My noise

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.

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Ramachandra was never meant to be a giant; God never intended him to be one. He was small, skulked in dark corners, jumped at loud noises and nibbled at his nails. Teja, for some reason, saw a similarity between him and the character 'Wormtail' from the Harry potter series. Two weeks later, Ramachandra ceased to exist, and Worm was born. There were precious few who remembered his real name.

But, there was one area he had mastered - Counter Strike. You see, computer games can turn the smallest creatures into unconquerable beasts. They don't really rely on physical prowess. As long as you can reach your keyboard and your mouse, and manage to peek over the table to stare at the screen, you should be fine. Perhaps that is why PC games appeal so much to mortals like us. But, Worm was beyond all mortals. He was the truest personification of the non-replication of a gaming identity of one's real characteristics. While in real life you could pick him up with one hand and dispose of him in the nearest dustbin, in CS, he could make opponents pee in their pants when one on one up against him.

None of us knew why he hung around us. The others had never cared to try and play a computer game and I was much too pre-occupied with Dota to venture into new areas such as the above-mentioned game. Jojo always thought Worm was a spy.

"Maybe he is spying on us and reporting every detail to his superiors."
"And do what?"
"How do I know? Who knows what use he might put it to. All this privacy stuff is like real big shit today. I've heard these celebrities invest millions to ensure their privacy. "
Teja and I looked at each other wondering if we should point out the fact that the celebrities have reasons to try and ensure their privacy while we don't. But Jojo was blabbering at such an uncompromising pace that we thought it would be best if we just waited for him to run out of steam.
Finally he did.
"Don't you think so too?" he asked, suddenly turning to us.
"What?"
"That he is a spy?"
"Yes, yes. It's all very well."

One never noticed Worm walking into our presence. He slid into the horizon and shimmered out, as and when required. Once he had established his physical presence, he would sit quietly drinking in every word of our conversations. Jojo always got pissed off by this habit of his.
"I tell you, he is conspiring against us. I won't be surprised if one day I walk into the hostel and find you all dead."

However, Worm was not always as described. When the exams were around the corner, he turned into a frantic beast thirsting for blood. He haunted the corridors and turned up wherever least expected. Exam-time was the only time in the year he seemed to have other friends. Scum like us were ignored, and Worm found solace in the toppers of the batch. It would suddenly appear as if he had devoted his entire life to them. Tongue hanging out, he would cling to them for dear life and lick up any bits of knowledge they threw at him. 'Everybody's bitch' Jojo once called him. not that he cared, of course.



Teja was lying on my bed watching me play Dota and Worm was hovering around, largely ignored by us when Jojo strode in with what looked like a week's shopping. He collapsed with a loud groan on Juggy's bed, leaving two huge shopping bags at the foot of the bed. I tore my eyes away from the screen to stare at his eagle-spread figure on the bed. Teja waited for Jojo to explain himself, but when no words came from the other end, chose to ask his question.

"Shopping for your to-be-born kids?"
Jojo had his arm across his eyes and hadn't bothered to take his shoes off. If Juggy was there, he would have fired him.

"Huh?", asked Jojo from somewhere under the mess of hair and arms.
"What's all that?"
"Oh, nothing great. I had gone down to the city to pick up a few things."

Worm was already knee deep in the contents of the bags. He had insatiable curiosity. Very soon, the floor was strewn with clothes, stationary and a pair of table-tennis racquets.

"Dude!" shouted Jojo at Worm, who hastily grabbed a handful of stuff and attempted to cram it back into the bag. "What the hell do you think you are doing?! Fcking get your filthy hands off them."

Worm gave a meek glance up at Jojo and scampered off from the room.

"That bastard." Jojo swore under his breath once Worm was gone.
"Chill, man" said Teja, casually observing my game again.
"Don't worry. I just needed to scream at Worm once. He has been getting on my nerves these days."
"Peace, man. Let him exist."
"Ya, ya. Why can't he let me exist in peace. He pops his ruddy ass in places where not required."

I diverted my attention to Jojo after trying in vain to prevent my hero from dying.

