"Somewhere, while growing up we sort of understand what kind of dreams we can afford dreaming. It all comes down to economy. Dreams are like items in the KFC's menu, you always end up choosing veg burger when you are alone. I blame myself, if I had enough passion, flying wouldn't have been a problem. But I decided, I wanted to become an MBA and not a superman."
"Once upon a time, I was in love
but now I am a drama queen."
[A Short Story]
Based On True Story
My name is Prem Prasad Timalsina, you
will not find me on facebook because I am not fool enough to keep that horrible
name as a facebook profile name. I would rather call myself ‘Dhani Baau Ko
Gorib Chhoro’. My name doesn't help when it comes to introducing me among
friends.
"What is your name, Bro?"
"Prem Prasad Timalsina."
"What?"
Exactly.
I am nineteen but my name tells people
that I had come to Kathmandu three decades ago with a hundred rupees note and
created a Business Empire out of it. Seriously, though, why do Successful
entrepreneur in Nepal have same background stories like--He came to Kathmandu
(insert any big city's name here) with a five rupee note (insert any
denomination here lesser than hundred) and made an empire out of it? Sometimes,
I get depressed thinking about not having enough background stories to be successful
in life. I mean I don't know how to make empire out of hundred bucks. I have
never even worked in a library as a struggling child. Damn, I do not even have
hauntingly poor parents. It is as if there are no success stories for a middle
class child. People like me eventually end up working for the people who came
to Kathmandu three decades ago with a hundred rupees note and created Business
Empire out of it--or for their children.
This is not a success story, though. It is a teenage bullshit.
I must clear something first. I hate
being a teenager, there I said it. Because, there are so many reasons. For
Example:
i. You cannot put status about your life
being a failure. People always shove that
You-are-still-young-and-you-have-so-much-left-to-achieve explanation up your
ass.
ii. You cannot make a serious argument without being humiliated at first for being young and inherently foolish. I mean I so want to argue with those old hags about their values. For a starter, I want to ask them, "What a country is? Why should we love something that makes us hate people for no reason?" But I cannot ask that because your motherland is supposed to give you identity and some sort of values. So, I am told with example that I should pretty much not care when people die in India. If a Nepali dies in a terrorist attack in India, a precious soul is lost. But if an Indian dies in a terrorist attack in India, a fucking vegetable is lost. I hate the insensitive hypocrisy that comes with loving a country, a mere political boundary.
iii. Your falling in love is a childish wish come true while their falling love is a mutual and a vigorously thought-about consent.
"Son, I have brought a catalogue of finest and learned woman in town. Look at them and chose whom you want to sleep with."
"Mom, can I keep them all?"
"One at a time, son. One at a time." Says the mom as if she had brought a brochure of shopping items to chose from.
iv. Ugh, I am tired. Make your own list, If you are/were a teenager.
It was the end of the Board Exams and a seventeen-year-old I, for the first time in life, had thought a serious thought. A few exams ago, I had found out that I have been sharing the exam hall with the most beautiful woman in the entire galaxy (galaxy because I was a teenager and I was stupid). She looked at me and I looked at her and it was the first time I had difficulty using a calculator. I deduced--I was in love. Why not? I was so good in using calculator and I had never felt that way for any girl. I mean I am pretty good with calculator. That must have been love. I became darn sure when my digestive system suddenly surrendered to her aura.
Exams were over and I was all fired up
about going to her and asking her out on a date. The plan was alright until a
childish fear found me--What if she had a boyfriend? What if I got beaten up?
She was so beautiful--I didn't think the party-loving-rich-pocket-full hunks in
Kathmandu had spared her. The best a book-loving-ever-googling-penniless guy
like me could get from a seventeen-year-old girl for a reply was--"I have
been cheated in love once. I will never trust love again. Let's be
friend." She is bloody seventeen. She doesn't even deserve to say that.
Okay, I am being a hypocrite.
