Whats new? - 2

As the bus rattled to a stop, we fought our way out pushing the crowd inside the bus around. The bus ride was a nightmare as it had always been during the school days. So out we were, on the road, minutes away from the place of our dreams. And what a sight!! We could already see a crowd of girls and guys. People getting down from different buses heading towards a common destination! We were so used to seeing girls in the below knee length brown skirts in school that this site came as a knockout punch. Colorful tees, short skirts, jeans, frocks, and only god and girls know what else. I wished I had eyes at the back of my head too! Mama Mia... exactly what we had dreamt of!

"Isn’t that Priya? Has she taken up Arts here?" my friend whispered into my ears. My eyes turned into a scanning machine (like shown in Terminator), and pretty soon I found her with a bunch of girls farther ahead of us. She was looking stunning in a black top and denim short skirts. "Don’t we share the same tastes.." I thought. FYI, she used to stay near my house and was a good friend. My friends used to pair me and tease me with her, but no one had a clue that I secretly admired her. I could also see my friends scanning her friends. "Good start" my heart whistled.

Within a few minutes we were face to face with the college building. And what a giant of a structure it was!! Almost ten times bigger than our school building, it towered over us. I could see people hanging out in the open corridors outside classrooms on every floor. Seven floors in all! For a moment I was scared of the buildings dimensions. But we had no option but to go in. So in we went!! Now comes the bad part. As soon as we entered the building, we were surrounded by a bunch of grinning faces. "Fresher?" one of them asked. He was already a foot taller than me not to mention his bulging biceps. As it usually happens in bad times, my friends had disappeared. "Yes" I gulped. "Chal beta chup chap." I was dragged against my will but didn’t have to courage to open my mouth to retaliate. What I did in the next hour, I had never done in life. I was made to dance while another hapless victim sung, sing while the other poor guy danced, dance and sing simultaneously and perform other stupid acts. I was insulted and abused too the point where I cursed my existence. At the end of the hour I was humiliated and my ego was shattered but I had won a friend. The guy who was ragged along with me! We found company in each other’s sorrow state. Akash was from another part of the city but we shared the same interests. Luckily we happened to be in the same class too.

With a lot of difficulty we found our classroom, which happened to be on the fifth floor. Before entering the classroom I glanced outside. The view was breath taking. I could see the cricket ground opposite to the college building, currently vacant due to the rainy season. Beautiful teenagers scattered in small groups lined the small wall, which marked the boundary of the cricket ground. The hawkers strolling around with their fares, the vehicles moving about slowly on the road, everything was looking awesome from here. I as glad to be here! This uplifted my mood and I was back to my cheerful self. Next moment I was inside the classroom. Everything in the classroom was bigger than the school classrooms. The blackboard, the windows, the benches, everything was bigger. The classroom itself was huge. I scanned the crowd. There were around fifteen girls and three guys for every girl. “Its going to be tough!!” I thought about the competition. I turned my scanner to debug level and the results displayed five girls rated as “beautiful”. The others were displayed as “below average”. “Even worse, now there are nine guys for every girl!!” I calculated.

“Hey dude!” came a familiar voice from one dark corner of the class. It was one of my friends who had betrayed me some time back. “Where were you dude?” they enquired innocently. “Mother fuckas!! I ll get even with you guys later.” I snarled. They had managed to befriend three new guys. The only thing common amongst us was that we loved backbenches. Quick introductions were made. “Not bad!! Two hours in college and already four new friends.” I beamed. We then discussed all the good girls in the classroom. Since we didn’t know their names we gave them pet names. We actually fought over naming them too. We were enjoying ourselves.

It was a new place much better than our school; new people who were as excited as us surrounded us, it was all fun and frolic... until she walked in…