The Farewell of Varun Shyamak

Hi All,

I had not blogged for quite some time now, and this too would not have come soon, had Gaurav not reminded me by posting on my Facebook page. Well Varun Shyamak story series had been fun but I think it has lived its time. So here I decided to finish this off by giving him a fitting farewell. For all those who have not read me before and have not heard of Varun, you can still read this story as there is not much relation between previous stories and this one except the characters, however, if you want to know more about characters you can read "Weird Weird Varun Shyamak", the first story of the series.

As this will be my last post this year, wishing everyone a merry christmas and a very Happy New Year 2011.

It was true. Varun Shyamak was finally going away. It had all started when one fine day he had barged in, looked at us, looked around for some strange object and to our surprise had announced that he had ‘cracked’ the GRE, a phrase which I always find slightly incorrect, for I have not yet met anyone who had not ‘cracked’ the GRE, for the simple reason that unlike combined entrance exams for Indian universities, GRE score is not a sufficiency but a mere necessity to get an admission to a foreign institute. Varun had found this the hard way last year and finally did not manage to get through, but this year he had fared much better though not exceptional enough to earn him an easy call. But after some exhaustive search and numerous letters he had finally managed admissions to some unheard university in South California. In South India, especially in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, it is almost customary to have a foreign degree, not necessarily a MIT or a Harvard, any ‘foreign’ would do. It is like a criterion here for how much dowry a man is worth (same being ‘Government’ job in North India).

The time for Visa processing was there and for some reason Varun wanted me to come to Chennai with him for that. Off course, Ramesh had already prophesied that Varun is not going to get the Visa. “Hey Jeet, Please yar, come with me. You know the city more than me.” He had said, as I had done my engineering from a college just about a 100 KM from Chennai and had visited the city a few times.

“No, no chance. I don’t want to have anything to do with that city in my whole life.” By chance or fate or bad luck all my previous visits to Chennai had not been good and I could only expect worse if I had Varun for company.

But then, this was no ordinary person trying to persuade me, it was the Varun Shyamak. He would never give up unless he is made to give up. He would go to the height of quoting exceptional quotes from Wordswoth, Einstein, Buddha, Vivekanada or recently even Barack Obama to convince all. So he started “See Jeet, so much of bitterness in not good for you. It’s high time you make you forget all that happened in your past in the city. I agree you didn’t have the best of your time there, but for how long you will carry it in your system. That’s why I’m telling you to come. It’s for your own good.” The theory of pseudo-righteousness and the peace of mind, works today on most people as is evident from some innocuous self-help books becoming bestsellers and pseudo-spiritual gurus plagiarizing Vivekanda’s words becoming highly revered, but then this was not a spiritual guru, nor was he a monk who had sold his Maruti leave alone a Ferrari.

I simply replied, “It has got nothing to do with it. And so still no, no chance.”

But then he was not going to give up, he continued giving me the lecture. Soon others, except Vikash, joined too. Seeing this, Varun changed stance and started proposing a group outing. “Guys! This might be our last trip together. Soon I will go, then Ramesh may follow too, even Saurav is looking for a new job, Jeet has plans, and Vikash Sir will soon move his family here and may not have time for us. Let’s go to Chennai together. My interview is on Friday then we will be free for weekend there. We can also go to adjoining places on those days. What say?” he said and paused.

“Hell no” said Ramesh and soon everyone, except Rachit, declined. Rachit had never taken a stand in his whole life so I was not sure which side he was on.

So, he left alone, and when he returned back, I slightly regretted our decision, as Varun Shyamak’s Visa application was rejected and I just missed another fun story for we never got to find the real reason. We drilled him, but the only answer he gave was “the interviewer was an asshole”. To this day we don’t know the reason as to why his Visa got rejected. Meanwhile, Varun got his interview rescheduled, this time in Mumbai and for a change his Visa application got accepted.

Very soon Varun Shyamak’s luggage was packed. Sunday was supposed to be the day we will wish him good bye (good riddance as it turned out to be). He would go to his hometown, Mysore, and will plan his travel to US sometime next month. The emotions were mixed. Varun with his weird activities had often given us moments of real fun, be it him wearing one underwear for six consecutive days and live the Sunday without it so that it can be washed and dried, or getting accused of misbehaving with a cute waitress at a Pizza joint when in reality he had just asked if she was happy or rather ‘satisfied’ with her job, or be it touching the feet of a hot female student at his first music class assuming her to be the music teacher.

On the Saturday morning, a day before he was supposed to leave, he came to us and said, “Let’s go for a party tonight”. This was unexpected and was not a good idea. Last time when he had invited us for a party he had chosen a roadside eatery and to top that at end of the meal he had refused to pay the full amount which was only 300! Friendship had turned sour for some time following that. So now when he invited us again it was fair to be skeptical.

“Are you on tranquilizers?” asked Ramesh, mocking subtly.

“What’s wrong? Let’s hang out tonight” Varun replied.

“I still remember the last time, so clarify that you pay the whole amount.” Ramesh said.

“No. I did not say that I will pay. I said that we party tonight” he said and paused to add some effect amidst the confusion, looked around and after some ten painful seconds of silence added “… each one pays his expense”

Ramesh gave him a stern look, looked around at me and then at Saurav, shrugged his shoulders, took a deep breath and said, “Tell me you sick moron, how come is this party if everyone pays his expense?”

Varun was unmoved and replied in a very calm manner, “Well, grammatically there is a difference between a treat and a party. What you are asking is a treat and what I suggested was a party. As you see a treat is a word which has its root in …”

“Ok shut up!” I had to interrupt, “we all know that you are a sick miser, so no need to modify theories to suit the facts. And I am not joining you. I have some work tonight. I have to go somewhere else in evening” I lied.

But Ramesh for some reason took the baton of convincing everyone and when he is out to convince, you can do only one thing, you agree. And so we did.

“Where do we go?” asked Saurav. Rachit suggested a place and no one agreed at first, but at the end everyone settled on that, a trend which I had noticed each time.

“So let’s say we leave at 7:30 tonight?” Vikash Sir finally said something.

“Can we leave a little early? I have a little shopping to do.” Varun almost begged.

“Seriously? You have shopping to do?” Saurav mocked, but not subtly, for on each previous occasion he had wanted to shop, it had been like we would go to mall, Varun would go to each shop, look at each thing with a kid like I-wish-I-had-that-lollypop look, and finally come out without buying anything, leaving us all exasperated.

“Even I have to buy batteries for my camera, old one is not charging. We will need it today, so let us leave early by 6:30” Saurav added. It was obvious. It seems like a mandate in social-networking era that whatever you do needs to be captured to be put on Facebook. It is but obvious that at a time when everyone spends the majority of his or her time contemplating how to make his or her life more Facebook worthy, capturing the moment has become much more important than actually living the moment.

So we agreed to leave by 6:00 P.M. And ready we were by 6. Varun had again pulled out his age old green T-shirt, too small for him and having a lame slogan stating “I am going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes”, his rugged, and by rugged I mean rugged with overuse, low rise jeans, which scarcely hid the underwear he had been wearing since Monday.

We took the Volvo bus despite some opposition from Varun, who was of opinion of travelling with normal bus, as it ‘costs less than one-third of volvo’. Once in a volvo bus in Bangalore you can see three types of personalities. The silent ones, who will be in majority, will just sit idle, sometimes with earphones to shut everyone out, and not care about anyone or anything and occasionally showing a lot of frustration with traffic. Next there will be a few confused and excited types, most of them new in city and somehow believing, “wow, this is amazing”. Thirdly, and more importantly, there will be ‘I-cannot-live-a-moment-without-show-off’ types, whose only agenda will be to show off, foolishly believing that people are really interested in them. These will either be talking loudly with co-passengers giving gyaan to everyone around, or talking super loudly on phone so that everyone knows about how important they are, and if they happen to possess one, they will be pulling out and I-POD or a smartphone and using it with an eye of an aesthete, intermittently looking around to see the effect on co-travellers, as if they are the only ones who possess that. Varun belonged to the third category.

So Varun started endlessly talking about U.S., his future plans, American food, American girls, American universities and whatever he could to ensure that everyone around him knows that he is going to U.S. Saurav and I wasted little time and moved to a seat as far as possible to avoid hearing his droning monotonous voice, but then there was no respite, for right in front of me sat another guy, who was talking loudly on the phone about his miserable job. In some 20 minutes of the ride, I came to know that he works for oracle, his job sucks, he wanted Java but got .Net, his seniors at work suck, he has now got an interview with google (which I doubted), a girl is flirting with him (I doubted this even more), and all such fucking details without talking to him once. I was mighty relieved when my stop came as I was on the verge of snatching his phone and throw it out and ask him if he has no one at home to talk this stuff to.

We had to cross the street to go to the mall. The only rule to cross the street in this city is look left, look right and run for your life and thank god when you are done. Before we could cross the street, Varun said, “Hey I need to find out about the air tickets from Bangalore to Mumbai next month, I will just check with the agent and come” and pointed to a small board on first floor of a building which read ‘GEO travels’.

“Why don’t you book this over the internet?” Vikash had made the mistake of asking him.

“No, internet banking is not safe; you know recently there was an article in the paper …”

Before Varun could complete another excellent piece of information Ramesh interrupted him, “Ok Ok! You check and come back fast”.

Varun looked angry on being interrupted but simply walked off without a word.

Fifteen minutes passed following that but there was no sign of Varun. I called him and he said “That fellow was asking too much commission, I am checking at another place and will be there in 2 minutes”. Another twenty minutes passed but he did not return. We tried calling but he did not answer. Saurav then said “I think I will go and get the battery for my camera, in the meantime. Rachit, why don’t you join me? Ramesh, you give me a call when Varun comes and then we can decide.” Both Rachit and Saurav trudged off and Harpreet joined them too.

“This guy is a pain in the ass. Jeet, I think we need to remind him of Jog Falls before he leaves” Ramesh was getting irritated every passing moment.

“What Jog Falls? He never joined us for that trip. It was Coorg” Vikash Sir said. Off course, he was unaware as to why he did not join us, which in fact was known only to Ramesh, me and obviously Varun.

Finally Varun appeared after some five minutes but before we could heave a sigh of relief, we saw he was running and three people were running behind him who caught a hold of him by scruff of his neck soon and there seemed to be a heated argument around.

“Let’s see what is going on” Vikash sir said and as we were about to rush, Ramesh said to me, “Let him be on his own, let us get out of here.” Before I could say anything Vikash Sir gave us stern looks and we reluctantly rushed towards him. I wish I had taken Ramesh’s advice that day.

“What happened? Why are you manhandling him?” Vikash Sir tried to raise his voice amongst the confusion. They ignored him and simply went on arguing in language which was greek to three of us. I pulled one of them aside and asked “What is wrong?”

He replied in a husky voice “He said Bangalore-Mumbai ticket book maadi. I booked, and now he is not paying and after we asked him to pay he was running away”

“I never told to book the ticket. He did it by himself” Varun shouted.