'Friendship' was the last thing I wanted
to do. You cannot be friend with someone you want to make love with. Jealousy,
possessiveness and undue attraction would eventually lurk in. I, thus, told my
roommate to find a way to find out her name so that I could find her on
facebook and woo her by totally becoming someone else. It was the best
option--and the easiest one. My lousy good-for-nothing roommate came with
nothing. No name. No nothing except one vague information--that she gets off
the bus at Gongabu. I didn't talk to him the entire time we walked to our room.
It was strange.
We had finally reached our room. As always, when he was working with our stubborn lock, I was hit with an idea.
"I have an idea, Nivesh." I
told. Nivesh is my roommate's name.
"No, we are not going to break the
lock." He replied without considering what my idea was.
"No, a better idea."
"What?"
"Since the exams are over and all,
I am going to go to Gongabu bus-stand every day to look for her. She would
eventually have to take a public vehicle."
"Woah! It is a bad idea and you
know the explanations I am going to offer you." He looked at me with that
serious look.
"I am in love. I deserve to be
foolish." I quickly reverted.
"Whatever. We are having a party, tonight.”
He finally decided to tell me.
"In our room?"
"Yes."
"Our friends are coming?"
"My friends are coming." He
said as he unlocked the door. He was right. I did not have friends.
I was tired after running from shop to shop buying a variety of liquors, I was exhausted. Nivesh was rich and always hosted parties. That is why he had friends or maybe because he was rich and had no reason to not make friends and not party.
Everybody in the party conveniently ended up calling me PPT, short for Prem Prasad Timalsina. I hated the abbreviation his friends gave me but I forgave them eventually because they brought fancy resources--I smoked a cigar for the first time. While I smoked the overweighted cigarette with an overrated tobacco, I was strangely sent back to a peculiar high school memory as I kept on looking at the ball of smoke that I carelessly exhaled.
"Smoking is injurious to health and it is the best initiative undertaken by Government to make producers print an image of disfigured lung at the front of the packet. Do you agree, Prem Prasad Timalsina?" My economics teacher was a bitch because he always liked to spell my name full and humiliate me in the class. But I loved him.
"So is religion. Why doesn't
Government make temple-people put this giant board showing pictures of woman
being forced to become a Sati or pictures of children being offered as a
sacrifice?" Everybody in the class started to laugh. "Everything has
a darker side. Even peace comes at the cost of war. It took Vishnu millions of
years to finally become Gautam Buddha. Otherwise, he too was busy killing
people or making people kill each other, and throwing his wife in fire. You
cannot condemn and humiliate a consumer product for having a bad side. If you
are going to do that for only one item in this huge pool of unhealthy products
then I am going to call you a hypocrite."
"Prem?" Son of a bitch had
called me by my first name for the first time in his life. That is maybe why
the cigar threw me back to that memory.
"Did the coordinator catch you
again?" He asked. He looked concerned.
"Yes, bloody son of a gun took all
my stash. I cannot study now." I was furious.
"Meet me after class." He
ordered seriously.
Everybody in the class automatically speculated and even betted that I was going to be offered a detention for being crude in class but they didn't understand the sanctity of relationship he and I had. He had called to offer me some money to buy myself new stashes of cigarettes with those images of disfigured lung printed on their boxes.
"Do I have to buy you some?"
"No." He replied.
"Prem Prasad Timalsina?"
"Yes, sir."
"That religion thing was
good." He smiled at me as he said that and kept on nodding his head and
dived into his thoughts. He always did that.
"Hello." A girl kept on
snapping her fingers to pull me back from the trance.
"God, don't do that. You will break
your fingers for heaven's sake. Cannot I have my cigar in peace?"
"You can but I was told this was
the last cigar and I haven't had one." She innocently murmured.
I finally raised my head to look at her.
"God, you are tall!"
"Can I have the rest of the
cigar?" She asked.
I gestured her to sit down as I offered
her a deal, "You can have it, if you promise to share it with me."
"I can share it with you. My
boyfriend hasn't come and I feel like an alien in this party."
