During our regular ‘Daaru sessions’, Ameya and I always dig in the past. We have only two things to kill time. Either dig the past, or imagine - what could have happened, what if this happens? And then we laugh our lungs out (which are becoming weaker by the spirits we drink). Here I’m presenting the former, our past, things that happened during our school days. And do keep in mind, its set in 1998, when I was in 10th, going on 11th.


10th Boards went as easy as lofting a full-pitched ball for a six. So much fear was imbibed in our minds since 9th that I could hardly concentrate on studies. I always dumped the idea of studying because cricket and girls were priorities then. Even today they are!

I hate these rumors that results are coming 15 days earlier; results are out on May 20th etc. Everybody knows they will be out somewhere near 4th June, then why the hell scare us? Nevertheless, had I studied, my stomach would not have got upset every second day. And it was a long holiday for us, bloody 4 months sitting at pot, I mean home.

It was 8 am in the morning when Dutta called up, “Abe Banga, results are out, make it to the school in 1 hour.” I rushed on hearing the bad news. On reaching our school, Summer Fields, I was appalled to see many fellow students waiting for the results. And it did come, some 2 hours late. The moment it was stuck on the notice board, a little high, near the school gate, there was a sudden rampage. I had no other choice than to climb that small tree.

I wasn’t able to identify the format; I mean the course names against the marks. So as Honey Dave, the brightest student of our school screamed to me from the earth below to check her marks, I recited the course names instead of marks. And then, she fainted. Some nice fella while ogling at her yet-to-develop breast told her that these are course names, don’t worry.

Ah, not bad, I got a whooping 65% where I was expecting a compartment or a two. Decent score for a bright-yet-doesn’t-study student, as told by my teachers to my parents whenever they went to school for that report card that carried red underlines wherever marks were spotted.

And then I met some other my-types students. Even they were happy to know they’ve passed. And then, keeping in with the school’s traditions and customs, we cheered loudly, as if making ‘naaras’, “Summer Fields Zindabad” (don’t know why). And to satisfy our vocal chords, we sang the filthy (read: humorous) ‘Jugni’ and ‘we will, we will fuck you’ while clapping our hands to awful pain.

Now the big choice, which stream? Under family’s pressure, I took Science, non-medical. With this decision, I became a star in my parent’s eyes and a joke in my friend’s circuit. I remember the drilling sessions, of course, by my friends to take commerce without math. But I didn’t listen to them and spent a whole week figuring out what the teachers were talking about. Every teacher’s lecture started with the same dialogue, “children, as you are science students, you must be knowing how this thing happens.” How the hell are we supposed to know? After a treacherous week, I changed the stream and did what I thought was most fruitful.

Arts (humanities) is not bad at all, I said to myself, looking at the girls while entering the eco class in the 7th period at 11th A. Luna (Priya Vaidya, our Eco teacher) asked me where I’m up to, this is 11th A. I told her that I’m a new student. She just looked at me, puzzled, on knowing that I’m coming from Science stream.

As news broke that I’ve changed the stream to arts, I again became a joke in my friend’s circle. Don’t even ask how my parents reacted. But I was convincing myself that things would be better and that there were many options after school.

Arts had only 4-5 recognizable faces from my previous class. Everyone else was new. So a new obvious gang was made of these 5 guys. Let me tell you, we were only 10 odd guys, rest were all girls, some 30 of them. Now who needs chocolates? (Didn’t get this one?)

Our gang had Sumit, a fat guy, my dear friend since 9th. Then there was Pandu - Pankaj Wadhera, also called gadhera. He got these names because of his childish nature and a peculiar habit. He used to lose his memory some times, and this problem was perpetual. In 10th he once wrote ‘sex theta’ on blackboard instead of ‘sec theta’ while solving Aryabhatta’s curse to students, but was let go because of his memory problem. Lucky bastard. He even used to laugh while teachers asked him any question.

After the mellow Pandu and Sumit, ladies and gentlemen, here come the real demons (read: bastards). That’s Varun Joshi and Gaurav Wadhwa for you. No one dared to change their names. Reason alone was that Joshi had a great physique at a tender age of 16 and he stands at a whooping 6 feet. People were dead scared of him, so were we, even though he never harmed us. Perhaps he was a source of energy to us. We used to get into fights and he used to rescue us. Positive energy you see.

