[This happens to be a true story and I’m the ‘boy’ in it, while ‘you’ is a girl who’s a batchmate and a good friend.]

So, you land up in the new city which you never ever visited in your life. New fragrance, new streets, new language and new transport system. Well, the last one is a drastic change if we consider its size and usage. I’m sure it leaves you in awe if you jump into a metropolitan city from a mountainous and less accessible one. However, you aren’t alone with all these new-fangled experiences. You have a company of a boy who’s younger than you and is a complete stranger to you when his whereabouts are considered. But, he happens to be your batchmate and quite probably one of your good friends in that isolated 55 acres beside a shrinking lake. And you start living with him for a month, just to tame that bitch called ‘internship’ that’d sugar-coat your CV.

Day 1 – You wake up at 6:30 AM and even before lightening up yourselves, you light up the Blackberry. It has a neat message displayed on its screen – ‘Data Services Charges – Rs. 0.1 | Available Balance Rs. 20.84’. You curse that black piece of technology for engaging itself in a spree of piquantly deducting your balance. Yes, it has been happening since a few months and hundreds of hard earned rupees your parents threw at you, time and again, have gone to waste. But then, why bother fixing it when it ain’t poking you! So, you carry on with all the activities that would make you look/smell beguilingly delight for the day. In the meanwhile, this boy gets you a recharge of Rs. 50 just so that your zero balance doesn’t collide with the roaming charges and ban even the incoming calls. You’re out of home for the day and you thank him on the way!

While the crowded bus creeps through the busy city, with merciful intervals of steadiness, you rejuvenate your love towards the same Blackberry. Punching in keys to tell the whole world, at least most of it, about how/what you’re doing. And the most wonderful thing of all – ignoring those tiny little messages about the balance deduction.

5:00 PM – You’ve been blown out of office as the work hours end. You go meet the boy at the Bus Station and throw yourselves along with him into an empty bus. While the bus crawls through the same route, the herd inside increases massively in number. You start sweating while at the same time thanking that you got a place to kneel your ass down, as it gets darker outside.

7:00 PM – You peep out through the window and try to figure out the proximity of the bus from your stop. The boy claims that the stop is almost there and asks you to get down through the ladies door at the front while he’s going to do the same through the back one for gents. With enormous struggle, you manage to reach the door. The bus stops at a traffic signal and voila! You jump out like there’s a herd of rats pinching your butt. As the bus moves away, your nervous system reacts to the fact that this boy hasn’t got down. Well, he’s going to get down at the intended stop and you were clever enough to do that at a traffic signal. With all the decency, the boy gets down at the stop only to find that you’re missing. He sneaks into the bus to see if you’ve been lazy enough not to move. Realizing that you’ve disappeared, he takes out his mobile and punches the call button to reach you. Heck! How could he? You’ve managed to blow a bountiful surprise at his face by dissipating all the balance your mobile had!

Now what? You rush to a mobile store to get a recharge. But, wait. Do you remember your own number? Using it for a year shouldn’t really help you do that. So, you dive into your own mobile to trace those ten digits. In the meanwhile, the boy gets a little panicked and he calls the girl at whose place you both have been staying. That girl, with a calm and sensible mind, asks him to stay where he is while she gets your mobile recharged. But the boy can barely stand still. So, he decides to walk a little bit and find a mobile store for himself. Hurray! He reaches the place where you thought you were lost. You look at him and start blabbering excuses while he exposes his angry face at you trying to enquire the crazy reason you got lost. But hey! He shouldn’t have panicked, right? So, you shout at him for panicking for a mere fact that you were lost in this new unknown city amidst all the uncommunicative people. He realizes that the screw is indeed a bit loose in someone’s brain and decides to keep quite.

No, no talk on the way back. He looks out trying to cool himself off and failing to find a way to vent it off while you dive into your Blackberry again to talk to your distant cousin/relative/friend. For one moment, he’s reminded of the fact that he has no sibling and it brings him joy! Taking care of his own self is what all he’s been doing in his life. A gazillion thoughts run into his head. The most important one still haunts him. What if he begets such a careless/carefree daughter? Would he still love her? And how does one teach ‘care’ to someone? – The thought of this shatters him and he’s forced by his inner self to stop from carrying the intellection ahead. Period.