In-TALKS-icated

"Would you believe me if I said I was a lesbian?" She asked Rohit playfully.

"Not a chance." Rohit summarily replied.

"Hey!!Why?You have no reason to assume I cannot be a les!" she said, putting her hands on her hips in a cutely indignant manner.He could almost feel his heart skip a beat.

"Throughout our entire conversation,you didn't eye a single chic," he said while pouring in vodka into his empty glass."Not even the red tank top bombshell who walked past us just few moments ago.You didn't even throw her a second glance.If an absolute knockout like her cannot make you turn her head,no gal can.On the contrary,I saw you steal glances at quite a few good-looking dudes here.So keep your lesbian nonsense to yourself.In fact,do me a favor and keep your entire self to yourself.Let me go back to my drinks.I picked the wrong gal to ask a phone number from.I get that.Now shoo away."

"Hey,no need to be rude here,"her voice seemed hurt.Was it feigned?Rohit couldn't figure out."I was just messing with ya!And dude,you are sloshed already.Right in front of me,you gulped down five pegs.You wanna get stoned or something?"

"Would you believe me if I said I get stoned every night?"He looked at her,fighting hard against the weight of his heavy eyelids.One bottle of beer.Followed by a splurge of vodka.He was having difficulty keeping his eyes open.

"I would have liked to say not a chance,but judging by what I have seen so far..." she left the sentence dangling teasingly.His vision was getting a bit blurry,but he thought he could make out a smile on her lips.

Rohit didn't utter a word.

"Hello?Had too much to drink?Can't talk right now?" She waved her hand animatedly in front of his face.

He just let out a rude grunt.

"Now I am curious.Just why do you get stoned every night?" She asked with a questioning look in her pretty kohl-lined eyes.

"A skewed sex-ratio in our country."The skewed sex-ratio in the country was at the heart of all his woes.To have a happy, active, fun-filled sex life in this country,you either had to be born as a female or not at all.At least,this is what Rohit thought.Substitute for good plentiful sex was good plentiful booze.And so it fell upon alcohol to fulfill the role of his rebound girl.He always looked upon alcohol as female.Just like women.,it was addictive and costly.And harmful in the long run.


"Love problems,huh?Tell me about it.I just broke up with my boyfriend  yesterday.We had been an item for three years.Three fucking years.I felt so messed up and shit,I cried the whole day yesterday.Would you believe that?!!!??"


For a gal,who just went through a traumatic separation from her lover,Rohit observed that she seemed to be in amazingly high spirits right now.Must be all that vodka she soaked herself in,he thought.She had downed four pegs of vodka in front of his very eyes.Heaven only knew how much she had before that. 

Gawd!!!I just hope she doesn't throw up on me!!!Rohit thought desperately.He had come to his friend's part just to hog on the free drinks.For quite understandable reasons, he didn't want a chance encounter with a lovely stranger at this heady venue to turn into a cloth-washing nightmare.


"I mean I was never good enough for that jerk," she suddenly became hysterical.Rohit grew even more alarmed.His story with hysterical women had been a history of misery so far.He didn't want another chapter of that history textbook to be penned that night.
"All the time,he used to compare me to some dumb-ass bimbo or the other who probably spend half their waking hours applying  make-up and adjusting their bras to turn their headlights on."


"Headlights?" Rohit asked groggily.


"Boobs."She explained contemptuously.


"Hmmm."Headlights.Equal to boobs.Rohit noted it down.


"And you won't believe what that ass-hole suggested to me when we broke up.He said I should get a boob-job done.Some cousin of his got it done recently.And now he was saying I do it too.That sonofa...I just don't get it.Why can't gals be satisfied with what they have?Why go to such extreme lengths to change your physical appearance to appease others?"


This girl was on the slimmer side.Which meant her headlights kind of lacked the glare which Rohit would have liked.But despite that,with her angelic face and petite figure,she could still make a lot of heads turn.That bf of hers had been a downright jerk.Or maybe just too damn awesome.Maybe he could just afford to throw away gals with enough hotness quotient to melt a hole through anybody's glasses.


"Ah well.Blame it on Cecil Beaton."Rohit answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Cecil who?"

"Marilyn Monroe.. along with many more awesome now-dead people -- was in reality rather more wrinkly, lumpy and human than we think. She owed a large portion of her image today to Beaton's camera and gift for flattery. Especially the latter, seeing as he edited the shit out of his photographs."

"Interesting.Go on."She said,her curiosity aroused.

"This dude Beaton.He was the Photoshop of his times.Sixty years before Photoshop 1.0 was launched, Cecil was toiling away in dark rooms with basic tools such as razor blades and markers, trimming waistlines, correcting bulges and sharpening features.And this fucker actually gained world-wide fame for his ability to make the rich and famous look unreasonably sexy."

"Uh..huh.."

"That fucker started this whole goddamn trend.Of editing celebrity photos to make them look stunning.Thanks to the photographers' and magazines' tendency to...how should I put it...creatively correct their shots, scores of girls grow up thinking stuff like blemishes, love handles and dull hair are shameful rather than the human norm, and therefore need to be hidden or otherwise dealt with."

"Damn him." She cursed under her breath.

"Human beings anyway are an unpredictable lot. I wish a day would come when they would be replaced by robots and we can all live in a world of predictability and order.No heart-breaks,no disappointments,no hurt expectations,no pesky mess butting its ugly head into our lives."Saying this,Rohit lapsed into silence again.


Presently,she asked,"So what's your story,hotshot?Which gal tore a hole through your stony heart?"

"It's a long story."

"Shorten it then."

"Boy meets girl.Falls in love.Girl breaks his heart and flies away to a different city.End of story."

"Boy!!!!You rattled this out almost as if you had memorized this shit.Just how many times have you told this to other people?"She shot out incredulously.

"Only about a hundred and forty two times.But to your credit,you are the first person who managed to wrest it out of me within less than half an hour of us beginning to talk to each other."

"That too someone you started talking to just because we lunged for the same vodka bottle at the drinks bar."She started giggling.Rohit felt as if he could hear bells chiming in the distance.Funny,he thought.Didn't this kinda stuff happen only in soppy Mills and Boons novels?Must be all that booze!!!!!!!Rohit could feel himself being slowly, but surely, pulled into a sleepy dreamy quicksand.

"So,no touch with her huh?"She asked again.Her voice seemed far off.Distant.Even her face seemed to be fading away.

"None whatsoever."

"You know maybe we should meet up again later.You seem to me a nice guy to ....... to."

And that was the last thing he remembered her saying before he dozed off.

***

He didn't wake up before morning.He was still at his friend's place.Several around him were still picking themselves up from the floor,the sofa or the chairs after last night's excesses.He looked around frantically.There was no sign of her.

He thought of asking his friend about the girl.But what would he ask?His memories of last night were a blur.All he could remember were snatches of that conversation.He wasn't even sure what the girl looked like or if he could even recognize her if he saw her at a distance.

Disappointed,he left his friend's home.And suddenly his phone beeped.It was a text from an unknown number.

"Hey hotshot!U stil remembr tht gal u talkd 2 ystrdy?Coz she stll rmmbrs u.Wanna meet up?U dozed off last nite.So I jst called up my phone frm urs 2 get ur numbr.Im sure u dnt mind,do u?:-) Cheers,Mahima."

Rohit's heart sang.The morning suddenly seemed brighter.The birds chirping suddenly sounded sweeter.He started whistling as he made his way home.

*The End*

P.S.This is a sequel to Love and other bugs. Don't worry,you don't need to read that in order to enjoy this story.:-)