"Nice. You headed down there with the Husseins? That was a smart way of impressing a chick. I doubt if you would have thought of it yourself."
"Who said anything about the Husseins? I went down there with Chichi. In fact, half of this stuff belongs to him. He toaded off to meet his darling and shoved the bags onto me."
"Whoah, whoah. You weren't with the Husseins?"
"Nopes, why?"
"I thought I asked you to spend time with them."
"Well I did."
"When? You have been out shopping all day."
"I did have breakfast with one of them yesterday."
"And?"
"Well, we talked."
"Over breakfast?"
"Ya, for about half an hour."
"Tell me you caught up with her later in the day."
"Nopes. Was I supposed to?"

Teja gave a sudden smirk.
"Jojo, you ass. Half an hour is like half a second in a girl's world." I said.

Jojo looked around at Teja hoping for salvation. But Teja gave a slow nod.

"You are a bigger ass than I thought", I added. "How hard is it to stick around a hot girl all day?"

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.

---

For Jojo and his to-be-soulmate, Juggy had no sympathies whatsoever. He relentlessly complained about Jojo being the reason why girls scream, 'I hate men!'. Apparently, he knew girls way better than Jojo. I wouldn't blame him. After having read "What women want and everything else under the sun" I was inclined to the feeling that a person who had no idea who he had kissed without the effects of alcohol deserved to be plaqued, with every right, with the title Juggy had suggested.

Jojo wasn't a man renowned for his patience and with every passing minute of Juggy ceaseless banter about men like Jojo being the root cause of all evil, I couldn't help but get the feeling there would be a need to call in the emergency services pretty soon. If Juggy's words were indeed getting to Jojo, the latter would strangle himself, otherwise the latter would probably beat the former to ham. Fortunately, Teja interrupted before long.

"Dude, Juggy. If you can't make yourself of any help, get your filthy ass out of here."
"But just look at this guy. He kissed the girl with no sort of ratification of her identity."
"Look, we know Jojo has a compressed rat's brain. But, we should be helping him out in his spot of bother."
"I don't know why you are encouraging him. If you get behind him, the next thing you know, he'll be kissing every girl behind the parking lot in the dark."
"If such a thing were to happen, ill slip a live wire into his bed and wait for him to electrocute himself."
"I am not sure you could do that."
"Cometh the hour, cometh the man."

Juggy frowned at Teja for a while then gave in.

"Fine. If you think you can handle him. What do you propose, Sherlock Holmes?"
"That is beyond me. That is why you should always have a dumbass in your group who goes around reading books on women's mindsets." He waved a hand vaguely in my direction.
"Lawl. I think the matter is pretty straight-forward. Jojo has to walk up to one of the twins, and ask her if she was the one he kissed. There is nothing better than honesty. He should probably explain the whole matter."

We looked around at Jojo to find him throwing bits of paper at Worm, who made lazy attempts to dodge them.

"Juggy," I said," if we ever need a recipie for disaster, we will surely get back to you. But right now, the problem statement is such - Jojo has to figure out the kissed girl, and stay alive after he does so. The girl will frikking murder Jojo and bury his honesty alongside him in his grave."

Jojo now seemed to tired of his previous sport and was making faces at himself in the mirror.

"Jojo, you ass!" Juggy shouted. Jojo leapt two feet off his berth and turned around to face us.
"Oh, sorry." He twirled his mouth about and settled into a more normal expression. "I got carried away a bit." Juggy looked like an old mother ready to whack him with a broom.

"Anyway." I continued. "There is nothing better than patience in this matter. Jojo, my friend, the matter is simple. You have to be around the twins, no matter what."
"Which twin?"
"Both twins"
"Harry, they are two disjointed people."
"I know. Just hang around them all the time."
"You mean hang around with either of them?"
"Exactly. But make sure you don't hang out with one twin for too long. Distribute your time."
"Alright. But what will that lead to?"
"It will buy us time. Then the psychology of the individual can take over."
"The what?"
"The psychology of the individual. It is the study of the human mind and how it would react to different situations. Jeeves employs it all the time."
"Who is Jeeves?"
"Never mind. Focus."
"Aye aye."
"Repeat after me. Spend-time-with-twins. As simple as that."
"Got it."
"Very soon, you will be sailing like a ship on butter."
"Do ships sail on butter?"
"No, Jojo. That was not the crux of the statement. But never mind that. Don't stress your brain too much. You have a job on your hands."