Before we could figure out anything they again went into alien language fighting mode. Ramesh tried to free Varun from their hold and said “Let’s talk decently here, why you people are manhandling him?”

But one of them pushed Ramesh and asked him to mind his own business, which invoked anger from Vikash and me as well and we too started arguing.

One of them who seemed sensible tried to defuse the issue. “We do not want to fight. Just ask him to pay the cancellation charge and the commission and we are done. How can you ask us to book the ticket and not pay for it? It is 3500 bucks ticket and 300 is our charge, however at least pay the 1000 Rs cancellation charge.”

“Why should I pay?” Varun had found his voice again and looked much more brave as he had got us for company.

“Why did you ask to book it then?” the man asked.

“I never asked to book. I simply asked to reserve the ticket” Varun replied leaving all of us stunned.

“What is the difference between book and reserve?” the man looked clueless

“Reserve means I just wanted to block the tickets for a day” Varun had done it again.

“Let’s get out of here. Leave this idiot here to sort it out with them” I whispered to Ramesh and Vikash but they did not follow.

“You pay him the cancel charge or you take the ticket, anyway you had to take it. And it is your mistake, reserve and book do mean the same thing and firstly, domestic tickets cannot be blocked” Vikash Sir made a sensible suggestion but Varun seemed to be determined to mess this up, so he continued arguing and in to time police was there to settle it out.

Now we could not even walk out as they have asked us to stay too. A big fat policeman with a monstrously large belly seemed to be in charge. He listened to both sides and it was obvious who was wrong, and to add to that he might be also getting a share from the shopkeeper every month.

He came to us and to our horror said “Handcuff all of them”

“What? Why all of us? There is only one here who did the fraud” I panicked.

“You all came together right? And then all of you have been seen fighting. Take them all” he replied.

“What is your problem? We never fought. We were just asking what is wrong, you just take Varun.” Ramesh said in a very high voice which clearly did not amuse the policeman.

“You are shouting at me? I am your father’s age and you are shouting at me” he said. I don’t know he was sarcastic or emotional.

“Sir, how much do you want to end it here?” Varun was speaking again!!!! Even a thief does not want to be called a thief in public and here Varun had offered bribe to a policeman in public.

As expected this pissed him off. He held Varun’s collar and pulled it upward and said “What do you think? I will make you learn all the lessons tonight in lockup”. Saurav and Rachit had also come in meantime and had understood and did not want to get involved.

“I will pay the ticket cost” Vikash sir said, “please finish it off here, There was just some confusion”. The shop owner agreed to not press any police complain if he got the amount. Varun said “Why are you paying, I will pay”.

“Fuck off!” Vikash Sir said, two words I had never heard him use before

Thought he policeman did not like Varun questioning him the amount, he asked me to silently slip 2 five-hundred rupee notes into his pocket, which I immediately did and they were gone in no time. As soon as they disappeared and Vikash sir moved in the shop to pay him the money, Varun said “I will pay Vikash sir later. Sorry guys, but it was not my …” before he could complete Ramesh punched him hard right in the abdomen and mouthed an expletive and walked off leaving Varun reeling, while Harpreet and Saurav ran behind him to calm him down with Rachit watcing silently from distance.

Varun soon recovered from blow, “What is this attitude?”

“We were about to be handcuffed because of you” I said

“So? They were just looking for money” he was dangerously nonchalant.

I could not bear it and I pushed him hard and he fell on the ground. Harpreet ran and stopped me. I said “Just get lost from here. Do not come near me again before you leave”

“I would love to choke you to death. Don’t you come near me too” said Harpreet pointing his finger to Varun and then he asked me to leave from there and he was about to leave with Ramesh and me when Varun again spoke “Hey guys let’s forget it. Let’s not spoil the occasion. Let us go to the party now.” Of course this was not taken lightly but then something amazing happened. Something which we never thought we would ever see in life. It was Rachit who jumped out and ran and tackled Varun to ground and kicked him in butt twice before Saurav pulled him over. For what we have known Rachit he had always been someone who did not get angry and did not take stands. Normally in such situations he would start laughing aloud leaving everyone aghast. And to add to that the sight of a lanky 48 Kilograms person pouncing on a rather healthy person weighing over 70 and dusting him to ground was something I had never seen before.

Tears rolled down Varun’s cheeks. Rachit was fuming still and somehow all of us apart from him started laughing. Vikash Sir had paid and come back by then and he too had seen the cat-fight and even he could not hold back his laughter.

We never went for the ‘party’, we all returned to home leaving Varun there who came back after some time. Some people chose to put the incident behind and did wish him luck when he left for good the other day. I was not one of them, neither was Ramesh nor Harpreet.

We have neither seen Varun nor heard from him for more than a year now as none of us kept in touch with him through any medium, my last memories of him being, Rachit standing over him after dusting him on the ground. We never came to find out whether he paid Vikash Sir the money for that air ticket. However, it would be a lie to say we did not miss him after that. For whenever in future we look back at our first two years in that city most memories will be of Varun making it all go wrong. The plans never got executed, we did often end up in places we did not want, but overall it did give us some unforgettable memories.

Varun Shyamak and his Musical Mistake

Hello All. It seems like the Varun Shyamak is really catching up. The last story was read by more than 100 people and when you consider that when I started this series there were only a total of around 10 readers, it has gone a long way. Special thanks to Avinash Sir, Unmesh and Gaurav to originally come up with this idea of same character with different stories. In case this is your first visit to my blog you can know about Varun Shyamak after reading ‘Weird Weird Varun Shyamak’ or other stories started with the title beginning from Varun Shyamak. Whatever Varun Shyamak does leads to a comical situation. Just imagine what will happen if one fine day he wakes up and wants to be the next rock star and play the Guitar. If you can imagine it, do read on :



Yes, Varun Shyamak did this. He did it. He had just done something that could make all my theories on him being one of the sickest misers on the face of the earth go wrong. If Ram Gopal Verma starts making good movies, Chetan Bhagat starts writing like Jeffery Archer or Zayed Khan learns acting this would still be the most incredible thing to happen in this decade for Varun Shyamak had just bought a shining new Guitar, yes a first hand, shining new guitar from his own money. For a person who used to wear one underwear for 6 days and live the Sunday without it as long as the washed underwear dries in sun and who still used his school time water bottle to store water, buying a guitar is like a cosmic event that happens once in a millennium and it was not an electronic guitar but the one which works without electricity (I have no idea what this version is called). As we kept on looking incredulously at him for an instance and the guitar at the other, he had taken the guitar out, sat down on the stool with his legs crossed and was holding the guitar striking an expert guitarist pose.


He kept sitting in that pose looking outside the window for some 5 minutes without striking the wire. Finally someone, I don’t remember who it was, asked, “Varun! How come you got interested in Guitar?” He looked up as if he had just been woken up from a dream of Mallika Sherawat, gave a smile, looked in some other direction and after some 30 seconds replied “Music is just ‘cool’. People who can play an instrument specially the Guitar are considered very ‘cool’. True story!”


I am not sure of the validity of his statements but one thing I am pretty sure that these two words ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ (was originally kewl) have confused an entire generation of age group between 14 and 34 and made them do stuff which they would had not done in good sense under normal circumstances. Not very long ago these terms were only used for weather, food or other such stuff but now it is used to tag people as likeable or not likeable. So you have girls literally starving themselves to get a size zero, a number which we hated when we were in school, guys forced to smoke, to wear low waist jeans and branded boxers, forced to follow soccer leagues and shout Man U, Chelsea, Rooney shit and walk with a swagger with I-POD or a poor cousin of I-POD stuck to their heads and listening hard rock(no pun intended) music just for one particular reason and that is a feeling to be ‘cool’ and more precisely to be ‘like others’. Hitting the gym is no longer a way to stay fit but it is a means to the end of wearing skin hugging clothes and walk as if the whole body has been tied in bamboo sticks. To add to the confusion these terms do not have a clear-cut definition. To be like most others is ‘cool’ and to be different is also ‘cool’. Intelligent person can be called ‘cool’ or called a ‘nerd’; loud mouthed morons who talk with ‘fuck’ and ‘ass’ in every sentence can be called ‘cool’ too. Thus it gives rise to another set of people who do neither of the above mentioned things but look sane and sober even when they are drunk, for they feel that is the way to be ‘cool’ or the other reason is that either they are too lazy or too busy to hit the gym and walk like both legs running in opposite direction causing the body to sway in different directions. For them, social networking sites come to rescue. They will spend hours to find a suitable status update and then refresh the page every 5 seconds with the hope of a comment or a like and this process will repeat multiple times a day.


Varun Shyamak was no different in the fact that he wanted to be cool, but with Varun obsession is not a mere obsession but it transforms into desperation. He had done everything in his power to appear different or ‘cool’. Of course he was too miser to hit a gym or buy an I-Pod. For him the idea had been to sound intellectual and look intelligent. He was often seen carrying around magazines like Frontline, Business today, and Discovery channels journal or National Geographic journal and he managed to read at least one article which he would bring out at a later time in a public place but sadly enough none of heads would ever turn when he started whining of the new economic policy or how monkeys have a weaker heart. Of course he always had a copy of Debonair just under his pillow but fortunately he did not discuss its content in public. Then for some time he had turned into a facebook addict hoping this would get him the attention of opposite sex that he so desperately needed. He would update every minute details like “Getting late to work, but can’t find my shoe police”, “The traffic in this city sucks. The metro is becoming a must”, “Just screwed up at work. ****** boss is pissed up” and this would continue the whole day. However, he stopped it after some 3 weeks when he realized that he did not receive any ‘like’ or any ‘comment’ on his status. He had done everything in his power but he was as far from being ‘cool’ as Arjun Singh is from sanity. But now he has gone out of his league. He had spent more money that he had spent in an entire year preceding it on this instrument not because he wanted to learn it, but he wanted to look cool.


“Why don’t you play it?” said Rachit who had till now been eyeing the Guitar like a kid eyes a lollypop.


“I have learnt ‘Addicted’ on Youtube. Will you like to listen to it?” said Varun.


“Sure. Play it” said Saurav.


Varun placed the guitar in his lap, wiped the strings looking at them with the eye of an aesthete. He then put the straps on his shoulder and again held the Guitar like an expert, looked outside the window at some strange object as if praying at that divine object. We waited patiently for around 1 minute when he finally struck a note. What followed was 2 minutes of utter torture in which Varun closed his eyes and played a tone which in no way looked like addicted and with it he was also trying to sing ‘addicted’ in a fake accent. I had occasionally heard Anu Malik singing ‘Dekho Barish ho rahi hai’, I had seen Sunny Deol dancing and I had seen two Ram Gopal Verma movies in a single day, but I had never felt like throwing up like I did that day. And to add to that Varun seemed to be in no mood to stop.


I had had enough after those two minutes. I said “Ok Ok!!! Stop Now. Enough.” He stopped looked around probably expecting an applause. He waited for some more time and said, “You people want to listen ‘Kal ho na ho’, I learned to play that too and I know the full lyrics.”


