Night Shifts.

I have my breakfast when you’re having your evening coffee.

I have lunch when you’re having dinner.

I come back home when you’re hitting the snooze button just to sleep a wee bit longer.

I sleep when it’s time for your lunch.

Sometimes, I don’t sleep at all.

And I love it.

Amen.

It’s a known fact….

That I’m a jerk.

Big deal.

Fuck off.

Amen.

He was at the store, looking for some movie UMDs to “inaugurate” his brand new Playstation Portable. The collection was formidable. There were movies he watched and liked and there were movies he didn’t watch and still didn’t like.

But one cover stood out. He had to buy that movie. He walked towards it as memories took over.

—

XXX.

That was the movie we decided to watch. Well, it wasn’t what we decided. Mysore had a very limited array of movies for us to choose between. I think at that point of time, we had two Kannada movies and a Tamil movie, not to mention an old Hindi movie nobody liked in some theatre unheard of.

So, the four of us – W, K, A and yours truly bunked class and rushed to the theatre to buy tickets for the matinee show early, you know, just in case the place got filled. Well, apart from the old men who thought XXX was, well, a porno movie who also probably gave us dirty looks (two guys and two girls going together for a porno movie – very corny!) when we entered the movie hall, we had the whole place to ourselves.

The movie was awesome. Vin Diesel kicked ass. Specially the scene where he starts that landslide – AM-azing! I wanted to learn to ski and surf and skate and yeah, jump off falling cars.

Tattoos. Metal-Trance soundtrack. Bald heads. All served in one hot plate.

One of the reasons I liked this set of people was the fact that they were spontaneous. They never liked planning, in fact, the more they planned, the less they did. Even the movie plan was a spontaneous one. But the next spontaneous “decision” was, well, kind of close to ridiculous.

I know, we watched a kick-ass movie and stuff, but to follow the movie up with piercing your ears is not the kind of dessert I was hoping for.

I think it was K who wanted to pierce her ear (she already had an array of rings on her ear, I dread the day she gets into an electromagnetic field). So we went to Devraj Urs Road, looking for a place to, well bore a hole in K’s ear. When we found one, I noticed A getting really interested in the whole piercing affair. She even picked out the “stud” she wanted, if I remember correctly. And before I could turn around W was with K discussing the various intricacies of piercing. (All he wanted to know was which ear to pierce so as not to look gay. He’s bisexual, I learnt after a couple of years. More on that later).

So, there we were, four college kids, three of whom are ready to undergo voluntary puncture of their bodies. Hey, the ear IS a part of the body, okay!

As for me, I was too chicken to do anything like that. K and A lived with their respective aunts and both of them had their own problems with the aunts and so both of them could in theory do whatever the fuck they wanted to, except probably get hickies or whatever.

As for W, his parents were never around and his sister was too busy to even acknowledge his presence. He could really do whatever the fuck he wanted.

Me? Well, I lived with my parents and a pain in the ass brother who according to my father looked up to me. So, it was partly living to expectations and mostly the fear of getting my ass kicked that stopped me from taking the “drastic step”.

K volunteered to go first, having been the one with most experience and no, I am not exaggerating. You should look at her ears, they’re like five Olympics symbols in one ear. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. Then went A and finally W.

I don’t know how painful it actually was, but with A and W holding my hand while the piercing happened, I knew it was painful for me. Even the thought of it now makes my right hand go “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”…. That’s how bad they squeezed my arm.

All in all it was a productive day. I got to watch a great movie with great friends and I could follow that up by making fun of their golden studs. It was a sight. They looked like branded sheep, all in different sizes – the sheep that is.

What happened in the following days, you ask? I don’t know about K and A, but W got his ear infected and the stud won’t come off. First we tried pulling it off. That wasn’t a very good idea because he couldn’t stand the pain. So, we decided to get some help from an old friend – weed. We made W smoke up – on top of Chamundi Hills – and after about seven joints, when he was comfortable and, more importantly, numb, we tried prying the thing off. Didn’t work. We gave up.

Finally, a couple of days later, W walked into college smiling and the ear looked lighter. What happened, we asked. He said, it just fell off while I was sleeping.

Yeah, it just “fell off”. Bastard stud.

—-
As he paid the cashier, he couldn’t help but wonder what an amazing time college was. He also couldn’t help but notice things had changed. Two of the four had lost a parent, gotten displaced and one of them was in a drug rehab. As for him, he was in an alien land, trying to get his bearings right in a place with a cold climate and colder people.

As he entered the street, the wind blew right at his face. He closed his eyes and the tears in his eyes rolled down on his cheek.

Yeah, the wind does indeed irritate the eyes.

At least, that’s what he wanted to think.

Amen.

Back.

Okay, I’m back.

And I’m almost out of chocolates.

Amen.

PS: Shutdown imminent.