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.

---

Juggy was the soul that I shared my room with. Debates raged in various circles as to who was the more unfortunate of the two for having the other as roommate. Juggy had no doubt in his mind whatsoever. In his opinion, the Indian judiciary system should have considered handing the penalized an option between 5 years of rigorous imprisonment and 5 weeks with me wherever applicable. Once when I was lying half-naked on my bed, he had cared to remark that he couldn't see why our forefathers even thought of giving up their lives so that scum like me could enjoy freedom. I on the other hand, was hell-bent on proving that Juggy was a wandering perverted saint who had mistaken the university for the Himalayan mountains and his colleagues to be his disciples.

The first reaction of Juggy when he heard of Jojo's adventures was rather predictable. He swayed for a moment on the spot as though there was a strong breeze determined to knock him down. He stared from me to Jojo repeatedly to ensure that we weren't fooling with him. Once he had done so, the hand clasped the head in magnificient fashion and we heard him muttering although we barely saw his lips move. We did find out later that he was cursing the reckless, spoilt minds (read Jojo) that, according to him, had sprouted all around him without accord.

To every soul that breathed, he was a positive pain in the ass. When given an opportunity to speak, he would preach and humbly request us to mark his words and follow them. He had, of course, made it to the cellars of fame in our college when he stood up in the middle of the class and downright condemned the use of 'insensitive and offensive language' by the professor of algebra. Only later, after he had made a complete ass of himself, did we come to understand that he mistaken the word 'rate' for 'rape'. Even the whole class, all of about 200 students, laughing at him and a furious professor were insufficient to divert him from his means.

It was a wonder, as Teja said, that he knew english. For a man against capitalism, soccer, cigarettes and anything even remotely western, he got along with english pretty well. He seemed to have no complaints, with english-medium education, with the computer or with english songs. He surprised us all when he got his laptop late in the second semester and got us sick and tired of Nickelback by the end of the day. Jojo ran out of the room when he played 'Rockstar' for the eight time in an hour. I got the feeling I was beginning to remember the lyrics of the damned song and the tune irritatingly kept playing in my head even when the music had stopped blaring from the speakers. Teja silently swore never to let any Nickelback song to ever infest his iPod and somehow knew Jagdish Jhunjhunwala, alias Juggy, would keep us wondering about his sanity for a few years to come.

Inspite of all that he was, we were good friends with Juggy and like all good friends, we always stabbed him in the front. We couldn't help it, he was that sort of a person. He was short and plump and seemed to roll when he walked. If were to see him scurrying along a corridor for the first time, one couldn't help but be frought with the fear that he might simply fall onto his side and lie there like an upturned beetle. His legs were probably more powerful that they looked at first sight. It must take some doing to propel that globular mass forward and onward. His style of walking was comparable only to the Worm and the two of them together were miles away from the rest of the pack.

Juggy's habits were always a wonder to us. Teja swore he could lay down a thousand bucks and claim Juggy had never masterbated. Jojo took the matter on step further by claiming Juggy didn't pee (Which, incidentally, none of us had seen him do). I could tell from his nervousness, he had never talked to a girl for more than 10 seconds or 3 sentences, whichever was earlier. However, the word in town was that he did have a girlfriend; which was what beat us all. It paved way for Teja's remark : "You know, girls have a worse choice than boys when it comes to choosing their soulmates. I mean, just look at the situation. There are so great guys without girls and yet these girls pick out the biggest jackass in the lot to be their boyfriend. Guys on the other hand, have not left out any hot girl. It just goes to show. I bet Juggy's girlfriend is really hot. It's just the way the world turns." Worm merely nodded to whatever each one of us said.

"Did you know Juggy is the sole heir to some few million rupees worth of property?" asked Jojo one day while we stared at the mentioned person scamper off to the cafeteria. There was no rumor that was left unheard by Jojo. It helps to be in the company of girls who are experts at gossip.
"Who said so?" asked Teja.
"I don't know. That is the word. It seems his dad is a big shot back in his town."
"Hmm. When we do plan to do our gigs, we'll make him sponsor us."
Jojo rubbed his hands together.
"And as the manager of your band. I shall ensure that the money is spent well."
"Hear, Hear."