So 5 of us, scaring the shit out of people’s life. Ours was a chilled out gang. Nobody spoke to us because either they were scared of us or they didn’t like us for the plain reason that we were abusive. Must tell you that we didn’t have the privilege to speak to girls, because they never spoke to us. They could hardly relate to our abusing tongue or hooligan attitude. Certainly we were from some other planet, not Mars or Venus definitely.

While all this was going on at the school front, at colony, there were many interesting twists. Ameya and I had finally found a 3rd permanent member to our group. Though we had a group of some 4-5 guys who’d sit back after cricket, but their presence was somewhat temporary. We had to lure them by match-fixing, playing one over match for money, basketball for money, and if this was not all, we’d take them to our favorite hideout, Girl’s Hostel. No, you took it wrong. We used to hide in their gali and then climb with the help of bricks to see them undress. One day we did see them changing clothes, and since then we’ve been regular there, armed with hope that history will repeat itself and we’d be bedazzled with…umm, forget it.

Okay, was telling you about the new entrant in our group, the names’ Kaali. Yes, he was a guy, but we loved giving this kinda feminine names. Like we also have a ‘Ganji’ in our group. So you would be thinking why feminine names? That is because we already had ganja and kaala in our groups, so we reversed the last alphabet and there emerged Ganji and Kaali.

Kaali was a bright student who never saw the brightness of sun because he was always in his class or room, studying, wasting time. We introduced him to the world of morons. And today, I’m proud to say, he outdid us. He hails from the most despo school in Delhi, the all boys (yawk) Don Bosco School. And no need for his introduction, he taught us, nurtured us to become a perfect 10 morons, despos to the T. He lacked only one thing, managing time. Ameya and I had all the time in world to kill, but poor Kaali (though his name is vikas, or vicky) was always keeping up with studies.

I must tell you how Ameya and I killed time. Morning we used to go to school together. So the school starts at 8am, and Ameya used to come at my place at 8:10 sharp. I was always catching up with my prayers at that time, so meantime he used to finish our leftover kaju’s and kishmish’s, sometimes marmalades. After then, like dedicated students we used to go school. Coming home together is quite obvious. Then we used to disperse to our homes. At around 3:30, when we were through with our lunches and shits, Ameya would call me and talk about what’s coming on TV. Picture this; we both are watching the same channel at our respective homes, speaking on phone about the program we are watching during breaks! Complete vellas, I know.

5pm and we are out on a cycle. It was my tailor’s cycle by the way. We then used to chase girls in scorching heat. Perhaps we were fast, thanks to the gears installed on that cycle. Be become so pro that we even chased autos and the likes!

6pm and everyone is at park. Cricket was a passion for us, though Ameya was anytime better than me. We even played at my house’s verandah or street. Street cricket was fun, playing every shot delicately keeping in mind that girls would be watching us. Coming to the girls of our colony…I would come to that later, some interesting stories.

Now after cricket was over, everyone sat for some half an hour in the eve, pulling each other’s leg. After that, even they used to leave us, with only two or three guys for the company. Pakoda was one of them, senior to us, so his stories were quite interesting. Perhaps many of the ‘players’ who came to park were quite senior to us, some even married. So ultimately they became a ‘moron figure’ for us. We looked up to them for any problem. Their stories were what success school and college lives are made of. They never tired of telling their fights, flings and jokes. We had a big team of some 30-40 guys playing in a small park with even smaller duration games. When I recollect those days, I only sigh, those were the days.

Coming back to school, some new happenings took place. Wadhwa had become lethal now. He gave us stupid ideas of stealing things, just for kicks. Now why else would we steal pens and other stationary from other’s bags? All was fun until we found money (100 ki hari patti) one day from Natasha’s bag. That was the day. We got packed some samosas from canteen and headed straight to the basketball ground in the backyard from where we jumped a big fence into the other side, which was a Mandir. From there we went to Main road, hired an auto and went to watch ‘Bandhan’ featuring Salman Khan at Alankar. Now please don’t ask me why that movie. Joshi’s idol was Salman. Wadhwa wanted to become like him, so obviously we too have to watch that stupid movie. Not to tell you about the people who came to see the movie, the bastards shagged during the interval in toilet, screaming, ‘Rambha, Rambha’ (she was the actress of this not even semi-porn).

