Chapter 1

“Sam, past it left”, Ravi was at the top of his voice. Samarth had decided to go for it and took the ball all the way to the goal post. They had a stiff defense, despite which Samarth made it almost there. And just when he was about to seal it, the goalie moved violently in his direction. With the kind of reputation he had, he could have gone for it on his own. But, just before the goalie slid his legs to push the ball away from him, he passed it on to his left. Ravi, who was all waiting, just shoved it in at the right time. The match ended in a draw and the team had a big sigh of relief.

On the sidelines, Shankar got up from the seat and shared wireless high fives (transmitted along the thin air) with the players on the ground. “Srini, they saved our faces… we drew it for the first time with Comp Sci guys……” Oblivious to everything that was happening, I just said,”Shankar, I am planning to write a novel. What do you think?” He sure didn’t see this coming, though quite recently he was irritated with my long silence breaks and total ignorance of the things happening around. “What?!!!” his instantaneous reply. I got up from the seat and started walking. Shankar came towards me and then corrected “Sorry Srini, I was just not really expecting this. Why don’t we talk about it over the dinner?” “Over the dinner, Ruchi Parota Corner, the bill is on me.” I said walking away, since he wanted to spend some time with the team and was not ready to come along.

With half the parota over even before the sabji arrived, Shankar was in no mood to listen. But, the obligation of me paying the bill left him with no choice. “I am planning to write a novel. What do you think?” straight on the point. “Why?”, with his finger then working its magic on the tongue to salivate on the remnants of the stuffed aloo stuck on the edges. Then on seeing my face and sensing the seriousness of the situation, he immediately made eye contact and said, “I mean what is it about? And why do you want to write?” Fundamental, I thought. He sensed my itchiness and then finally modified it to “Ok, chuck that. Just tell me what is it that you are going to write?” “My experiences, may be more precisely my afterthoughts on everything that has happened in my life” I replied quite confidently. “?” was the reaction on his face. His face blurted, ‘what is so b*@%#$ interesting in your life?’ while his mouth cluttered “Ok …. Ok I get it……, Nice… nice…”

      I paid 84 bucks for this ‘nice… nice…’ from him. We left the parota corner at around 12 midnight. “Why?” I was still thinking. The ‘?” look still incomprehensible. I began wondering if his 'nice... nice...' actually referred to my idea or the stuffed aloo parota………