Pretty Neat , huh ?

I am boring by default .Sometimes less boring, but boring nonetheless. And I know it. So I suffer from this tremendous urge to do something out of the blue thing every now and then to break the monotony. I always keep finding new ways to vent out all this pressurized energy in a little this way or that. Sometimes when the favourite comic strip or the occasional football match isn’t enough I tend to give-in and let myself be tamed to this urge. This usually results in amazing disasters and embarrassments prompting me to resolve “I’ll NEVER do anything like this EVER again”, and everytime I do, I end up bettering the previous one!


Last night I thought about all the crazy things I have done and had a good laugh. Then I thought people should know about some of them. Here are three of them that I can share; the others I assure are too off the wall to be included in a public domain.




The craziest things that I have done ( in order )

1 walking semi-nude on the beach
2 using the toilet of an express while travelling by a local
3 writing a love letter to a girl I didn’t know


1. Walking semi-nude on the beach

Before THIS happened, I had never been to a place that was entirely devoid of human presence. Yes! Such a place does exist , and not very far away . It’s this place they called Taal -sari , and its a half hour ride on a motorized-rickshaw form Digha.
It was five in the evening when we reached the place and we had an hour before the dusk morphed itself into darkness . As the sun gently lessened its intensity the beach looked stunning form where we stood. All we had to do now to get to it was CROSS a river! Yes we were definitely on the wrong side. It was well past the (peak) time to find a boat to ferry us down to the other side. There was another way though ….. in the next couple of minutes we had taken off our clothes and started crossing it on foot ! I wonder what a bunch of crazy morons would have looked like crossing a chest-deep river with hands held up high clutching dry clothes and other valuables (namely wallets, phones, fags and matchboxes).
When we were finally on the other side we realized if we had done one thing right in the entire day ….. it had to be this . The sand was a shade softer and lighter and the waters were different ( like the grass is always greener on the other side ). It was the best beach any of us had seen , ever .The next thing we knew we had tossed our clothes, wallets ,shoes ,caps , and shades (the phones,we hid carefully inside our trouser pockets before we flung them) and we had started running for the waters … I have run 100 mt. sprints before but this one was special , very special … I knew I would be remembering this for the rest of my life .. those 12 seconds or so …. The air was crisp but the water was cold. We couldn’t have lasted longer in the water. Only human! Aren’t we ?

We didn’t have towels with us …so we had to let the water dry itself off ourselves; we waited. In the mean time Mari had discovered this bunch of Red Crabs.... we chased them for a while and even caught one ….and of course we let it go after that, we couldn’t have eaten it for sure . Dusk came almost uninvited, we had to go back. We crossed on to the other side but this time it was only half as fun. It was a day we all agreed not to forget…..

A week later I got to know that a photograph had been leaked in college, it had a boy on a beach ….





2. How to travel Local but use an Express' Toilet

Whatever has to happen has to happen, but it is this impeccable timing with which this "whatever" hits , that upsets me !

Asansol is a good 220 kms from Howrah and it takes approximately 5 hours to cover the distance in a local train. Locals aren’t the preferred trains for most, they are inconvenient. One has to break the journey into two parts. Asansol to Burdwan ( 90 odd kms) and then boarding a Burdwan to Howrah connecting local.
It’s rarely that we choose to commute by a local that too in the wee hours of the morning. But we did, that day. When the train finally started moving we had bleary eyes , empty stomachs, full intestines and no topics to keep us from sleeping. These trains … they jerk and oscillate and create a to and fro motion which is sometimes undesirable … half way into the first of the two hours I knew this journey would be a little different … a little difficult perhaps. This was the hard way of discovering that when Nature calls … it calls …and IT is pretty good at calling.
So why talk about this stuff when you can help yourself to the toilet.... Yup ! That’s the problem…. no toilet onboard a Local ….. actually just a urinal would have done fine in my case , but there I was stranded on a train with half a dozen sleeping friends and no toilet!
So there were two options. One was to get down at the next station , use the toilet, and take another train .The other was to hold up for another hour or so till we reached Burdwan and then use the toilet there without missing the train and company.
By the time our train entered Burdwan , I had 6 excited friends cheering me on to the finishing line and my eyes out of their sockets. But as soon as we got down on the platform a creaky voice from inside the loudspeaker declared that the Connecting train would be leaving from the next platform in another two minutes ! Double dilemma … I followed them to the train with my eyes desperately scanning the place for a loo . When I found none I did what i would describe as CRAZY even by my standards .

Even as the others boarded the Local I darted for the Express parked on the other side of the platform, entered it , found the toilet, unlocked the door, locked the door and helped myself. Halfway through, the creases on my forehead had just started to un-pleat when suddenly the train broke into a series of jolts and jerks. It had started moving! What timing! Impeccable ….. by the time I could put myself back in order for another two hour hold-up the train had picked up considerable speed and I didn’t even know which way it was headed !

Some 30-35 metres of the platform was left , by the time I finally hung myself off the door. No I’m not talking about a time and distance problem here ….. just that if I decided NOT to jump I would be reaching Durgapur in about an hour, without a ticket , belongings , money or ID ( which would be bad-luck even by my standards ) . I jumped and somehow made it without scratches or fractures .Yes I caught the Local too. Its all about TIMING, they say.


So its not entirely surprising that after this incident my system just wont accept water on a day I am traveling.








3. Writing a love letter to a girl I didn’t even know


This one has got to be the craziest yet. Oh God ! What was I thinking?

Come August , with the arrival of the new batch , its open-season at college . All guys remain specially active during this time. Even the King of Lazeland would brush off the snow and polish his skies! This activity is mainly due to the fresh batch that has just come in. The boys are taken for a ride and the girls are asked questions. This is the time when a popular three syllabled sentence is used rather indiscreetly. I got entangled in one such story ……

The guy just couldn’t muster enough courage to speak out his mind and the girl in question refused to pick up the subtle hints. So the boy decides to write her a letter conveying his feelings. But since he is not too sure about writing one himself, someone else must do it.

If you ask me why I agreed to write a letter ..sorry a love letter, on behalf of a friend ,that too to a girl I hadn’t even seen , I would give you a shrug and said “dunno” any day .

I’m not a romantic , neither did I have prior experience with this stuff so as unexpected it took me two days to actually come up with something that resembled half prose , a quarter of poetry and a quarter of philosophy all somehow fitted into a framework of an informal letter’s format ….. I had doubts of its working but that’s the best I could do , both to the letter and to the friend .

The letter was copied by someone else and finally delivered by another someone else. ( I shall be least surprised if the next Ian Fleming is an Indian) ….. Anyways it didn’t work out for the poor guy and he held me partly responsible …. I only got to see the girl in another two weeks or so , about the same time that I got news that this “poor guy” was now happy with another girl who ( thankfully) I didn’t have to write to.



Well just ahead of another open-season I found out that some people had found out…. That did make me feel a little awkward but then what the hell … its not everyday that you get to write a love letter, that too on behalf of another guy , to a girl you haven’t seen … I doubt if I can better this one …