“Varun! We know you are singing, you know you are singing. But, for neighbors it may appear that we are torturing you.” As soon as I said it Rachit got a fit of laughter attack. He held his stomach and started laughing hysterically and after some seconds he was sitting on the floor still laughing inconsolably while Saurav and Ramesh tried to pick him up laughing themselves while Vikash was chuckling silently.


Varun looked rather nonchalant even as others were bursting out. Finally the laughter resided and Ramesh said “It’s not bad yar! Tomorrow let’s say if he loses his job Varun can play this thing on roadsides and I am sure people will have to pay him to stop.” Listening to this Rachit got a relapse of the fit he just had and this time even Vikash Sir giggled.


Varun looked humiliated but either he had got used to it or he did not have balls to hit back, so he kept quiet and kept adjusting the Guitar in different position. Finally Vikash Sir said “Why don’t you join classes if you really want to learn it?” Vikash Sir always liked to play the big brother role to us and would always give advice on everything and we would generally take it without a second thought and mostly it turned out to be the right one. But then this was not Ramesh, Saurav or me, it was Varun. He said “No need to do that. You can learn it on Youtube. The classes charge around 1000 per month for only weekend course and it generally takes more than 6 months to learn it.” I looked at Ramesh and gave him a ‘here he goes’ expression.

Varun was not finished, “You see there was recently an article in The Week about a person who learned a lot of things on Youtube” Now Ramesh looked at me and gave me the ‘here he goes’ expression as Varun continued, “that man learned musical instruments, driving and lot of such stuff from Youtube. He also learned how to handle wife’s pregnancy by it.”


There was no point arguing him so I, Saurav and Ramesh slipped out to dinner silently leaving all of them to settle it among themselves. While on the way we met Harpreet who was returning after another long day at work. We informed him that Varun had bought a Guitar and he was shocked but then said, “Ha! He must have borrowed it from someone or stolen it.”


“No he showed us the bill and it was duly packed” Saurav informed.


“Someone must have gifted it to him” said Harpreet.


“Nai yaar!!! He has bought it. Remember only predictable thing about him is unpredictability” I said.


“How on earth do you come up with such remarks” said Harpreet and I just smiled back.

“Anyway, you people carry on. I had my dinner in the office canteen” he said and walked away.


We strolled around for an hour or so after dinner and came back around 9:30 and we saw Varun and Rachit sitting heads bent into Rachit’s laptop. When I reached closer I saw that they had opened Youtube and seeing the video of a man playing the Guitar and playing some unrecognizable tune. Varun was trying to imitate it and producing some different harmonics which only he and Rachit were able to understand. Ramesh shook his head and went out to balcony and lit his cigarette. I joined him there so did Harpreet, although both of us did not smoke. Suddenly, Dipti, the girl next door appeared on her balcony, seeing whom Ramesh threw his cigarette and adjusted his hair very subtly. I signaled her ‘hi’ and she smiled back with a ‘Hi’. Ramesh followed suit and got the same reply. Our interaction with her was limited to that ‘Hi’ only even though she was living here for last 6 months, as she lived with her family and her father was a retired Air Force Lieutenant, and we did not want to screw things up. She always seemed cheerful and was a perfect girl next door, not exactly gorgeous, but nice homely look and very beautiful eyes and she always wore Indian outfits. Whenever we looked at her she smiled back and always replied to our greetings, but then once Varun had tried it and she had straightway walked back inside. Well this wasn’t entirely her fault. Varun was not a jerk but often girls took a first look at him and drawn their conclusion that he is one of the biggest jerk available on this planet, for Varun always looked like contemplating and his eyes always wander in different directions and it appeared that he was always drunk and to add to that his tone of speaking is like he is instructing and not talking.


She stood there for quite some time seemingly enjoying the calm winds. Suddenly Varun came there with his new instrument. She was about to leave but she stopped and looked intently at the Guitar without saying any word. Varun behaved as if he had not seen her even as her eyes were fixed on the Guitar. Ramesh and I looked at each other as if saying to each other “Shit, it works.”


Varun also thought so and he started in a fake English accent sounding like a Tamil anna speaking Punjabi “You know Guitar is just Physics. You see when this string is struck it produces
harmonics and causes a resonance in wood. Now, if the harmonics are formed correctly it is music and if not it is noise. Isn’t it strange? Everything is Physics. Why don’t you people give it a try?”


“Varun, why don’t you play it? Play that song again.” Ramesh had caught him off guard.


“I have been playing it for more than an hour now. My fingers are hurting” Varun cooked an excuse and was still talking in his fake accent.


“Please Varun, just one song. Play the ‘addicted’ again. I insist” I said.


“Yar Jeet, it’s more than 10 P.M. and it is illegal to play it now.” He said and this time he forgot to speak in that fake accent.


We kept on requesting him and he kept on refusing. All the while Dipti looked very amused as if fighting to hold back her laughter and she left finally. Varun looked crestfallen but he did not say a word. We went back to our rooms to sleep feeling victorious.


Next morning while I was about to leave to office Varun stopped me, “Hey Jeet, Can you do me a favour?”

“Yes tell me.” I said knowing full well that this was not a good idea.

“In your way to your office there is some teacher named ‘Kajal’ who teaches music somewhere just near the Accenture building. Can you just find some information about it?”

I was getting late so I did not ask what made him change his mind and promised him that I will do that. However, I forgot totally about it while I was coming back and so when Varun asked me about it when he came back I had two options. One, tell the truth and two, make it fun. Truth that is not fun is useless. So I cooked up some facts. I told him, “Yes I found out by some students and she teaches very well, but she is very strict. Remember when you go there touch her feet and also before entering open your shoes. Remember, she has a very short temper. If you don’t do these things she will not take you as a student.”

“Oh is it? How about the fees?”

“She said that she will talk only to the student and she has many options available and you can choose which one you want.” I was going on making facts and he believed it. You may be having bitter feelings as you read this, but let me state this fact if I fool someone once then it is shame on me, twice then shame on the person whom I fooled and more than twice then you have to agree that either I am a genius or that person is dumb. So in both cases it is not me who was at fault when you consider what happened on the following Saturday.

The following Saturday I had woken up late and was slowly going through the daily routines when around 11 A.M Varun came to my room and asked “Hey Jeet! Can you do me a favor?”

I hate when people ask me this question. Of course, I CAN do the favor but what if I don’t WANT to do it, this question should be as ‘Will you do me a favor’ but anyhow I replied “What?”

He paused. Looked around and waited another 10 seconds to reply “I have asked Vikash Sir for his bike. As I don’t know how to drive can you drop me to the classes? I want you to come because you have already talked to madam. And I will pay for the petrol. I know you may not want to come by bus this early so I asked for bike.”


I had no intention to go but I could not miss seeing Varun touching the feet of the teacher and making her freak out. But there was a twist. It was a fact that even I did not know at that time and it was that the teacher was not Mrs. Kajal, and no no, it was not even Miss Kajal, but it was Mr. Kajal! I don’t know why some men keep names which sound girly, names like ‘Mehndi, Tulsi, Bindu, Anshu, Sonal and even Dimple.


So, as Varun said I took him there and parked the bike. He requested me to come in as well which I would have done anyway. I had drawn a mental picture of Varun going and touching her feet making her shocked. Varun did everything as explained by me. He opened his shoes and placed them aside, even as others walked by wearing their shoes and looking at him incredulously. He asked me to open mine but I said “I am not a student so why should I” fighting hard to hold back laughter.


When we went inside we saw a lady sitting in the center holding the guitar. She was wearing a traditional white Salwar Kameez and was sitting in the posture of a music goddess. We both had confused her to be the Kajal Madam. She looked much younger that what I had anticipated. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was drop dead gorgeous with a pair of most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. I thought it would be even more fun and signaled him to touch her feet. Somehow Varun was idiot enough to do it even as he saw some twenty others not doing it.


The lady seemed aghast as Varun charged towards her with hands folded and as he bent down and even before he was able to touch her feet there roared a sound of a thundering slap and Varun’s spectacles were thrown away. Suddenly a lot of other students caught hold of him and the girl was complaining that he was misbehaving with her. People were calling call “Kajal SIR”. It was then that it dawned upon me that Kajal was the name of a man. Not sure what to do, I picked out the best option. I silently fled from there.


As I was about to start me bike and rush, I suddenly saw Dipti standing there. She waved me ‘hi’ and after looking around that her father or any guard was not there I moved my bike towards her and asked “Hey Dipti! What are you doing here?”


“I learn traditional dance here.” she said.


Suddenly the picture became clear to me as to why Varun bought a Guitar and why he chose this class. I silently laughed as again his master plan had gone begging.


“And Jeet what are you doing here?” she asked.


I was amazed that she knew my name; of course she may have overheard it just like we had overheard her name. “I came here to drop my roommate who wanted to learn Guitar.”


“You mean that jerk guy who keeps making strange faces” she said rather innocently.


“What! Why do you think so?”


“I don’t know. He always keeps looking with …eh … with those eyes” she said widening her eyes and drawing her nose forward slightly.

“Ya, but those are his normal eyes” I said and smiled and also looked back to confirm he has not come back. She laughed at this remark and I asked “Hey how are you going back?”

“I will take the 335E” she said pointing at bus stop.

I said “Hey you want to come with me. I am going straight home. If you don’t mind I will drop you.” She hesitated and I added “Don’t worry you can pay me the same amount you pay for that bus. You see, I am a little hard on cash” I said and winked. She laughed and sat back on the bike and I added “Don’t worry I had met just two accidents and in both cases the person sitting behind did not die” and to which she replied, “There is always a first time” and then added “but you drop me some blocks before my house, otherwise, you don’t know my father.”


I did the same. We talked some stuff on the way and I let multiple calls from Varun go unattended in the meantime. She gave me her number as well but I never called back as I was petrified by her father although Ramesh and I sent her a few messages in a week, and we stopped it as soon as she SMSed that her dad asked who were ‘Rama’ and ‘Abhilasha’ the names with which she stored Ramesh’s and mine number respectively all the time.


Varun came back in the evening and I expected that he will be pissed at me and we will have a big fight. But he pulled me aside and simply asked me not to tell anyone about it. He also recounted what all had happened after I ran away. Kajal sir had come and Varun had explained him the event and since he found it rather amusing, they let him go. Also he told me that that girl had apologized after that, a fact whose validity I am not very sure of. I spent some time laughing about what had happened. Varun looked angry but he did not offend me. I think I also apologized to him about what happened although I didn’t really mean it.


Next day Varun sold back his Guitar at 70% of the cost he had bought it and then he never bought any musical instrument again. I felt slightly guilty for it but then the whole event was too funny to feel bad for him for a long time. I promised him I will not talk about it to any living soul and I did keep that promise. Anyhow I had never said anything about writing about it for I have to write about it, for it gave me one of the biggest lessons in life, which was ‘never assume that names have a gender’. Had I known Kajal was the name of a man the whole story could have been entirely different. But then great mistakes are always born from small mistakes. True story.