"Good." We then silently
shared the cigar as we both kept on staring outside the window to look at the
moonlit night. The day marked the end of a wonderful life for us. We finally
were getting the opportunity to become serious in life. I mean we got ourselves
time to reflect on whether we really wanted to be a doctor or a pilot or an
engineer or something else. It is funny how everybody wanted to fly an airplane
when they were young but end up counting cash in the cosy bank counter.
Somewhere, while growing up we sort of understand what kind of dreams we can
afford dreaming. It all comes down to economy. Dreams are like items in the
KFC's menu, you always end up choosing veg burger when you are alone. I blame
myself, if I had enough passion, flying wouldn't have been a problem. But I
decided, I wanted to become an MBA and not a superman.
I am more than a bird
I am more than a plane
I am going to end up being a lousy
accountant
I, was, meanwhile, wondering how the
lights in the street lamps were wrongly exhausting themselves on an empty
street. But then again I thought, "They are for the moths and the other
insects."
"I love fireflies." She
suddenly spoke.
"What?"
"I was thinking how these street
lamps are enduring injustice by having to spend their light on an empty
street." I was dumbfounded. She had read my mind.
"But then again, the moths and the
other insects might need the light." She added. I was speechless. I took
the cigar from her mouth to check if I was dreaming. I was not.
"I love fireflies. They create
their own light." She concluded. I, meanwhile, kept on staring at her face
not knowing what to say to her. I kept on absentmindedly staring at her
cigarette infected blue lips as she kept on talking.
She, after few minutes of monologuing
about emptiness in street and all, stood up to fetch some beer. "What do
you want, Carlsberg or a Budweiser?" She asked.
"Always Budweiser. Carlsberg tastes
like piss." I quickly paused to reflect on my commitment I had made early
that afternoon. "On a second thought, I will have none. You enjoy." I
concluded.
She shrank her face not understanding my
reason for refusal. She passed a strange uncomfortable smile and went to get
some beer for herself as I kept on looking at her walking away from me. I knew
she wouldn't come back so I continued the looking out of the window charade
without her.
"How did she know what I was
thinking? I mean it is brutally strange." I thought.
"What is brutally strange?"
She asked. I hadn't notice that I was talking my thoughts out loud. She had
returned.
"Nothing," I quickly veiled my
error. "So, you are back?" I added. I noticed that she had brought
herself a Budweiser.
"My boyfriend hasn't come
yet."
"Sit down." I cheerfully asked
her. "I am Prem Prasad Timalsina." I finally introduced myself.
"What?"
"Exactly."
"Did you come to Kathmandu three
decades ago with a hundred rupees note and created a business enterprise out of
it?" She asked while laughing.
"How do you do that?" I was
surprised.
"What?" She asked.
"How do you know what I am thinking
about?" I asked seriously. It was as if she was reading my mind.
"I don't know. You have a weird
name. What do your friends call you?--Prem Kaka?"
"Nice joke." I scoffed.
"Why are you not drinking,
though?" She curiously asked.
"I am in love." I replied
without even thinking twice about the humiliation I would bring to myself.
"What?"
"I am in love. I don't want to
forget her face." I said with conviction.
"What?"
"Exactly. I don't know her name or
her address or anything whatsoever. I have been told that she gets off at
Gongabu." I paused and added in a serious tone, "From tomorrow, I am
going to sit there at the bus-stop and look for her every day. She would eventually
have to use a public vehicle." I reasoned like I reasoned with Nivesh.
"That's why I do not want to forget her face."
"You are crazy."
"I know. But I am in love. I
deserve to be stupid and crazy."
"Touchè." She said as she
burst into laughter.
"Don't be that rude. You are
hurting me." I furiously screamed at her. I couldn't bear her laughing at
me.
"Okay. Okay." She again burst
into another Hyena like laughter breaching her promise. I couldn't take it
anymore so I threw my hands to cover her mouth. I, finally, after a minute long
struggle, managed to push her onto the ground. She reluctantly kept on
laughing, though. She kicked her legs in the air violently to push me away as I
was overpowering her. "PPT, you are crazy." She kept on yelling while
laughing at me brutally. I finally locked her legs with mine, and she was darn
tall, and moved my right hand to cover her mouth while I held her soft right
hand with my rough left. After a minute long struggle, she finally gave up. I
had my hand covering her blue lips while she kept on staring at me with those
helplessly hazel eyes. She was sweating and breathing heavily after tiresome
struggling. I could listen to her heartbeat from up close.