Worm sat staring at Teja's guitar and silently drinking in every word.

Teja merely grinned back at Jojo.
"Teja, you ass. Why don't you make yourself useful and help me out a bit here. I could really use some help right now." There was a hint of desperation in his voice. Teja finally stopped yanking Jojo's tail. He could be a really handy friend when one needed him. He had once helped yours truly get out of a tight spot when I had been taken into police custody for interrogation. But that's a different story altogether. At the moment, the four of us were crowded into Teja's room brainstorming over Jojo's rather avoidable situation.

Teja was the first to speak up, though not very convincingly. "Are you sure you wish to date one of these chicks? I mean, you could use your time so much better." Jojo thought for a second and then replied. "You can rule out the option of me backing off. It's a matter of whether I should sit around and wait or really chance my arm."

I somewhat reassured him. "Don't call it 'chancing your arm'. We'll figure out who the unfortunate maiden is, sooner than later; don't you worry."

Juggy was never a person with gifts of concentration. He was the sort of person who would forget what he was talking about by the time he finished a sentence. We didn't blame him for it. So, it wasn't very surprising that when he finally got a chance to break the silence, he did so by claiming that a prostitute had made herself comfortable next to him on the bus earlier that day. Jojo's case study was cast aside when he spoke thus.

"I swear she was a prostitute!", he protested when we refused to believe him. "She was rubbing her elbow against my groin! She was a whore if there ever was one. She was trying to seduce me, you know. Trying to make me get an erection." I frowned at his words. How come such things always happened to Juggy? Teja raised an eyebrow as a sign of interest. Jojo had turned over on the bed with a curious glance at Juggy.

"What do you mean 'tried to make me get an erection'? You mean to say you didn't get one?"

Juggy shuffled his feet as a response and tried to avoid everyone's eyes by staring out of the open window. Jojo gave a sudden snigger and propped himself up on his elbow.

"Whoa, whoa. What have we here? Looks like there are more interesting matters than me going around kissing twins. Juggy, my friend, you were saying?"

Juggy looked like he could have killed himself for having brought the topic up. Teja withdrew himself from his reclined position."Lawl ! Did you not get an erection? Dude, the girl was nearly scratching your balls, the way you describe it. How can you frikking feeling nothing?"

Juggy looked around at each one of us in turn and finally gave in to the relentless eye-balling.

"Fine, fine. I didn't get an erection. Does that make you happy?"
"Pray elaborate, my good man."
"Well, I simply started chating 'Ram, Ram' in my head. I said to myself 'You are a good man, a pious man. Lust is for the weak. It is nothing but mayajaal. It's all moh-maaya'" Juggy looked like he had swallowed a lemon really quickly.

"Holy crap, man!" said Teja barely able to believe his ears. "You thought of all that shit while she was busy touching you?? Dude, you should have simply taken her offer. Ask Jojo how difficult it is to get a girl these days." Juggy frowned.

"You would have done the same too, if you were in a public place. Don't you blame me." But none of us were listening. We had made ourselves busy by rolling over the floor with laughter.

"Yes, yes. Laugh all you like. But one day you will realize I was right. Lust is not everything." Juggy said as he stormed out of the room.

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.

---

 Over the first week of my introduction to Teja, I had wondered what a person of his caliber was doing in our college. I oft wondered how a person like him was not making news headlines elsewhere in the world. He could have been a rockstar, a youth icon and so much more. The only stupid decision he seemed to have made was that to drive down the engineering road. Maybe none of his well-wishers knew anything much about engineering at all to divert him from the miling crowd of endeavouring engineers.

"I think I know what it is." said Jojo unexpectedly one day when I voiced out the abovementioned thoughts. "TMK doesn't sound cool at all. We know how cool he is because we know him, you know. But those of him who don't know him, will have to know him through his name or his initals, you know. And you know they aren't cool." I took a minute off and retreated to fully absorb what Jojo had told me. Well, yes, Teja Murali Krishna was not the ideal name for a rockstar and neither was TMK the ideal nickname for a youth icon.