Varun Shyamak and the Haunted House

Hello All. Off late whatever I am writing is turning controversial whether it is the last story or even a simple facebook message against snobbery and hypocrisy.
So, I decided to go back to writing stories involving Varun Shyamak, the character which has become mine and I hope a lot of yours’ favorite. In case you don’t know him, you can read about him in the previous stories “Weird, Weird Varun Shyamak” and “Varun Shyamak and his theory of job satisfaction”. However this story is an independent one except the characters. So it is not mandatory to read them but in case you want to know the characters better. Ghosts, supernatural beings etc. are some things we often discuss, but with Varun Shyamak it can go weirdly wrong. Writing about ghosts is more difficult than seeing a horror movie. Reading a little about para science led me to such case studies that virtually had me terrorized and tormented. I won’t spoil the story with more details. So, read the story and leave your comments. (And if somebody’s name is Varun or Arun or Tarun, etc. I am very sorry to use a similar name and please do not expect any more apologies).



It had been more than three weeks since something weird has happened, which is like an eternity if you happen to have a person like Varun Shyamak living in your house. Everything was just going normal, except for at times, Varun will suddenly smile at some strange object or laugh all of a sudden (it was still normal for most of us) but mostly he looked disconnected as if living in a different world and had to be constantly pulled out of it by someone. But then no one was complaining. “Sometimes monotony is better than adventure” Saurav had said when I notified him of the time that has passed since Varun’s last antic. But deep down inside we all knew that it was just the lull before the storm, and in fact the more time that passes like this the bigger the storm will be, and thus we were not surprised at all when we were woken up in wee hours in the morning to the harsh cries of Varun.


The IPL 2 season was on at that time and on that night Mumbai Indians had famously choked against Warne’s Rajasthan Royals and lost the game by 2 runs despite needing just 4 of last over with three wickets left and as expected we had started to smell things fishy. It is strange and funny that how amazingly good we are at conspiracy theory. We kept on talking for hours about the game. Varun had been silent this far, looking outside the window at some strange object and intermittently smiling. We ignored him as we had got used to it. We did not realize that it had been 1 A.M. and all of a sudden Varun said “Guys!”, and then he paused for some 10 seconds. Looked outside the window again then looked in and said “Its 1 in the night. Don’t you people have office tomorrow?”

“Yes, it’s better to catch up with some sleep. Guess it’s time we say good night” I said as I got up to head to my bedroom.

“Wait Jeet! I’ll come too” said Ramesh as he too got up and walked towards me and added “Good night all. Sweet Dreams Varun!” and winked back.

Harpreet, Ramesh and I had our rooms on the first floor, while Varun, Rachit, Saurav and Vikash lived on ground floor. We all moved to our rooms after wishing each other good night.

I went to my room, cleaned some mess that was lying on my bed and went to sleep. I had hardly slept when I heard a loud shout from ground floor. It was Varun crying out frantically. I initially thought I was hallucinating and tried to go to sleep again but then I heard him again. I got up, put on my shirt and rushed downstairs and on way I also met Ramesh who did not even cared to put on his shirt and rushed in his vest. When we reached Varun’s room we saw Varun sitting on the edge of his bed, his back to the wall, breathing heavily and carrying a horrified expression on his face. Vikash was sitting by his side looking sleepy and weary. Saurav and Rachit were standing nearby simply looking at Varun. Saurav was yawning while somehow Rachit looked fresh and he had got enough time to get his spectacles on. After a while Vikash asked “What happened, Varun?”


“Don’t talk to me. Please, don’t talk to me” yelled Varun, all the while having the most animated face and moving his head vigorously in to and fro motion.
Ramesh and I looked at each other, and to say the least, Ramesh looked irritated. Harpreet joined us soon. All of us were confused, as to why Varun was shouting. Even though he was Varun Shyamak, one always believed that there may be a limit to his weird activities, and then this whole thing looked like a mystery. His vocal cords may have just woken up the whole colony and now he wasn’t willing to talk. Harpreet picked up a bottle of water and passed it to Varun who gulped it down in no time. After some 5 minutes of utter confusion and heartburn Ramesh asked “Dude, what’s wrong?”


Varun looked fixedly out of the door for some fifteen seconds and said, “Well let’s go to sleep. Let us talk about this tomorrow.”


If I had a camera I would have captured everyone’s expressions at that precise moment. Everyone had a different expression to show the frustration. Saurav simply frowned and shrugged his shoulder and looked away. Ramesh looked as if he had just been robbed of some prized procession. I clenched my teeth and could feel my body get stiff with anger. Harpreet nostrils blew out a fume of anger and his eyes looked blood shot red and wide. Vikash simply placed his hand on his face and shook his face suggesting a “no, not again”. In all this Rachit had not forgot his sense of humour, he was desperately trying to hold back his laughter. He somehow managed to see the lighter side of everything, a quality which eludes majority of this world’s people.


After waiting some time Ramesh said “For fuck’s sake Varun, you woke all of us at …” he looked at wall clock and continued, “3 A.M. and now say you will talk about it tomorrow. Tell us what happened.”

“Seriously, you don’t want to hear it now” Varun replied.

“What is it? Tell us” I said.

Varun shivered slightly, he looked towards the door and after some 10 seconds said “Our house is haunted!!!”

When he heard this Rachit started laughing as if he got possessed by some witch craft and by god he laughed loudly. I don’t know what funny thing he found in ghosts but he continued “He He He He” despite all of us signaling him to keep quite. Saurav slightly pushed him and told “Shut up!” all the while trying desperately to hold back his laughter. Rachit paused, pulled a stool and sat down and to our horror started laughing again. He finally stopped after some 2 minutes. His laughter had suddenly lightened the environment. All of us were struggling to hold back our laughter. Ramesh had drawn his lips inside and curved his mouth slightly to cover his expressions.


After Rachit had stopped, Varun said “It’s not funny. I swear our house is haunted. It has ghosts of two girls.”


Suddenly Rachit started laughing again and this time even Vikash and Saurav can’t hold back. Harpreet was smiling, while Ramesh and I were chuckling silently. It continued for some time till Varun said again, “Guys, it is not funny. I swear there are two spirits in our house. Believe me, I saw two girls who came and were knocking my door and then they walked towards Vikash’s door and knocked them too” He shivered again and sweat beads were forming on his head.

“Were they hot?” Ramesh asked and Rachit was about to laugh again before Vikash gave us all a stern look and somehow Rachit controlled. Vikash then place his hand on Varun’s shoulder and said “You must have dreamt it”


“No I saw them. They were chit-chatting and laughing. One was tall and the other was short.” Varun said.

“Varun, in all fairness, why would the girls come to you and Vikash? Vikash is already married and you are well … Varun Shyamak, and also when there are people like me, Saurav and Jeet, already in the house. What say Jeet?” Ramesh winked and put out his knuckles towards me and even though he mentioned me last in list I still bumped my knuckles on it.


“Shut up!” Vikash told us and said “Varun, you must have dreamt. You are reading all these parascience journals for all past week. It has got cluttered up in your mind”


Parascience is a branch of study that aims to define the paranormal activities using scientific tools and techniques. Ghosts, spirits, witch-craft and black magic are some topics which have been beyond any human reasoning and logic. There are people who simply accept it, some simply deny it and then there are people who simply question it. The work of dealing with these was mostly left to mystics and godmen till the previous century, but then some scientists with the help of some research universities (Stanford University is believed to be the first one) decided to make a living out of it and thus started the study of these phenomenon sometimes in late 19th century. However many scientist still question the methods and basis of these research and even the status of parascience as science has also been disputed as there has been no conclusive evidence despite of over a century of research. But then people often find discussions over these activities very enchanting.


Over the past week Varun had got very much involved reading about parascience. He was picking up journals and web-postings of such experience and each day he will come to haunt us with a new scary story ranging from a unfinished love to a brutally killed young girl. He had once given us 10 ways in which one can see ghosts. None of us ever tried it. One of the weirdest ways however was the one he told for girls and he claimed that it always works and had been accepted by discovery channel as well. It was like “take a big mirror. Exactly at midnight, light the room with very very dim light. Light a candle in front of the mirror. Sit infornt of it and comb your hair and say three times "BLOODY MARY" while gazing into the mirror and u can see a girl with blooded clothes in it”. I asked many of my female friends to try it but none of them did. I once asked him “Why it is that only a few can see the ghost while some cannot?” and Varun gave us all a detailed explanation. He said “You see human sense organs are imperfect. We can see only certain frequencies”, he gave some more details about what frequencies we can see and what we cannot and added, “Now these paranormal sightings emit certain frequencies which our brain cannot decode. However with some people and in under some circumstances, as in some disease or abnormal condition our brain is able to see and decode these frequencies. Some people have trained their brain to decode these, while some parasychologists have certain equipments to measure these frequencies. There are ways by which you can train your brain to decode these”


I hated talk about waves and frequencies as these very concepts had almost stopped my degree but then that is getting away from the story. The point is Varun had for some reason got too much involved in this topic and now he was claiming that he has seen not one but two ghosts. I don’t know whether he had just managed to decode the frequencies or he was just hallucinating or he was simply doing this to attract attention. Knowing him any possibilities could not have been ruled out.


“Guys I did not dream. There are two spirits in our house” Varun was pleading.


“Ok! Let us talk about this tomorrow. I suggest we move on to our rooms. And Varun if you are still afraid, you can sleep with the lights on” Vikash suggested.

I wanted to ask “How come sleeping with lights on going to help. You can just see something more clearly with lights and I don’t think one will want to see ghosts more clearly” but I did not.


We moved back to our rooms to catch some sleep. It took some time for all of us to go to sleep. Even though it came from Varun Shyamak the idea of having two ghosts watching over your shoulders is a scary one. I don’t know when I managed to go to sleep but when I woke up to my harsh alarm clock my head was spinning and I had a strong desire to go to bed again. However, I got up and went to work but was unable to concentrate the whole day. But then it was a Friday, and no one noticed it. On a Friday everyone looks in a mood to not work. Some are plain tired after four grueling days; some are overwhelmed with the thought of a great weekend ahead, while some are grumpy as they might have to work in weekend. I don’t know which category I belonged to that day. May be I was just worried that this may be the beginning of another Varun drama and as it turned out I was not entirely wrong.


I hung around with some other colleagues for some time after the office and finally returned home around 9 P.M. only to find Varun sitting on his bed while others surrounded him. He was still looking scared and there seemed to be a heated conversation going on. I ignored them and went to my room changed and then came back and pulled a stool to sit besides Ramesh who was looking bored and disconnected. I asked him what had happened, and he said “Same old crap, this asshole is still saying he saw the apparitions and saw them again in early morning at around 4:30. Now he had also found out from neighbors that some 6 girls used to live in this house some 10 years ago. Two of them named Pinki and Preeti had died as a bus had rammed their scooty from behind while they were on way to work, following which others had left the house. Now he says that their spirits are in this house”

“When did you find out all this?” I asked Varun.

