The "secret" that everyone knows !

A ten minute walk from my room to my coll's run-of-the-mill entrance on a torrid saturday afternoon, a fifteen minute wait under sweltering conditions for the bus(which is supposed to be frequent!) to Kelambakkam bustand ,a five minute journey to the same, boarding a 21 H DELUXE bus ( ie with proper doors n glossy colors and more probability of ensuring you a not-so-bumby ride), and 'unbussing' at some place (which depends) in the celebrated city of Chennai with a 1.5 hour non stop bus journey behind me, and then hiring an auto (with usual overpricing of the ride) to Citi Center... This is what it takes to get to Citi Center for a SSNite or anybody post Kelambakkam unless he owns a personal chopper or has a dad who has some job in the city just when it matters and drops you off at Citi Center in a car without sweating a bit ….just like I did last weekend!

Citi Center, a paradise for dried eyes ( blimey ! are you thinking what am thinking? ), an exquisite shopping mall which commands a rather affluent clientele, the best way to pine away time, houses the famed inox string of theatres, and a haven for hoggers (All kinds of restaurants galore, you can’t possibly ask for more!).

Virtually everyone wears blue and black attire. Interestingly, blue can mean two diametric meanings …one meaning prosperous (referring to a guy who had just come in with you-know-whom ) and the other – depressed or sad ( the state of the same guy while bidding adios to y-k-w, with a heavy heart and a light wallet! )

And wonder what those konjam-konjam-tamil-therium type of lassies are doing in citi center (other than clutching tight their boyfriend’s hands, who is so watchful not to go past any branded MNC apparel shops!), because I’ve never seen them possess any carrier bag with them…
Giving a wicked smile(good enough as gabbar character does in the new Sholay), I sympathise piteously the hapless situation of the boyfriends I look at…

Coz every guy will definitely loathe the long followed custom (sshhabba…rumba kashtom! ) of having to spend every buck right from any means of transport to every single piece of cheese burger that ‘she’ eats and yeah also that which she wastes, citing reasons concerned to diet …ie creating a balanced nutrition where strangely anything that is not liked doesn’t find a place! (#001)

Waking up late on the day of your date with a college mate, noticing some 25 missed calls from y-k-w and cursing your fate, bathing twice and setting so called stylish and sexy hair styles, easily deceiving people in your home, getting an OC bike from your ‘best’ friend ( at least for that day! ), pacifying your waiting gf by cooking up stories over the mobile of how your grandma had to be rushed to the hospital. Ultimately at some Pizza edge (sorry dint get the rights reserved from pizza corner !) , ‘she’ keeps looking at her wrist watch at a frequency of – one look at the watch for every single apologizing smile towards her. Note that ‘she’ wears a handbag containing a mini make up kit as if she would be called upon at any moment for a trial in some RGV ki movie but its existence is usually ignored throughout the date. Inside the restaurant, seated opposite each other and with you giving a dumb smile (not knowing what is to follow!) , ‘she’ takes a look at the overpriced and overrated items in the menu, and your heart skips a beat when she pauses and sets her eye upon some topnotch five layered Chicken burger with extra cheese, which she eventually never completes. (Maybe it’s the cost factor why couples share stuff at coffee shops , i.e ore cup juicea rendu perum uriyirathu, athuvum for eons! )

#002 - There must be some rule activated in restaurants : duration tolerated for anyone to stay inside should be proportional to the cost of what they eat/drink/waste/share.
#003 – Pennywise and pound foolish – refers to gals and guys respectively !

After seeing through the painful last five minutes (billing and tipping waiters rather generously though not intentionally), you wave goodbye with a weightless wallet and start thinking it all over again. Maybe I went overboard and trifled away huge bucks? Maybe all I did today was to waste time n money, Maybe she’s not that serious…Cha, I’ll never go out with her again…

Someday soon, you get up to see 25 odd missed calls and the rest is history…

PS - # indicates the thoughts or some modified adages of the crazy part(which is almost the whole) of me….

equals.......