Teja hadn't been blessed with the best looks either. He was rather ordinary looking to say the least. But he knew how to dress. He never tried too hard, as with everything he did, but always managed to pull it off. Even the simplest of costumes looked good on him. In many ways, he contrasted Jojo. Jojo had the kind of dreamy looks that girls somehow always fall for. But even they got repelled by his dead-brainness. "Nothing repels girls more wonderfully well than a hint of bad breath, a touch of body odour and an ounceful of Jojo" as Juggy once put it. Teja on the other hand had,in my book, everything that a girl could possibly want. He had a coolness quotient beyond compare and a bring-it-on attitude that should have ordinarily squeezed even the faintest of 'ooo's out of girls. But somehow he never seemed attracted girls. He did once have a girlfriend, he told me. "But she had a problem with my smoking. She told me if I continued smoking, either she'd start smoking too or she would dump me. So I dumped her instead."


We found Teja in his room later that day. "Drop the case, Jojo.", he said, without bothering to look up. His guitar always got more attention than it could have asked for. "Oh only if it was a girl." Jojo had once said, referring to Teja's guitar. "She would run away out his over-posessiveness and over-obsession and I could have had her on the rebound", he added with a wink. I assured him that he would have won plenty of girls if that had indeed been the case.

"Girls are nothing but trouble, trust me." said Teja once he finished fretting over the invisible marks on this guitar. "You are better off without them. Besides, you don't want them to get to know how stupid you really are."

Jojo made a grumbling sound and set himself down on the bed of the-engineer-who-never-was. The-engineer-who-never-was ought to have been Teja's roommate. But he never arrived. Instead there was a pair of unclaimed shoes on the bed on the first day of university that probably belonged to him. To quote Teja, "Maybe he was out to be an engineer but he knew he never was one. So our engineer-who-never-was simply legged it and left his shoes behind in the hope that maybe I would leg it too and would join him in the wilderness. But I have failed him. I have let down his trust. Oh engineer-who-never-was, please forgive me. I have let you down. I've never had the guts." Teja had succumbed into violent sobbing the first time he uttered those words. Juggy had to run over to comfort him and Jojo felt Teja should be thrown into the nearest asylum with a couple of hefty guards who would ensure he didn't set the place on fire.

Jojo made himself comfortable on the bed. "Do you think the-engineer-who-never-was had a girlfriend?"

"Probably yes." was Teja's reply. "Maybe he had legged it for his damsel in distress. That force would have been alone to motivate him."

Jojo was lying back staring at the ceiling. "Do you think he would have kissed a twin?"

"No that can only be done by a person of your supreme intelligence. I have always wondered why God didn't give you a lizard's body. It would have fitted your brain so beautifully."

Jojo muttered something that sounded like "Cut the crap".

Teja smiled at the effect his words had brought about. "But well, on a positive note, maybe it is fitting that you kissed one of the twins." Jojo looked around at him with a ray of hope. "Ya, you never know, you could end up courting the other one instead and consequently getting murdered in cold blood by the former. Anyways, you'd do the world a favor by getting your fat ass off it." Jojo gave him a look that plainly said 'I could ask for nothing better than being able to strangle you'.

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.
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It would have been easy, no doubt, to dismiss the matter as a case of rash youthfulness and carry on on the merry road. But, I knew better than to act that way. Jojo was a person to be handled differently.

"So let me get this straight. You kissed one of the Hussein twins."
"That's right."
"And this was your first kiss."
"You got me."
"And you have no idea which girl you kissed."
"Well actually, I have narrowed it down to two."
"Were you drunk?"
"Nopes."

I seemed to have hit bedrock in my interrogation session. The character of the person before me was beginning to baffle me even more now.

"Didn't it strike you before you kissed the girl that you ought to know who she is?"
"Well, it did strike me. But I was taking for granted that she was Aisha. I didn't bother to examine the matter further. Then when we kissed, I thought she tasted like Aara."
"What do you mean 'tasted like'? Have you tasted her before?"
"No, I got this gut feeling as one may put it."