“Last week. I am telling you this house is haunted”

“Now that settles it. You found about this before you claimed to see them. You are just a victim of chemical imbalance bole to chemical locha of Lage Raho Munna Bhai. You have been thinking about this all long and then you’re over obsessed with paranormal activities. You just saw what you wanted to see.” I said

“No, I am telling you I did see them not once but twice.”

“FFS Varun, we are living in this house for almost a year now, and a lot of people have lived in this house in the meantime. Why do you think their spirits will come back all of a sudden to haunt us?” I said

“Maybe they were always there and we did not feel them. We might have felt them but our ignorance comes in way of fact. If your cup is always full and if you try to add a little more liquid into it, the liquid will leak out. To understand or learn something you first need to empty your cup. We would simply have thought that we are dreaming or hallucinating and slept. And you know I told you about imperfectness of our senses. First you need to get the doubts and pre conceived notions out of your mind to understand this.” Even though he was scared he was still at his intellectual and philosophical best.


“In that case ignorance is bliss. I would rather not understand something which makes me scared and miserable.” I said.


“Jeet I think what Varun is saying may be not totally baseless” said Saurav and added “Now that I learn it I realize how many times I have heard footsteps or my stuffs getting misplaced and sometimes I have even heard sounds of giggling and at times even sound of payal. But each time I dismissed it as some random noise coming from outside or to my dreams.” Said Gaurav

I had heard something called ‘mass hysteria’ but I believed it happened only with masses but now I was seeing a completely different picture. Till now we were happy in our house and in fact had a lot of fun in that apartment but now with a little knowledge people had turned apprehensive. Suddenly Rachit also said he had also heard all this and, probably for the first time since I had known him, Varun Shyamak had got a lot of support.


“Let’s go for a walk. We’ll talk it over.” Said Harpreet.

We went out for a walk. Varun was behaving erratically and Rachit and Saurav remained silent. I pulled Ramesh aside and asked “What is wrong with them? They are over reacting. I hope they don’t ask us to change the house.”

“Abe yar, even I don’t get it. We have lived here for so long. How come all of a sudden this?” he said.


“Varun has got hallucinating and now somehow he has got everyone believing stuff that might not even exist” Harpreet added.

I repeated Harpreet’s comment to Vikash, who was anyway about to vacate this house once he got his family in town. He said he had not felt anything but he could not rule out the possibilities.

We were back to square one when we reached home. I tried to talk them out of it “See guys, even if their spirits are there it is pretty sure that they don’t want to hurt us. We have lived here for almost a year and had the time of our life here. Nothing wrong has happened. So let’s just live as we used to” I knew this would not work and it did not. No one will like to live in a haunted house even if the ghost are that of Mahatma Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln.


“No man! We never know whether they want to hurt us or not. It’s very risky to take a chance.” Varun said.


“Get your head out of your ass Varun. Just because of your baseless fear, you are willing to leave the apartment. And I don’t even believe that there is a ghost or rather two ghosts in our apartment.” Ramesh said.


“I am not saying that we leave the apartment, but we can at least work to get the spirits out of our house” said Varun.


“What? Are you serious? Varun, if the ghosts are there do you think you will go and say them to leave and they’ll leave” Ramesh said.

“They must be here for some purpose. If we can find that and do that for them they will leave the house and go to their world”

“First of all I don’t think there is any ghost in house, and then there is no way to find out” said Harpreet.

Varun looked around and said “Yes there is.”

“What?” I asked

He waited as if he wanted to have some build up to his answer. He looked out of window as if asking some divine answer and looked back and said, “PLANCHIT”


There was a moment of silence. Perhaps no one wanted to comment. Planchit or Planchette is a technique to interact with spirits. I had seen it in movies where some college kids try it out just for fun, lighting some candles, placing their fingers on a coin and chant something to call a spirit, finally spirit comes and coin starts moving. In each movie something goes wrong and tragedy follows.

Finally Saurav said, “No we are not doing that. It is very risky. I don’t want any black magic here”

“This is not black magic Saurav, it is science. I have read about it and I can do it if some of you help me” said Varun.

“No Varun! Saurav is right. It is very risky. Bad things can happen. I will not advise doing this.” Said Rachit and this time he did not laugh. I had not seen him serious any time before this.

“But guys, this is the only way out. We have to solve this problem, we just cannot wait and watch” Varun was not in a mood to let it go. I had a wild thought that Varun had conjured up all this just to make us do planchit but knowing him I didn’t think he could have strategized so much for it as he would simply had talked us into it. I was still not sure whether something was really wrong and to me it still seemed it was Varun’s figments of imagination, his tired brain was showing him what he wanted to see. Ideal thing to do would have been to take him to a psychiatrist, but now he had also infected Saurav and Rachit.

Saurav said “No. No such stuff here. Why don’t we just leave this house and look for another one? I am afraid and I am not ashamed to admit it. I don’t want to come in way of spirits” all the while he looked agitated, something which none of us had seen before. This idea of leaving the house led to one of the most bitter and biggest arguments our group had ever had. After some time I think we also lost track of time and space. While Harpreet, Ramesh and I were firm that there was nothing wrong in this house other three except Vikash, who was not willing to take sides, were convinced that house was haunted. I don’t know how long it went on when finally Harpreet said “Well let’s do it then. Let’s do the Planchit. Varun I will help you.”


There was some silence, following which Ramesh said, “Ya I’m with you too. What say Jeet?”

This question had left me stumped. I had no intention to get involved with spirits. I was afraid but admitting it was going against what I was standing for, and moreover it would not have gone with my ‘dare it all’ image which I had worked so hard to obtain. I was sure same was the case with Ramesh. Most people who are fearless are not actually fearless but just that they don’t want to show their fear to lesser mortals who look upon them. Rachit and Saurav had silently given their consent but they made it clear they will not be a part of it, but they will just sit and watch. And it was on…


Varun had now turned instructive. This was the moment I am sure he would have cherished. He had wanted this feeling of importance for a long time now. He wanted a moment when he can instruct us and we would actually listen to him. Many a time he had tried and failed, miserably, as whenever he had tried to overrule us in any field there would come out someone better than him in that. But now no one was interrupting him and he was continuing in a very serious and stern tone. As he went “Listen, this is a very high risk technique, so I need all of you to concentrate. Please don’t take it lightly as it may lead to something horrible. This act has to be performed between 1 A.M to 2 A.M as that is the time when air is at its calmest. Now its 12:00 A.M, so we can start in one hour. All we will need is few candles, a few incense sticks, a plain A4 (I don’t know why he mentioned A4) sheet of paper, and a coin. We can make the board only just before we start it. We need to cut down all light and close all doors and windows. No fans as the technique required absolute calmness of air. Is everything clear?”

“What will be on the paper?” Rachit asked.

“The paper will contain a circle in center, two circles marked “yes” and “no” on two sides of it. And then there will be segmented concentric circles which will contain all English alphabets and digits 0-9. Something like this” He went on to portray the design on a piece of paper.

“Hey what if the spirits are illiterate” said Ramesh and let out a laugh putting his fist out in a high-fi position towards Rachit, but he stopped almost instantly after realizing that no one was in mood of jokes and very quickly he put down his hands.

Varun continued, “Now there are three important facts to keep in mind. A)..”

“Seriously Varun, why the hell are you talking as a professor?” I don’t know why I interrupted him.

“This is important. A) Your concentration on this is very important. If ever your mind wanders to anything bad or evil, that’s it. You have to concentrate and only call the correct spirit.”

“How do you know the spirit is correct, it may just act to be correct” Ramesh again interrupted and though he made a valid point, he still laughed. Different people have different ways to deal with nerves and perhaps laughing aloud was his way.

“Please listen, this is important. B) Once the spirit comes, never ask the question as to how it died. This pisses them off”

“Oh man! Pissed off spirit!!!” Ramesh mocked and was about to laugh again but stopped as Harpreet and I gave him stern looks.

“And most important C) If you see the candle flicker, it is time to say good bye. Just don’t waste time and say good bye because it means the spirit has just got mad”

“But this can also happen due to air” finally Vikash had said something.

“No it can’t. Remember fan is off and all windows and doors are closed” Varun said and this time we had to agree.

“Let’s get started. We need to make a circle with candles at regular intervals and big enough to seat all of us inside it. One candle needs to be in the center. Also burn the incense sticks all around the room” Varun had suddenly seemingly lost all fear and looked rather enthusiastic. He was shouting instructions like an army chief now and for the first time we were actually following.

He drew a giant circle on the floor. He called it some name as in circle of something which I don’t remember. “We need to light some 8 candles and incense sticks are a must. Now listen to me carefully” he paused, and then after some haunting 20 seconds said, “Whatever happens, don’t leave the circle between the procedure, and also do not remove your finger from the coin.” He paused again and then said, “Any mistake can prove fatal” and then he gave a seriously comic pose of seriousness mixed with fear.

Well, I had been chased by cops for breaking traffic signal; I had been chased by dogs when I entered a protected area; I had sat behind Ramesh on a bike, but never ever in life before this I had felt this scared. I had just said a silent prayer, “Oh Bajrang Bali!!! (I don’t know why I chose his name), if I get out of this, I will live my life differently”, I also made a lot of other promises. Ramesh was nervous too as was evident from his 'out of context' laughters. “Where do we get candles and incense sticks from, I have one or two, but not so many.” said Harpreet. “Don’t worry, I have them” said Varun as he opened his cupboard and took out a packet containing all those stuff. Some piece of paper fell down; Harpreet picked it up and slipped it in his pocket after examining it. Varun slowly started placing candles at regular intervals and I could not help noticing that despite all of us being agitated he looked rather calm and composed, and I appreciated it at that time. Ramesh wanted to light the candles but Varun stopped him saying “No not now! Just before the act and after all lights are out. It is 12:30 now and we will start in another half an hour. Try to relax as we all need to concentrate very hard.”


“I will join you, I need to make a call” said Harpreet and left out. I wondered whom he wanted to call, his parents, his brother or a girl friend about whom we had not heard yet, but I did not ask him. I was feeling suffocated so I too took my leave and went to my room, washed my face and lay down for a while. I still did not want to do it but I could not pull back now as it would have made me a laughing stock for the time to come.