I don't know why but I moved my left hand to wipe the sweats off of her forehead but I messed her hair up in the process. I again don't know why but I slowly moved my right hand away from her mouth to brush her undone hair while she silently kept staring at me as if I had paralyzed her. My breath and hers had finally synchronized. I kept looking at her so that she didn't laugh again. I didn't realize the wrong in whatever I was doing until she moved her head to pull my lips with hers. We were kissing.
I pushed her away and ran to my bedroom and locked myself as I tried to recall the face of the girl I had fallen for inside the exam hall. I was afraid that I might have forgotten her face.
[A Few Minutes Later]
I unlatched the door to
join the party again. I was done being a drama queen. I wasn’t raped or
anything. Besides she had my cigar. I was not going to let go of that. I am
Prem Prasad Timalsina and not a whiner. God, why did I even type that?
She was not there. The
cigar lay there on the ashtray unattended and the smoke was fading. It was
struggling giving up slowly to the overpowering breeze that blew right through
the open window through which I stared at the street lamps a few minutes ago. I
looked around for her and she was nowhere to be found. Have you ever heard your
heart talking to you? Like really ‘talking’ to you. I heard it telling me where
she was as if it was not my heart but hers.
I sneaked out of the
party to not let Nivesh know, I don’t know why I did that, and opened the gate
and walked right to where she stood--right below the street lamp that I thought
was wasting its light before.
“You are five minutes
late,” she yelled with a wide smile on her face.
“For what?”
“See. I am a firefly.”
“No. You are drunk.” I
stated the obvious.
“No, I am a firefly and
the lamp said that I can borrow the light from him.”
“God, you are drunk.”
“I am?”
I stood right next to
her to check if the light had something intoxicating in it. No, it was the alcohol
she had at the party. I didn’t realize that she had dispatched one of her hands
to catch hold of mine. I tried to move my hands away.
“We two are fireflies.
And when it gets dark, I will be your light and you will be mine.”
“God. You are cheesy.”
“No. Prem Prasad
Timalsina, I am a poet.”
“Yup. One of the perks
of taking alcohol.”
She had somehow found a
way to grab my hand. She counted her fingers as she set them between mine. When
she reached five she just fell there on my arms and I was awestruck. I didn’t
know what to do. I helplessly looked at the window of my room hoping Nivesh was
watching. But he was not. I sat there on the road and carefully placed her had
on my lap and started praying. It is funny how she looked like an angel when
she was asleep, maybe it has got something to do with the street lamp that was
pouring its light upon us or maybe I became a poet too.
My legs were starting
to go numb and I had been controlling that tinkling feeling on my thigh for
past few minutes. I somehow managed to wake her up finally. She was not lucid
but lucid enough for me to walk her to my room.
It got embarrassing the
moment she woke up and realized that I had been looking at her fall asleep.
After having a few seconds long hot debate with Nivesh about whether to drop
her home or not, I had set her on my awfully undone bed. And when she woke up,
I was stupidly staring at her.
“Gosh. Why are you
staring at me?”
“I am not. There was a
mosquito.” I know. I know that it was a stupid excuse.
She smiled in return.
“You don’t know how
many cells have to burn themselves and how many pulses my neurons have to waste
to keep my heart beating, if you knew it, you wouldn’t have broken it,” I said.
It was as if I was speaking somebody else’s heart.
“God. I didn’t rape you
or anything,” she said while getting off of bed.
“You are damn right,” I
quickly replied as I realized what I had just done. I was losing my mind.
She opened the door to
get out of the room. The people at party had crash landed on the floor. She
literally had to walk stepping on their bodies.
“Where the fuck are you
going at the middle of the night?”
“Home,” she replied.
“You are drunk.”
“I am already sober.”
“Who is going to drop
you?”