I eyed the man with a bit of impatience. Gut feeling indeed. If only he had a penny for each gut feeling he ever had. That last time his 'gut feeling' theory had been put into practice was when he blew out the Cathode Ray Oscilloscope in the lab. "Harry, I've got this under control. Don't you worry." he had assured me. "I am getting the gut feeling this is the right way to connect these godforsaken wires." The next thing I knew, the harmless looking instrument was fuming and so was the lab assistant who had appeared out of nowhere to stand behind us. I asked him for an explanation later. He came up with the innocent-sounding reply, "Harry, there are no explanations for gut feelings. You cannot express the feeling in words. It just comes from inside." while he leant back on his chair with his feet on his table. It was, according to him, one of the most important corollaries of the gut-feeling theory - The gut feeling theory has no feasible justifications.

I was just beginning to work out how much richer Jojo would have been if he did indeed have a penny per gut feeling when Teja walked in.

"Hey, I saw Jojo pass by like the breeze." He made himself comfortable against the door-frame and said, "I give you thirty seconds. I've got a class to attend." He performed a hand gesture to indicate he had started his stopwatch. Jojo was in no mood to repeat his tale, so I had to do the honors. By the end of it, Teja was brightened up beyond compare. "Way to go, Jo. You have hit new lows. I'll get back to you for some more shit after class." With that and a wave of the upper arm, he was off.

Jojo was wearily staring at the tube-light as I turned back to him.

"You didn't ask her who she was?"

He didn't bother to take his eyes off the tubelight as he replied."What am I supposed to ask? 'Hi, I know we kissed, but I don't know your name. Do you you mind telling me?'? That would have ended my chance with her faster than Teja can smoke a cigarette."

I turned the prospect over in my mind. "Well ya, that would have been a dumb thing to say."
"Thank you. But I haven't come here for you to accredit what I have already done. What am I to do now? Should I humbly ask one of them, or wait to see which one of them approach me or try to hit on both of them again?"

"Ah, my friend, you have come to the right person and at the right time." I patted the book and held it up again so that he could see it in clearer light again.
"What is that about?" he asked again.
"Ah, nothing great. The title says 'What women want and everything else under the sun". So from what I make of it, it's a book about everything." I repeated once again.

He stared at me for a second as if in utter horror.
"What?" I asked.
"dejavu", he whispered. "I get the feeling you had said the same thing some other time."

His dumbness never ceased to surprise me. But thankfully I usually knew what to expect of him. So I merely shrugged the shoulders and continued.
"Anyways, we cannot employ any of the methods suggested by thy naiive self. The matter calls for subtleties, my friend. You think Sherlock Holmes would have simply followed one of those alternatives. No, he would have assessed the situation on hand and deployed a ploy of his own. This book here is one of the keys to unravel the puzzle."
"Ooo, is that a Sherlock Holmes book? I've always wanted to read one. Pass it to me."
I ignored his statement, his request and his outstretched hand in totality.
"Jojo, we are going to figure out the unfortunate Hussein that you lay your filthy lips upon, don't worry."

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.
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He burst into my room, well almost. For a moment his existence seemed to have escaped him but soon enough, he regained composure. With his head well below his shoulders, his hands outstretched, clutching the door-frame and beads of perspiration dripping down from the tip of his hooked nose, he presented quite a sight for the onlooker. If it weren't for the book upon my lap, I might have stood up and applauded his performance. But instead, I gave a snicker and hoped it would suffice. I gave him a full two minutes to regain composure before putting forth my amicable question, "Howdy, Jojo? Did the sky come crashing down again?".

Jojo was a piece of art. One of God's creations in His rarest moods. It wouldn't take more than an hour with this man to appreciate what I am trying to put across to you. God might have been trying to put together a flawless person. He had everything worked out. But just when he was about to put the brains into this creation of his, something must have happened that really pissed him off. Maybe His wife wanted him to take out the garbage or something along those lines. Something that involves stench, dirt and ya, plenty of garbage. Whatever it was, it made God forget all about the latest project he was working on, and stuff in garbage where the brains ought to have been.

No one had thus far understood why Jojo refused to play any sport other than fish-fish. He would tell anyone who would listen to him that it was a sport akin to water-polo but only without the water. No one knew why of all instruments that his parents offered to buy him, he opted for the cello. My deepest sympathies were with his roommate and everyone else who lived within fifty cello-lengths of him. Apart from these, he sang in his sleep and tripped nearly every time he went to the bathroom. Otherwise, he was a sound egg.