Finally I got up and went to Varun’s room. When I reached there the whole setting looked very gory. Lights were out and Ramesh and Varun were slowly lighting the candles. Harpreet joined us soon. Vikash, Rachit and Saurav were sitting a little away scared but interested none the less. Harpreet walked to them and said “If you are not doing it please don’t sit here. It may be risky. I just asked someone, people who are not in circle may get possessed. So you people go to first floor lock every door and window. Also, while we are doing it you may hear a lot of noises may be of some of us yelling and calling you, but remember, it is a mirage. Don’t even think about coming back here before morning”


They looked disappointed but still followed what Harpreet had said. Varun had finished setting up the candles and incense sticks and was working drawing symbols on a sheet of paper. Finally he said “Now enter the circle.” We were about to do it but Harpreet said “Wait! Varun, would you mind explaining this?” and he took out a piece of paper and passed it towards us. I took it and read it by getting it near the candle light and soon Ramesh joined too. We got it. Varun reluctantly came out of the circle and took a look and after getting it looked stumped. It was the bill of one dozen of candles and a packet of incense sticks, but the important part was it was dated a week back. Harpreet took Varun by his collars and lifted him slightly up and asked “You bastard! You set this up. Didn’t you? Just because you wanted to do this weird act you made this whole thing up.”

“What? Nooooo!!! I did not do it” said he.

“They why in the world did you buy so many candles in a city, where power seldom goes? A miser like you spending money on such stuff” Harpreet said.

“What? No! I just bought this for …” before he could complete Harpreet said “Shut up! Guess what! I just called Vijay and found out that in this house a family had lived for past 12 years, then it was occupied by some students for some 1 year and now we are here. No mention of girls.” Vijay was the son of house owner.

Varun was stammering now. A small piece of paper had brought down his empire. He was trying to come up with something convincing and said “He lied ..” but before he could complete Harpreet said "and I had asked about this from the neighbors’ son who FYI is an Engineering student and is awake till now"

Varun was running out of ideas and now out of a fit of depression said “I am not lying. I really saw th..” before he could complete I pulled his collars and landed a tight slap on his right cheek with my left fist. I don’t know what had happened to me as I repeated it two more times and said “You asshole!! Just because you wanted to practice this weird act you made this up. What the hell did you think, it is some kind of a game”

Ramesh had also had enough, he pulled him up by his hair and smashed his fist in his rib cage and followed it up by a series of resounding slaps on both his cheeks, all the while saying “You bitch, I will kill you today”. Varun’s horn rimmed spectacles had been thrown away. He shouted and I am sure others listened but no one dared come down as they had taken Harpreet’s warning seriously. Harpreet Singh may be a sardar but he was awesome with ideas like these. Varun finally freed himself from Ramesh’s grip who was bent on slapping the crap out of him and tried to run towards the door, but Harpreet stopped him and landed another slap on his face and this was probably the hardest and loudest one coming from a well over 6-feet and weighing around 100 Kgs sardar. Varun collapsed and fell down on the ground. Harpreet picked him up by his collars again and asked “Tell the truth or die” Harpreet’s face looked red with anger and his eyes burning with rage and Varun had no plans left. He said “Yes I made it up. I wanted to try this out but I needed at least 2 more to try this so I tried to talk you all into this. I am really very sorry”

As soon as he heard this Ramesh went berserk. He ran towards Varun and punched and slapped him multiple times. I finally had to pull him off Varun and he said “Asshole! Bastard! Just because of him we had a fight. What the fuck did he think he was trying?” He again freed himself from me and charged towards him and kicked Varun hard on his buttocks and I again had to pull him off.

Varun’s face looked aghast and tears rolled to his cheeks. He had made an excellent plan but just a small mistake had made it go all wrong. Had he just been careful enough to confirm some details and buy the candles on the same day, we might just have done the act and then things could have been completely different. But then Titanic was sunk by a small hole.

Next day we told the others that there we did call the spirits and they told that they came here just once in a year and have no intention of hurting us. Saurav called Varun, who had left early morning to spend weekend in his home town, and he confirmed that our house was no longer haunted. We lived there for another year before we all left the city and nothing remotely scary happened in that house again, in case you don’t count Varun Shyamak and his weird activities. Noone else came to find out what had happened on that night. They considered us their heroes for all that time, a fact which I am not sure I am really proud off.

Well I don’t know if ghosts and spirits do really exist but then I don’t really want to know. Just let’s say I am neutral about them. I have neither intention nor courage to dwell in this unknown world of paranormal activities. Perhaps it is just fitting that some things just remain a mystery which never gets unfolded.

Footnote: Never try Planchit. It is a dangerous act and need to be handled expertly. I have tried it and had a bad experience and I don’t want anyone else to try out. In case if you really need it get in touch of an expert.

Varun Shyamak and his Theory of Job Satisfaction

Hi all. This one comes after a long time and has been written in only one night. I got a response from a lot of you that you will like to read a lot more of Varun Shyamak and the other characters. However, this story is completely an independent story but with same characters. Still I would like you to read the story http://bakwaswani.blogspot.com/2009/10/there-are-strange-people-then-there-are.html to know the characters better.

Many of us has a philosopher inside us and love to give a lecture now and then, but with Varun Shyamak things can only get weird when he decides to philosophize job satisfaction and theory of Happiness. Well this is a more of a spontaneous story that I have written so there may be a few mistakes here and there, but I still hope you will like reading it.
Also I would like to thank all of you who read the last story which was one of the most challenging piece I had written. Before you read this piece I will appreciate if you cast your vote in the poll I have created which you can see on the right hand side of the blog.
Waiting for your comments.


“What do you know about frogs?” Varun asked me.

“Frogs?” I repeated. I had no idea, why I listened to Varun or so as to why do I even hang out with him.

“Yes, Frogs. You know if you take some water out of a pond in which frog lives and put it in a jar and place the frog in it, what happens? The frog will happily live in it, even as you slowly start heating the water. It will not retaliate and it won’t try to jump out. Slowly the water will start boiling and still the frog won’t jump out. And finally it dies fat and happy. Interestingly if you had placed the same frog in already boiling water it would have straightaway jumped out and escaped.” Varun explained. This was Varun at his philosophical best. Off course this line might not has been his own but from one of the numerous magazines that he had read.

“So?” I asked.

“So I want to say that even we are a little like the frog. I mean most of the time we don’t realize that we are in the jar and we smartly develop an attitude of adjustment, and before we realize our lives are messed.” Varun was disturbed and mentally unstable, but it was totally understandable. If someone has to work from 6 A.M. in morning to 6 P.M. in the evening and add to that the office being on other end of the city which takes 2 hours to commute, even an angel would have turned grouse and Varun was no angel. Add to that the sleep deprivation and excessive pornography and you have a perfect recipe for insanity which Varun Shyamak was. “Just look at us. We all are stuck in jobs that we don’t like, we are away from our families and living in a real mess but we have just got so accommodating that we happily accept it. We are not really happy.”


“Yes. Right.” Said Rachit, but this was more out of a habit rather than agreement. Rachit had a habit of saying yes to anything without thinking. He would say “no” only to plans of a fun weekend or to a better dinner that would make him move his ass out of the building and more often than not it was only because of him our plans would get rachited. He was a geek in his domain but outside it he was just someone who either had no opinions or never wanted to express his opinion. If you say him Domino’s is way better than Pizza Hut he would say “Yes. It really is” and just then someone would walk in and say Domino’s Pizzas taste like chapattis in comparison to Pizza Hut he would again say “YES!!!! Dominos Pizza is really bad.” Someone had once told me that people who always agree to everyone are really dangerous for they are masters at manipulating people and will often end up getting everybody to do what he or she wants. It didn’t seem to apply at all to Rachit but slowly as we started hanging out together more, I had silently realized that the advice was totally right for I had often seen all of us landing in exactly the same restaurant or movie which he wanted despite the fact that the initial verdict for that place being 1:9 and what was more surprising that no one would ever notice it.



“I think you are going overboard with it Varun. It’s true that we don’t like working but then you don’t need to like your work for after all it is work. It doesn’t really matter that how much you like your job as long as you are good at it and if they pay you well, I think it is fine. At the end of the day you have to do some work to earn a living even if it is not to your liking.” Vikash explained. Vikash had started his career as a lecturer in an Engineering college and had moved to corporate world very recently, but he still loved to give a lecture now or then.
“Yes! That is right Vikash Bhaiya” Rachit said. In my opinion Rachit had the most satisfying job among us, but still he didn’t seem to be happy with it. He was working for Intel and was into chip design, something which is a dream for every two out of three computer engineers. But for him his problem was nostalgia, rather than a dissatisfying job. Being a Mommy’s boy staying away from the family was haunting him and though slowly he had resigned to his fate, he still wished to go back.
Ramesh had just walked in. The clock showed 8 P.M. and this being a Friday night all of us were quite relaxed. Ramesh pulled a stool and sat beside me. Rachit sat down on Vikash’s bed with Vikash leaning on his pillow at 45 degrees. Saurav was standing by the wash basin preparing to shave and has been uncharacteristically quiet till then. “What are we talking about Abhijeet?” Ramesh asked. I narrated him the story of the Varun and the metaphorical frog. Strangely none of us remembered why we started discussing this out of the blue.


“Seriously yar! We are not totally happy with our lives; we just go on accommodating with it. Recently there was a study to find out which are the world’s happiest countries and India was as low as 71, while some really small country Vantau was number 1.” Varun was not letting it go.


“Ok! So what is the great Varun’s definition of Happiness?” I had had enough of his speech.


“Happiness in my view is living the life on your own terms. If you do what you want to do and not what you are supposed to do, then you will be happy with life. What say Rachit?” Varun continued.


“Yes. You are right.” Rachit said.


“This is the most ridiculous definition of happiness I have ever heard. You are linking job satisfaction with happiness? This is insane. There are millions of people in the world doing menial jobs, many are unemployed, many of us don’t exactly end up getting what we truly deserve and according to your definition no one is happy.” I couldn’t take it longer.


“Yes! Right” Rachit repeated.


“Shut the fuck up” I shouted at Rachit. “Do you ever cross anyone? Why are you so much in love with being so diplomatic?”


Rachit started laughing without any reason and continued for some time. Very few people knew that Rachit was a white collared criminal. He would make fun of everyone behind him but in front of him he would be a sage. I bet if at that time I had told Varun that Rachit once told us that Varun eats like a rabbit Varun would never have believed me.


“No I am not saying Job satisfaction is only prerequisite of happiness but….” Before Varun could finish, Ramesh shouted, “Shut up! Enough of the frog and rabbit metaphors. You know you are sick. You just want importance and this is why you want to sound intellectual. Just because you think you are not happy with your life, you want to make sure that everyone else starts feeling so.”
Well, Ramesh was right. Varun Shayamak wanted everyone to be like him. He had bouts of depression which he tried to cover up by making everybody feel miserable or by turning into an intellectual philosopher and then he had this never say die attitude no matter how much stupid it gets.


He was still not willing to lose this conversation, so he still continued “It is not only about me. Are you people happy with your lives? What say Jeet?”
“Of Course, I am” I said, “I work for one of my dream companies even though I don’t quite love the work I do, I get a good salary. I have a girlfriend who though not exactly hot, is very beautiful and I have parents who understand me. What more do you want to be happy?”