“I brought my scooter.”
“Oh,” I said as I had
nothing left to say. ‘She wants to go then let her go. God, why are you losing
your mind and surrendering yourself to her?’ My heart finally spoke.
Next day, I woke up to
a very annoying set of loud knocks on my door. It almost gave me a heart
attack. I asked, read coerced, Nivesh into opening the door. I knew he loved me
like his brother and would save me from waking up at middle of the night; it
was eight o’clock, which is pretty much midnight for us.
“Your girlfriend is on
the door,” Nivesh yelled from the other side of the room.
“My Girlfriend? I was
not drunk yesterday, Nivesh?”
“Then who is the girl
at the door?”
“Damn you, if it is a
prank, I am going to kill you,” I said as I walked towards the door.
“What the…” I hadn’t
even completed my sentence.
“It’s late. It’s eight
o’clock.”
“Late for what?”
“Remember what you said
about going to bus stop at Gongabu and waiting for her to take a public
vehicle?”
God, was she crazy or
something? It was midnight. I mean eight in the morning but midnight
nevertheless.
Well, I didn’t speak
much, I just washed my face and parted my hair on the left and walked with her.
“Are you not going to
change?”
“No, I am comfortable
with who I am,” I replied.
“I mean the clothes.”
“I am not going to my
wedding, am I?”
“Well, who would marry
you?”
“I don’t know. A
firefly would?”
“Are you drunk?” She
seriously asked me that.
I am Prem Prasad
Timalsina and I wait for her every morning to pick me up and go to Bus stand at
Gongabu. She doesn’t even realize that I am in love with her and I just wake up
early in the morning so I get to see her quick because I miss her all night. I
know it is cheesy and all but I am a teenager and I cannot help it.
God, that messed up the
timeline, didn’t it? I was narrating a story that happened to me two years ago.
Well, to the readers
who realized that I was almost going to mess the timeline, ‘She cooks very bad
and I pretend to like it anyway because I do not even know how to cook in the
first place. We are living together in a very messy flat at Michigan, USA and
run a small Nepali restaurant (clichéd one with momos and all because we didn’t
want to work at Gas station). I love her
very much. I don’t know about her. Maybe she will write about it someday. She
is a very good poet.’
Did I write about when
I asked her who was the boyfriend she was waiting for at the party? Do you know
what she gave as a reply?
“Damn. I almost forgot
about him. Do you think that he will forgive me or something?”
She is crazy that way.
But I love her
nonetheless.
How do you know Carlsberg tastes like piss? Have you tasted piss? :'D
ReplyDeleteYes, sir. Replace the k in the name with v, and now that v is done you have 24 more alphabets but double i doesn't make sense, so cut that off- you have 23 letters to use- and hence 23 more best friends. Clever. Not much.
Oh. I love that bit with the religion. I had a bitchy English teacher once, and I didn't like him because he didn't know literature much (not that I did/do. But that time, I wanted to, you know, 'know' and he didn't 'know' anything much. So bad teacher equivalents a bad person.) I made fun of him because he was a shitty teacher and he couldn't do much to take revenge but give me less marks on morning assembly speeches, criticizing my awesome public speaking ability. Said I was too 'fast' (duh. I speak a very normal speed). And my Science teacher at school was an old fag and he is doing but a collateral damage by teaching but nobody cares. I wouldn't mind this Economics teacher (even though he' give me cigar).
Oh I love fireflies.
Haha. I love PTT. He is such a pesky-teenager.
And did I tell you that you are so frikkin-awesomely witty?
This was faaabbbulousssssssssss.
I haven't tasted piss but maybe Prem Prasad has. He is a pesky and an experimenting teenager (inside my head, though.) Haha.
DeleteI am trying to write a story where character communicates with the writer and forces him to write the story the way he wants.
Haha.
DeleteI find it really amazing when people write characters that is not them in any way. Subconsciously, there are times when our sentiments and thoughts overpower that of the character. Well, you are an experimenting post-teenager (but still pesky) haha.
Best luck with that writer-character communication thing-y. :D