I ran into him on my very first day at the university. He had just tripped rather embarrassingly outside the common washroom, and I was the only bipedal soul around, so I had to help him back to his feet. "Thanks man," he had smiled. The next thing I knew he had invited me to his room to hear him play the cello and I regret having lived those moments of my life. I tell people over and over again that the man ought to be arrested for torturing life around him, but they simply laugh and think I am kidding. A few months later, I had realized he was a sound egg. One only had to graciously decline to be his audience during his cello practice sessions and stay away from him when he got drunk and seemed to consider the world his 'fish-fish' stadium and every other human being his opposition. I know people who have been subject to sledging and spitting by him in such a state. There was even a guy who claimed Jojo had tried to stab him with a toothpick with shouts of "You shalt never triumph, you filthy traitor!!"

I would do well to inform readers that over the past few days, he had been falling in love with one of the Hussein twins. The only trouble was, he never managed to figured out which one. "They are so similar!" he used to cry with anguish whenever he spotted either of them. "That's the whole point," I had told him one day. "They are not twins without reason." He gave me a I-wish-I-had-a-toothpick-to-stab-you-with look. "Thanks a ton, Einstein."

"When are you ever going to figure out which one of them you like?" Teja had asked him exasperatedly. Jojo brushed his hair out of his face and said, "I am going to try my luck with both of them. Either one isn't bad at all, is she?" Teja merely shrugged and got back to polishing his guitar.

So when he had burst into my room, well almost, on that fateful day, my first impression was that it had to do with Jojo and the twins. He didn't let me down. It did turn out to be about his twin trouble. But before he took off on his epic narration, he took time off to frown at the book I had on my lap.

"What's that?"

"Oh, it's a book." I held the thing up so he could see it in clearer light.

"I know the darned thing is a book. What is it about?" He stepped into the room and collapsed on the chair next to my bed. Before I could raise a voice of protest, he had slipped off his sandals and laid his soiled feet upon the clean sheets.

"Ah, nothing great. The title says 'What women want and everything else under the sun". So from what I make of it, it's a book about everything." I glanced up to see Jojo twirling a Natraj pencil with his fingers and staring away at a pile of junk on my table.

"Hmm" he said rather plainly. I didn't blame him. He was not a man of books. Nothing thicker than distilled hydrogen could seep through to his brain.

The book was put away. "Howdy, then?"

He turned back to me with an expression that showed plain surprise at the presence of another human in the room. He didn't have his glasses on. He always thought they made him look geeky.

"Where are your glasses?"

For an answer, he felt his face with his fingers. "Oh! That's what has been wrong! I must have forgotten them back at my room." He paused for a moment. "Dude, you have to help me."

"Ah, shoot. What may I do for my good man today?"

"Harry," he said for that's what he liked to call me. "I kissed a girl."

Every man who speaks such a statement has a typical set of follow-up expressions that he chooses from. The eyes brighten up, the ears prick up and are alert for the oncoming praise or congratulations. The body is tensed and the grin never disappears. Even if the kiss wasn't as good as one had expected, one still smiles. But I was totally unprepared for the expression that Jojo chose to produce after he uttered his chosen words. The shoulders were loose, the face appeared dejected and there wasn't even a hint of a smile on his face. I began to wonder whether I had heard him right.

"You kissed a girl right?"

"Yeah." He was markedly looking away and the lower lip was bitten.

"What's with the sulking then?"

"Err, Harry..." He was unsure about where his feet were and the loose strap on his sandal seemed to attract a lot of his attention. "You remember the Hussein chick, right?"

"Ya of course, what about her."

"I kissed her."

"Sweet! Way to go man! I am all ears. Tell me about it! Oh, oh, which one, by the way?"

The enthusiastic air around me quickly faded away. His eye refused to meet mine and I noticed his hair seemed to be more of his face with every minute that passed.

"Oh shit, dude! Don't tell me!" I cried exasperatedly. "Don't tell me!!"

He looked up with a hopeful expression, like a lost dog. But his lip was still being chewed on. Nodding slightly, he spoke the fateful words.

"You got me, Harry. I have no idea which one I kissed."