“But, what about your dream project? Your plan to change the world and to make this world a better place. And what about you Ramesh? You wanted to be the opening batsman for Indian team? Now are you really happy working for a Bank?” Varun said shaking his head to and fro in simple harmonic motion aka the Simple Pendulum we studied in school. Varun for some reason had decided to get under our nerves that day, and he is sort of person who only has a start button, and there are no buttons for pause or stop, and the only way to stop him is to pull the plug.


Saurav did exactly that. “Let’s leave it for later. Let’s go out for dinner tonight. How about Pizza Hut?” Saurav said. He had carefully chosen the expensive hotel knowing full well that Varun, the miser will defeat Varun, the philosopher.
“Ya. Let’s go” I said getting up and Ramesh followed suit. Vikash sir also agreed.


Varun looked crestfallen. He looked out of the window for 10 seconds, smiled at some strange object for some time and then added “Well let’s go to U.S. Pizza no. At the same price you can have more Pizzas.”


“Yes. U.S. Pizza is also near. It has also started Pizza buffet. Pizza Hut is very far. Too much of a walk.” Rachit said. Now, one fact that often went unnoticed was that if Varun rated 9.9 out of 10 in miser rating scale, Rachit was also around 9.88 but he very subtly managed to cover it in a veil of laziness and nerdity. Very few people noticed that Varun despite being proclaimed miser always ate outside more than once a week, the same being more than a month for Rachit and Varun may had had watched more movies than Rachit. Finally decision was made. All of us, except Rachit and Varun, left for Pizza Hut while leaving them to go for cheap Pizzas, which we even doubted they would.


While walking to Pizza Hut Saurav asked, “Why do you people even get into argument with him? This guy is a jerk, he should be ignored.”


“I don’t know why I do it or why do I even hang out with him.” I said.

“Same here” Said Ramesh.

“However the example of frog in boiling water was classic” Vikash said.

“Totally!!!!” I replied.


“What about Harpreet? Haven’t seen him tonight.” Saurav asked.


“He was in room man. His job sucks big time. He had to make some presentation and thus is working whole nights.” Ramesh replied.


“Then maybe, Varun should have approached him with his Shayamakian school of Happiness” I added.


“Exactly!!!” Vikash added.


We cracked some more jokes as we went to Pizza Hut, had some Pizzas roamed around in the mall some time and returned to home around 10:30 P.M. We did not find Rachit and Varun and we were surprised that they actually went.


“Strange. Varun actually did go.” I said.

“Maybe he remembered the hot waitress at U.S. Pizza” Ramesh winked.

“Anyone wants to watch a movie? I have some CDs” Saurav said as he passed us a bag of CDs. We were checking the CDs when my cell rang. It was Rachit. I picked up “Hey!” I said

“Where are you?” he asked, as I heard a lot of noise in the background.

“We are at home. Why?”

“Come to U.S. Pizza. Fast”

“Why? What Happened?”

“Varun Shayamak and his job satisfaction theory. Come fast I will explain you here” he hung up.

“Let’s go. Emergency” I told all. We rushed to U.S. Pizza only to find a lot of people surrounding some table. I asked one of them what had happened. That man, well in his fifties, gave me a ‘you young people’ look and told “Someone misbehaved with waitress”

“What?” we all called together. Well Varun was desperate but we could not believe he could have done this. We forced ourselves through the crowd, to see Varun being manhandled by two waiters, his shirt spoilt with salad and Rachit standing at a little distance and to our amazement he was inconsolably laughing.

I approached him and brought him to the side and asked “What happened?”

“He He He He He……” he went on laughing.

Ramesh pressed his neck and told “What happened? Tell us.”

“He asked the waitress… He He He He”

“What did he ask?” Saurav asked.

“Are you satisfied… Ha Ha Ha Ha.”

“Then. Whats’ with that?” I asked.


“He kept staring at her….ha ha ha ha….at her….ha ha ha ha” we understood and he added “and asked ‘Are you SATIS…FIED ... haaahaahaahaaa…all the while staring at her….ha haha ha he he he he. She smashed the salad bowl on his … ha ha ha ha …head..he he he he” he continued to laugh.


I had to do something. I and Ramesh went to the waiters and asked one of them what has happened. He recounted what Rachit had already told us and they told that they are going to call the police. Varun said “Are yar, I just asked …” before he could finish, I took him up by his collars and said, “Shut up! Is this the way to talk to a lady? She is doing a job here” and I gave a sympathetic look to the hot waitress standing in the corner with her beautiful eyes moistened. “Go and apologize” I pushed him.


“But…”

“Shut up” Ramesh shouted, “Just do as he says” and he pushed him again


“Just apologize and run from that door, run as fast as you can and don’t stop before you reach home”, I whispered in his ears as we pushed him to the waitress.
Varun went near her, looked as far as possible from her and said, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you” and then he suddenly ran and by god, he ran fast. He disappeared in moments.


Ramesh went towards the waitress and said “We are sorry. Our roommate is insane, we can’t help it” He deliberately didn’t refer to Varun as friend.

“You don’t need to be sorry. It’s totally fine” she said clasping her hairs.


Ramesh looked at her and said “You, however, did the right thing by hitting the bowl on his head. I like this attitude. You should rather have hit the hot Pizza Pan on his head or drop that melting cheese into his... ears.”

She laughed and before Ramesh could continue, I whispered in his ears “Enough of the flirting. Now run before something else goes wrong and she puts the melting cheese in your ...”, I didn't complete.

“Hey! We need to go. Catch you sometimes later Miss ...” I said.

“Komal…” she replied.

“Ya, Miss Komal, see you then”

“Sure. Thanks” she said.

As we walked back, Saurav said, “Jeet, you people are too much man. You pulled Varun out of an embarrassing situation and then went to flirt with that furious waitress”

“Forget it! Just some fun” Ramesh said and winked.

“Well I hope Varun will never talk about job satisfaction again” Vikash said.


It turned out that he was sadly mistaken. When we returned home, we heard Varun shouting frantically and the sound was coming from Harpreet Singh’s room. We rushed to his room and the last scene we saw was Harpreet slapping Varun repeatedly and finally pushing Varun into the bathroom and locking the door from outside.

“What happened?” Rachit asked him.

“I haven’t slept from last three nights working on this fucking presentation and on top of this, this asshole comes and asks me if I am happy and he talks about some fucking frog, a lizard or something and asks me if I am satisfied with my job” he said as he switched off the bathrooms light, “Noone, takes him out of here tonight or I will kill him”
Varun started crying and shouting frantically, banging the door and calling he is afraid of the dark and something something in Kannada. Vikash tried to open the door but Harpreet was in no mood and he stood in front of the door and said “Sir! No! I respect you but you don’t.” His eyes were red, his nostrils fuming with anger and he looked dangerous to say the least and we knew that no one can dare stand up against him and we rather reluctantly returned to our rooms. Varun shouted some more time before Harpreet told him that if he shouted once more he will come in and thrash him again.
So Varun had to spend that night in bathroom and we learnt two very important lessons of our life. One, never mess with a hot waitress no matter how cute she looks, and two, never screw up with an already screwed Sardar. And then I thought about it, that why did we hung out with him. Things never went as planned when he was around. Plans got spoilt, Bizarre things happened and you didn’t always end up at the place you had wanted to be, but still we had no idea why we even hung out with him. To this day I don't have an answer.

Weird, Weird Varun Shyamak

Before I get on with the story, I would like to thank all the people who read and gave their comments on my previous story "Pursuit of Madness". Some of you preferred to use mail rather than giving your comments here. I would still like you all to leave your reactions on blog, no matter whatever it is. Some of you felt that it was a true story, which it was not. True, some names matched with people but it was coincidental. Even this story may use names that may sound heard. So I would like to confirm that it is a fiction work and please do not draw parallels. So read on and enjoy. And also Wish you a very happy and prosperous Diwali...



There are strange people, then there are stranger people and then there are people like Varun Shyamak. I met Varun when I was staying in a men’s hostel in Bangalore some one year back and we were friends for some six months. A Chemical Engineer from Mysore, he was as weird as weird could get. All his activities ranged from funny to strange to bizarre to hilarious to irritating. He would repeatedly talk to himself, laugh all of a sudden and most of the time appeared to be in a different world. His mood swings were mysterious, as one moment he will sound jolly, sober and intellectual only to become depressed and idiotic in the next. One day he will go and spend a lot of money on inconsequential things and the next day he will turn a miser and not even spend a penny. He was psychotic about cleanliness of room and will often land into verbal duels with roommates over it. At times he would wake up at 1 A.M in the night and start reading newspaper intently much to the chagrin of his roommates. At times he will switch on T.V in late night to try his luck on some channels. Some of the roommates still swear that they had caught him doing it in late night. One night he had also woken up shouting in middle of night for some reason which still remains a mystery. In short, he seemed to be a nature’s prodigy, but still for some reason he was a good friend to have for he seemed to be of a clean conscience.
But things reached an extreme when we planned a two day vacation. While we were planning where to go, Varun said to me, “Hey Jeet, how about Jog falls? It’s a nice place and I have been there before.” He preferred to call me Jeet rather than Abhijeet which was my name or Abhi which others preferred. Saurav and Rachit, who were his neighbors, appreciated the idea. Ramesh who happened to be our organizer for each such outing took it upon himself to make sure that more people join us, which he believed would be a memorable one. When Ramesh is out to convince people, you bet he will be successful, and this time was no exception. He made sure that his friend and colleague, Harpreet Singh, a well buit Jat from Haryana with a great sense of humour and jolly mood, joined us. Along with them, Vikash Kishore, the senior most among us, also agreed to come. He was the only married person in the hostel and was here for a short term before he shifted his family to Bangalore. Vikash Sir, as we affectionately called him, had a very subtle sense of humor. In my words, he could peel the skin of other without him noticing it. Ramesh, meanwhile arranged a Qualis for the trip and also got the list of places that must be visited along with the order in which they would be most economical. This was his specialty, the awesome knack of getting things done. The trip was to start at Friday night and we planned to be back by Sunday night. “This is going to be great. We will remember it all our life”, Varun had said. He was serious.

