Dil ne jise apna kaha – Part 1

Ramesh woke up to a mundane recession-hit morning and powered on his laptop. It’s a well-known fact among desi kids that most of them sign in to their yahoo accounts even before the morning ablutions. So as stud_guy4luv@yahoo.com was checking his daily email he was surprised to see a message with the following subject.

Shruthi has sent you a friend request on Orkut

Now any true orkut stud very well knows that they never get friend requests and it is them who in turn inundate women with requests that often go on the lines of

Hai cutey,
You are very much beauty. I wanna make fraandships wid u. 22/m/blr here wat abt u? plz reply and accept my request ok haan? tata bye byeeeeeeeeee

(Now don’t argue with me, I’ve seen friend-requests that are risqué and some even NSFW courtesy my female friends. Plus it’s my story ok, so shut up!).

Ramesh at first could not believe his eyes for such things happen only in la-la land. Finally the years of endless devotion
to
Mamta Kulkarni postersendless devotion to Mamta Kulkarni posters had paid rich dividends and it was a girl who made the first move. He also knew that he could not be dreaming for that space is leased to Namitha Kapoor, Nayantara, Payal Rohatgi, Sherlyn Chopra and Bipasha Basu. Of course this was for the you-know-what dreams only, the yashraj dreams were meant only for Aishwarya Rai, Priyanka Chopra, Trisha Krishnan and Deepika Padukone. He quickly clicked her profile fearing it to be a prank by his fellow stud dudes posing to be a girl, but no! Communities, interests, profile info, testimonials and even scraps checked out to be genuine. There was no profile pic or albums however but then that was pretty common with 90% of the Rani Mukherjee type ladeej of the Orkut world who wanted the world to see them only in their bridal tresses. Communities and profile info can easily be tampered with but any Orkut-pro would know that it takes a lot to cook up 5000 fake scraps and 15 fake testimonials.

Now that the profile checked out to be female, Ramesh was ecstatic to break the news to all his fellow stud friends that finally the hunter had become the hunted! Soon his presence at ‘stud parties‘ was decreasing for he spent his energies on stalking Shruthi and gathering information from the scraps others left for her. Now for the uninformed, stud parties are get-togethers where the self proclaimed alpha males congregatethe self proclaimed alpha males congregate over chips, beer and watch you-know-what. While changing DVDs or during dinner breaks they talk about their latest targets, strategies, progress and exchange tips and leads to common friends of their targets. Sometimes when the torrents are painstakingly stuck at 80% there are also group stalking sessions where the studs do what is called in stud circles as ‘profile hopping‘. Profile hopping is another exercise that is exclusive to studs only wherein the aimlessly hop across Orkut profiles until a consensus is reached on a common target. Several factors are taken into considerations like choice of movies, school/colleges attended, caste preferences, favorite movie stars, height, complexion, testimonials and basically what ever you can gather from the profile info and communities. This of course assumes that the target has a profile pic and albums to drool. The above factors determine what is called the ‘maal-factor‘ of a girl which is calculated using a complex algorithm and higher the better. Girls posing in pics without sleeves, with their arms around others, pics in bars/parties usually tend to have a higher maal-factor. Arguments regarding ‘maal-gerls‘ can at times get nasty and last for hours mostly like a whole evening.

Once a ‘maal-gerl’ is collectively agreed upon as a potential target, all the studs begin looking at their connections like common friends and everyone in the six degrees of separation. Common interests are jotted down, ways and means to impress the maal-gerl with an approach that seems cool and not desperate are thought of. The trick here being to suggest that one isn’t interested in the said maal-gerl and the scrap is being left only as an observation of a common trait/interest/quirk and nothing more. If a girl is intrigued by the fantastic wordplay in the scrap/friend request, she takes the bait and responds/accepts. The aim is to beat everyone in getting at least a reply from the said maal-gerl, if not acceptance of a friend request. The winner then enjoys super alpha male stud status till the next stud party and has veto power in picking a you-know-what movie for download for next time! However exciting these stud parties may seem, Ramesh had lost interest and began spending more time with his new friend. Now when a stud missed a few stud parties it could only mean one of three things. A guy doesn’t refrain from watching you-know-what unless (i)his parents came visiting, (ii)he was seeing someone or (iii)there was a problem with his you-know-what. In Ramesh’s case it was the second one and he was mighty pleased about it.

A little history about our man of the hour though, for after all the entire story is about him and not weird Aztec bachelor ceremonies. Ramesh like all super studs never made any contact with the opposite sex in all his growing years. In school he always sat on the right half of class and the nearest he ever got to a girl was when the junior studs group he was part of tugged at pony tails. Engineering was no better in the sweltering heat of Bijapursweltering heat of Bijapur in a nondescript college far far away from the town in the midst of sugarcane fields. It’s even worse if you’re in mech or civil when the only thing feminine is the guy in class who is too cheap to get a haircut. Once you’re done with four years of rigorous technological education anything even remotely feminine is counted as maal. After struggling to find a job for months and having watched all the re-runs of  ‘Kahin to Hoga‘, he finally decided to get a hold of his life and began attending every job fair in town. Having got on a first name basis with every recruiter in Hyd/Blore and getting heckled out by security in Gurgaon/Pune, he even tried job fairs in Bhilai and the Bihari Railway exam. Sadly the Railway exams require a Bihar domicile irrespective of which state you take them in.

Continued in part 2…

(Image courtesy: UberTrigger)

PS: I’m bibliophobic and have never read anything since VIIth grade. Not quite sure about the tense used or flow of continuity. Instead of fiction lets just treat this like one giant post!