heavens it was not to be. It was her friend rita, She'd called to inform that the final semester results had come.! :O

The whole ambience in the room suddely got a very serious tone to it. As though the walls were painted grey within a flash and the sky was brought down a mile above our head. Well, I was quite nervous about the results, Cuz like every semester, there was this one paper that I was hoping to get a 36+14(Just pass) and god knows if it might go the other way. I could see from the corner of my eye that G was already praying all the gods in the world in all the languages she had learnt over the years.! But I was praying for only one thing.. That the invigilator should be like my Principles of Management professor Mr. Maanga mandai( Yea, thats how we call him). Mr.Maanga mandai, is one of my sincere followers, for he has read all the articles i've written, not to mention the mystery story about three pimps, courtesy, all my POM unit test papers.! Yea. he gave me 14 on 16 for the 'little tommy' story that I wrote for the question.. "Write about Maslow's heirarchy theory of needs"? :D

And then suddenly, I heard words that I never had wanted to. Mom wanted me to check both our results. Now.!!!,, If you're an engineering student, you'll definitely pity me.! There I was, waiting to see my results in front of two morons ( G and her mom) , by whose conceit.. I was a genius.! Cha. :(

After myriad attempts to open the annauniv.edu website( the very sight of that site sickens me!!), it finally opened. G wanted to see her results first, or rather, I wanted to see my results laaaast(or better..never.!!). So I typed her reg.no and waited for the page to open. There were three eager faces waiting and in the center was me, looking all around to check if it was really.. a reality.!! And gosh, it was. The page opened... And her marks.. Well , 67+20, 70+20, ...nothing less than 80 and all internals 20.! D'uh.!! And then G's mom asked her something.. But G Did not reply her, for her mind was too much pre occupied calculationg her percentage which eventually came somewhere around 86.. I was shocked. 86 was alien to me.. I mean, in my entire engineering life.. I had never once got 85+ in a single theory subject.! But heck, It was not long before i realized that the real shock was yet to come.. there were these three faces eager to see the 'genius'oda mark.!! Iraiva.!! :(

I typed my reg number into the small yellow box. It was not very clear to me, the box.. i mean, it fluttered, lik it was a ghost's den from inside which a ghost was about to come and haunt me.! But then.. there came the angel...Yea, The first thing I saw when the page opened was four P's. Yea..P for pass.!! yea, I'd passed all the subjects.!! yea , I was an engineer!! On any other normal circumstances, after seeing the four P's, I would've done a back and front belty in my bed and ran to mom with an 'aatha..nan pass ayiten' effect. But, it was not to be so.. I had to stay calm. I did.!!

I'd closed the window without calculating the percentage and that was 'blasphemy' to G's mom. She was like.. "hey,, you don want to know your score????". And i suddenly pictured the whole scenario and tried to regain myself.. And i said.. 'Oh yea, I do aunty, Its just that...er..erm..the..the.window closed accidentally'. And after some stupid looks of apology and samaalichufication, I opened the window and calculated my percentage for the second time in my engineering life.. the first time was when they had asked for the aggregate marks for placement.!!

I had scored 84%, A whopping 84 %!! It was like getting the 'un gettable' for me. But not for G and her mother.. I also saw the imminent danger coming. They would next ask for my aggregate. And I did not want to answer that. But I had to.. Cuz the 'ten gallon headed aunty' wanted to know.. And when I said, 75, The kinda look that she gave was like.. 'aiyiyaaaaaaaaa'. :( :(

I'd managed to smile at that reaction, frankly I did not know how to respond to her overt disapproval of such a low score.!! But then, It happened to be a blessing in disguise for me. Cuz, from that day on, I never had to counsel her daughter.. G's mother had finally rubbed me off from her 'genius slate'.!! Ufff.!! Thank god.!!

I went to SATYA temple and did special pooja that day.! Trust me, I really did. Not only for the marks, also for the 'blessing.. in disguise'.!! :D