The car arrived sharp at 10 P.M on Friday and with it started Varun’s mellow drama. While everyone got seated in the car in 5 minutes, Varun was nowhere to be heard of or seen. Ramesh tried his cell fanatically just to get no response. I and Rachit went to his room only to find him sitting and watching TV, with a shoe cleaner in his hand, as if he had forgotten how to clean his shoes and was waiting for some divine intervention. I wanted to shout but held myself back as it is never a good idea to start a holiday on a negative note.
“Come down Varun, everyone is waiting”, Rachit begged.
Varun looked up as if he had been woken up right in the mid of a dream. “Yar, give me two minutes. I need to clean my shoe” he said.
“You should have done it earlier”, I couldn’t hide my irritation.
“Yes, but it would have got dirty by now. I always clean my shoes just before wearing” he said. It was very difficult to argue his logistics for he added some subtle reason for all his weird activities.
“Ok. Hurry up! We will wait in car. Come down fast.” I said.
“Ya! I will be down in two minutes”, he said.
We went down and sat in car. Ramesh was getting frustrated each passing moment. Finally after five minutes, he shouted, “Whose idea was it to bring this jerk with us?” I pointed to Saurav, who was sitting very innocently in the back seat. “Fuck you! This guy will create trouble everywhere. He will play spoilsport at all occasions. We will want to do something and he will be counting pennies or will be giving his ideologies.”Ramesh prophesied. Ramesh didn’t like Varun and he had his reasons. Some time back Varun had invited four of us, comprising me, Ramesh, Rachit and my ex-roommate Sushant to his treat as he had got a job. Though the hotel was very small, in fact it was more of a roadside eateries, we still agreed and after dinner the expenses came to just around 300 bucks. But what happened after that was simply incredible. Varun refused to pay the whole amount. He paid 100 Rupees and said, “I put in 100, now all of you put in at least 50 each. 100 Rupees is enough for the party.” As expected it had infuriated us and the relation had got strained. Sushant never talked to Varun again after that. Ramesh was always bent on pulling his legs with vengeance rather than anything else. I and Rachit however tried to remain same despite that, but still even we couldn’t forget that.

After waiting another fifteen minutes, Saurav decided to go and look for him again. I accompanied him to Varun’s room, where we saw him frantically searching for something. Saurav asked him what had happened. “I can’t find my magazines. I kept them somewhere yesterday. I’ll just find it and come.” He explained rather calmly.

“Are yar! Everyone is waiting for you. Leave the magazine. Come now” Saurav protested, probably feeling guilty to include him in the plan.

“Just two minutes yar. There is no need to hurry. We will reach in 5 hours drive. I will just find the magazine and come”

“Leave it yar. Buy some magazine on the way.” I was beginning to get frustrated.

“No that magazine is expensive one and is not available everywhere. Just give me two minutes. You sit in the car, I will be there soon.”

“Ok come soon or we leave without you” I could stand it no further.

“Why are you behaving like that? I am just asking for two minutes” he said too calmly for comfort.
Saurav left and asked me to join him, which I did, thereby diffusing a potential bomb. “He is a freak and sure he is needed on the trip for more fun.” Saurav was trying to cheer me up.

On seeing me and Saurav return without Varun, Ramesh lost it. He said “Let’s go! Leave the weirdo. It’s more than half an hour. He is not a VIP.”

“He is searching some magazine and says he will reach in 5 minutes” Saurav said rather apologetically.

“Cool down Ramesh. You know those types of magazines are his medicines. He can live without food, not without them.” Harpreet said, in his typical casual humorous style.

“Correctly said Daljeet!” Vikash Sir said. For some reason, he could not remember Harpreet’s name and each time he called him with different name ranging from Preet to Paramjeet to Manjeet. I was sure that this wasn’t accidental and Vikash sir had very innocently found a way to rag Harpreet.

“Come on! My name is Harpreet. Har—pree—t. Please sir.” He said holding his head.

“Oh, I am so sorry, Parmeet” said Vikash and this had everybody including Ramesh burst out laughing, while Rachit started rolling.

“Are yar! Let’s start without him. Fuck Varun” I said as the laughter died down. The driver too was getting impatient for I could see him playing with the key.

“Right. It’s 10:45. We have waited for him more than 30 minutes now. Whoever wants to wait for him can get out and wait. We will leave now.” Ramesh said.

“Let’s wait five more minutes Ramesh now that we have waited so long. And you do remember how much fun we had when we went to Koorg and he was there” Vikash sir was trying desperately to cool him down.

All of us had gone to Koorg some time back where Varun’s weird acts had made it a memorable one. Most of the time we had kept pulling his leg and some great banter were exchanged. Above all it was Varun’s comedy of errors that had really given some hilarious moments. While all of us marveled the natural beauty from the car, Varun spent it sleeping on mine or Harpreet’s soldier. Even when we got down at some places his attention was more on skinny beauty rather than Scenic beauty, a memorable one being one at Raja Seat. While all of us where engrossed in watching breathtaking scenery, Varun spotted a beautiful girl, rather a beautiful woman, who walked to other side of the hill. Varun said to us “Let’s go and see the scenery from there” as if we didn’t know what scenery he wanted to see. We disagreed but Varun, slowly followed her path, while trying to show as if he wasn’t. He put one finger in nose and slowly and nonchalantly continued in her direction very innocently, still believing that no one knows what he is up to. His fore finger was in his nose and he was seeing the lady from corner of eye and somehow still believing that no one can understand what he is doing. Vikash Sir looked on and joked, “His fingers are either in his nose or his underwear”. As he disappeared, we kept an eye on him using our binoculars. We spotted him standing on the edge of a cliff some 20 meters from the lady, and trying desperately to strike a cool pose. He had put his hands in the pocket and was looking straight at the horizon with the eye of an aesthete. The lady, however, seemed to give him no attention. Finally after trying for around 10 minutes, he gave up and came back to our place and said intellectually, “Are yar! We have come for a tour. Don’t sit at one place. You should go and check out all places. View is also very beautiful from there. You people should have come.” Rachit could not help his laughter and he burst out following which everyone had burst out. “We also saw the view Varun” Saurav had said. Similar instances occurred at a lot of places after that when he disappeared for feeding fishes, taking picture, reading inscriptions or spotting better view but none of the girl had given him any attention. “Probably the sooner he realizes that he is not as cool as he thinks, it would be better for him” Rachit had said. He was damn right.


“Five minutes it is. I am not waiting a second longer” Ramesh warned.

“Right. Even I can’t take it any longer” I said.

To everyone’s relief we saw Varun coming with a copy of National Geographic journal in his hand.
“Why the hell do you need that in journey?” asked Harpreet.

“It’s really good yar. It has very deep insights.” Replied Varun.

“Strange, but not surprising” I whispered to Rachit. “He is a snob” Rachit whispered back, “I bet he won’t read more than a page but he wants to show he is intellectual. Don’t you remember Koorg trip?”he added. “I do remember that” I said and we smiled.

Varun had carried two copies of discovery channel’s journal in Koorg trip. He would take it out in the car, each time we sat down. Will open a page but never complete it. Then when we had to get down, he will keep everyone waiting, while he struggled to keep it back in his bag, which had been kept behind the seat. In fact this habit of his had almost resulted in him losing his buttocks. It happened so, that at one place we had to get down at a temple. The temple being on other side of road, the driver stopped on main road and asked us to get down fast, following which he will take a U turn and park it. Everyone got down quickly, but as expected Varun was still struggling with his journal and bag and was also blocking Rachit. After waiting for some time the driver had to move on and Vikash Sir banged the door on him and what we saw was Varun’s ass was hanging outside the window of the car as the car moved on and found the parking. Everyone had turned furious at Varun’s act, but Vikash sir once again calmed it up by a well timed joke saying “People clean it, yours almost got cleaned up”.


“Sit down. We would have left in another five minutes” said Ramesh as he sat in the front seat. I too took my seat and left the door open for Varun. We were eager that finally it would start. But to our horror Varun was still standing at the door, holding it with one hand, and looking in some other direction smiling at some strange object which only he could see. “Abe sit, you asshole!” I shouted. He again looked back calmly, again turned his gaze in the same direction and after some 30 seconds replied, “Did we get some snacks to eat in the way?”

“You sit first! We will get something on the way” Saurav was pleading now.

He slowly kept his bag at the back, then again stood there waiting some time and then much to everyone’s frustration, said “I have some packets of potato chips and biscuits. I’ll just go and get them”.

“Leave it Varun. We will buy it” even Vikash sir protested.

“Why do you want to waste money, when I already have it?” Varun reasoned.

Anger was slowly turning into exasperation. “Varun dear, please sit down. You have already taken an hour. It’s 11, let us leave” Ramesh begged. When he starts pleading, one thing for sure is that he has no option left.

“Are yar, just two minutes? What is the big deal? I’ll get it.” And he rushed inside, leaving all of us furious.

“We will make sure that he has his worst journey of life. What say Abhi?” said Ramesh.

“Absolutely. If Koorg was trailer this would be the climax.” I said.

“Listen Vikash. I am still telling we should leave without him” Ramesh suggested.

“Let him get the chips no. It would be only a minute” Harpreet said.

“You bet. Only thing predictable about him is his unpredictability. I doubt he will be back in a minute.” I prophesied.

“Yes, right. Even I doubt that.” Rachit said.

We waited and waited and waited. After another 15 minutes Harpreet said, “Somebody go and check. I hope he is not cooking the chips”.

Saurav was about to get up, when Ramesh said, “You sit. I’ll go and see. Abhi you come.” He sounded determined.

Ramesh looked serious and I was sure that this was going to be dirty. He did not say a single word to me on the way. As expected, Varun was not looking for eatables. He had got a steam iron in his hand, had opened his previous T-shirt, and another T-shirt was on the bed, and he was looking out of window with the forefinger of other hand in his nose.

“Pray what are you up to?” Ramesh asked.

Varun blinked, waited some 10 seconds, looked out again and said, “I spilled something on that shirt, I just noticed that. Give me two minutes”.

“You stay there and you press your shirt, eat your chips and munch your biscuits. For we leave now.” I declared.

“What do you mean by that? I have also paid for the car” he said as he kept the iron on the stand and came two steps forward.

Ramesh instantly took out a five hundred note and thundered “Have it. Here is your money. You take it, fuck it and sleep with it.”

I took out a one rupee coin and place it with the five hundred note and said “And here is your tip for finally relieving us”

“This is insulting yar. I am getting angry now. What do you people mean? I am really getting angry now” he said.

“Ok, you are getting angry; I know how to cool you down” Ramesh said as he picked up a glass of water kept on table nearby and threw all the water on Varun’s face.

Varun charged towards Ramesh to retaliate, but I halted him and I landed a tight slap on his left cheek with my sinister hand which left my palm warm for some time. Ramesh did the same thing on his right cheek with his right hand. Varun was stunned and aghast. Tears filled in his eyes.

“What the hell do you think, you are some VIP that we will keep waiting for you the whole night?” said Ramesh as he landed another slap.

“And on top you say, you are getting angry. What the fuck will you do by getting angry?” I said and picked up his magazine and threw it away.

“Now sit here silently. And if Vikash and Rachit call don’t dare you pickup” Ramesh ordered.

We went back to the car and announced, “Varun has refused to come. He says he is not feeling well”

“Shit! Why the hell did he made us wait so long?” someone said.

“Fuck him! Let’s enjoy our vacation. At the end of the day what that guy needed was attention and he got it. Forget what happened.” I said as we sat down and the car started.

“Ya fine. But I still wish he had come. The trip would have been a lot of fun with him” Saurav said.

Ramesh looked back at me and winked. One thing we were certain of was that Varun will never tell anyone about what happened in the closed room for it would not go with his image.

“Even I wish that he had come. It sure would have been fun”, I said and winked back at Ramesh and lay back on my seat with my hands behind my head and closed my eyes. For us, we have had our fun, the fun of teaching him a lesson and with it a sweet revenge.