While coming home that day, the scotterwala complained that we are taking him far than what was decided. So we handed him some pens, diaries and other stuffs we stole.

It’s a universal fact that once you’ve tasted chocolate, you would always want it. And the same happened with us. Once we started bunking, there was no stopping us. Perhaps we used to first bunk our classes starting with the first period, where we never carried our books, so that Shabbo (Sabarmati maam, Political Sc.) would kick us out of the class and we would then rejoice at canteen, eating hot, fresh samosas. After the break, it was our routine to go to M-block market, sit at Wimpy and ogle at college girls who would only acknowledge Joshi’s and Wadhwa’s advancements. Pandu, Sumit and I were always out of their frame, because we all looked kids. Joshi was tall, and Wadhwa had a beard to boast about.

I had one thing to boast about, and that was jokes. Oh, non veggies, if you please. The best thing was that I recited really dirty jokes in front of girls too. That really made me famous. In absence of Joshi and Wadhwa, girls would call me for an extended joke session, of course under the supervision of Nikhil and Rohit.

Now coming to Rohit and Nikhil. Rohit was the one who knew whole of the school, because he had flunked once and was in company of some hip and brute dudes. He had many, many female friends too. I sometimes envied Rohit and Nikhil because they had all the babes. But then Joshi and Wadhwa would condemn the fact by saying, “sab saali sluts hai (using a respectable term here).” Rude of hem I know, but that’s the reason enough why we didn’t have girls in our gang. Joshi and Wadhwa had girls in their life, outside school. But poor we, no girls anywhere.

Nikhil had one thing girls yearn for, oh, if you are thinking of something filthy, please don’t. He had a Yamaha RX 100. At that time he was the only guy to bring bike to school, so his popularity was complemented by his notorious deeds and his 6 feet height. He took away many girls, bastard. Perhaps girls would rejoice on hearing his bike’s vrooming voice.

Once Joshi wore Nikhil’s helmet during Shabbo’s period (it’s not double meaning dialogue dude). So Shabbo asked him in a somewhat thunderous voice, “now what is that?” he gently replied, “I gotta headache.” She never punished Joshi, don’t know why.

When I say girls are stupid, I really mean it. Natasha again and again used to keep her money in bag, which we used to steal. So our days were going great, and after some time, even assembly time got better. The girls were practicing for some dance show in school, and we used to stay back to see them dancing. As the skirts would fly, we would get out of control, wag out tongues and salivate. One day Saakshi (the most sexy and chikni of them) wore cycle shorts inside her skirt. We were heart broken that day, but not to the extent Sumit was, as he screamed, “Dhoka, Dhoka, hamare paise vapas karo.” Needless to say, we were not allowed in the class during the assembly time.

So stealing was the only fun besides bunking. If some love-birds were seen koo-chi-kooing in class during SUPW or PT period, we would just turn on the fans (during winters). They would then leave the class and we would loot the class. Once pandu got a Parker from Shikha’s bag. He was elated. But then I made him realize that it’s a big thing, and we’d be caught. As he kept the pen back, I took away again and said, “dekhi jayegi!”

Shikha was a bold girl, so was Uzmi. They were the dangerous duo, with Pooja chipping at regular intervals. Shikha used to bring us tree leaves with which you make a cracker’s sound while making the fuck sign. Just keep the leave on your left hand which is circled, and then pat on that hole with your other palm. What noise! Imagine this in our new English teacher’s class. On top of that, we used to collectively scream, “Kya Hua” which was the latest joke of Johhny Lever on Boom. That teacher never complained until a guy from commerce section once threw a chalk on her breasts. After some days, she left the school. Same stories happened, 5 english teachers left the school, until we found a strict one.

I remember once Aragya came running to class screaming, everyone has flunked except two students, and he is one of them. He was a studious student, so never bullied with him, but who was that another bastard who passed. On knowing that it was ME, I was thrashed by everyone, how dare I pass? That day was really ghastly. That was because I was not supposed to bring 41! Though aragya got 45, Sumit smartly went to teacher’s desk, and just ticked two lines horizontally against the 1 in 41. That made it 47! Now I was the highest scorer!

So much was happening here in colony. Ameya and I had found the latest timepass, going to the latest cyber café. It was new to us, and gave us access to watch porn. No more Playboy Mags, we were going full-on.

More coming up soon....