“You say it best….When you say nothing at all!!” Ronan Keating’s voice filled the room as the alarm of my phone set off exactly at midnight. As if on cue, the huge clock on the wall also let out the defeaning song of ‘Gongs’ as it struck twelve.
“HAPPY B’DAY TO UUUUUUU!” We yelled and hugged Sonal on turning seventeen. Sakshi took out two crackers from her bag and as we pulled their strings, they burst with a loud bang filling the air with colourful strings and tiny pieces of sparkling paper . Sonal twirled and danced with glee, her smile stretching frm ear to ear!
The three of us took our respective presents out of the bags and thrust them in the bday girl’s hands. I had bought her a teddy bear frm ‘Archies’. I smiled when she squealed with joy on opening my gift and cuddled the bear for a full ten seconds. Sakshi had bought her a very trendy and colourful t - shirt whereas Pratishtha had got her a lovely summery fragrance. As we began clearing the bed of strewn wrapping paper and messy strings, the intercom buzzed.
“Come on!” Sonal exclaimed, jumping off the bed and putting on her slippers. “Mum and Dad are calling!”
As we made our way down the stairs, we saw Uncle, Aunty and Saurabh bhaiya (Who was holding a bouquet and a huge greeting card in his hand!) waiting for us. All three of them hugged and kissed Sonal a happy b’day. A groggy eyed servant came out of the kitchen and place two square shaped cakes on the dining table. One was chocolate and the other one was of black-forest flavor. All of us crowded around the b’day girl and sang the b’ day song as she blew out the candles and cut the first piece. We skipped our favourite line of the song- “Many many boy-friends to uuu!” in the presence of Sonal’s beaming parents. After smearing a lot of cream on Sonal’s face and eating three pieces of cake each, we wished Uncle and Aunty a goodnight and made our way back to the room. We spent the next couple of hours chatting and clicking our pictures in funny poses. Our favourite one turned out to be the one of Pratishtha, Sakshi and myself in various ‘Shivji’ poses. We had fondly nicknamed a junior teacher at school- ‘Shivji’ because of her unusual hairstyle and dedicated this photo to her.
At around quarter past three, we all admitted to being hungry and tip-toed out of the room to, once again, descend the stairs and go to the kitchen. The silent house was completely immersed in a coat of darkness and we had to be careful not to touch the windows and the doors lest the alarm got activated and filled the house with ear-splitting sounds of the siren. Keeping our hands on each others’ shoulders, we walked slowly down the stairs in single file. Pratishtha’s free hand was covering my mouth to block out the sound of my giggling and by the time we reached the foot of the steps, she was pinching me on the arm, out of fury.
“MAAAALUU!” she said, exasperatedly, as we finally entered the kitchen and Sonal switched on the lights. “What is so funny?”
“Nothing!” I said, grinning, “just visualising how we must be looking, walking like that!”
Shaking their heads, the three of them spread out in the kitchen. Sonal started preparing maggi, Pratishtha was already pouring chilled ‘Frooti’ in four glasses and Sakshi was raiding the huge fridge for the leftovers from dinner. I was,as usual, sitting cross-legged on the platform, yawning.
“Maaaaalu!” Sonal hissed, pulling me upright for the second time, “if u accidently brush the window behind u and the alarm goes off, you will be the one answerable to Dad!”
“Uhh alarm-smalarm!” I replied, stretching widely, “You worry too much mumma !”
Once their arms were full of merchandise, I jumped onto the floor and started towards the door.
“Not so soon madam!” Pratishtha said, grabbing the back of my top and pulling me back.
“Whaaat?” I asked, turning to face her.
“You are so lazy Maalu! I am tired of your laziness!” she answered, giving me a stern look.
“Heyyyy!” I said , keeping a hand on my heart and my voice full of mock pain. “I am so hurt!”
“Good!” Pratishtha said, taking everything but the tray of Maggi and Frooti out of Sonal’s and Sakshi’s hands and shoving them in mine. “From now on, you can do some work too while we enjoy stretching occasionaly. You take most of this stuff upstairs. Now come on…after you!!!!”
Sulking and with my head high, I passed her outstretched hand and marched outside the kitchen, making a grand show of my anger. Once inside the room, I dumped two bags of wafers, half empty bottle of Frooti, a pack of cookies and and air-tight bowl containing heated pasta onto the bed and sat with my back towards the door.
“Now that Maalu is not interested in eating or talking or ‘helping’,” I heard Sakshi’s loud voice as the three of them entered the room, “we can sit here and enjoy ourselves!”
“Noooooo!” I shrieked,jumping onto the floor and helping them with the trays laden with food. “I’ll help!”
They roared with laughter and I made a face at them, realising that they had anticipated my exact reaction.
We dug into the food and chatted about what to do next.
“Wanna watch a movie?” Sonal asked, twirling Maggi around her fork.
“Borrrrrring!” Sakshi replied.
“Shall we curl our hair?” Sonal offered.
“Eeuuuuww!” I groaned in reply, pretending to throw up in my glass of Frooti.
“I know!!!!” Sakshi said, rising to stand slowly and dramatically. “Lets…” she reached out behind her to slowly sieze something, “PILLOW-FIGHT!!”
The thing she had grabbed from behind was a big white pillow and in an instant, we all were on our feet, attacking each other fiercely with pillows of our own. I had just managed to place my glasses on the side-table to keep them out of harm’s way when I was roughly pulled by a leg and next moment, I was lying on my back on the bed, being hit by all three of my friends. I quickly managed to grab Sonal’s leg and yanked it hard. As a result she heavily fell down on the bed and sitting up, I hit her everywhere with my yellow, sun-shaped pillow. “HAPPPY B’DAYY GIRLIE!” I yelled, as she shielded her face, giggling and trying to fight back.
Meanwhile, Sakshi was chasing Pratishtha around the room hitting her hard on the back of her head with the largest pillow in the room.
At around five am, we finally collapsed on the floor and lay against each other, panting and catching our breath. What fun we had had! We even took a picture to capture the fun-filled moment!
“You know what!” Sonal said, “I can’t believe that after a few months we will leave school and…well, we will all go our different ways, right?”
“Noo!” I replied, lying down on her outstretched legs, “Its upto us, isnt it? We will make sure that even if we go to different colleges, we will keep in touch and keep meeting for outings and nightstays just as we do now.”
“Yeah! Lets do that!” she said, holding out her hand, “ Sounds corny, but…We wont let our friendship fade out …ever! …. PROMISE????”
“PROMISE!!!!” the three of us yelled, putting our own hands on top of hers.
“Come on now!” Pratishtha said, getting up, “I am in no mood to get sentimental and besides, we have a monster called ‘Board Exams’ to defeat, before worrying about our teary-eyed moment of farewell. Tell you what! Let’s click a picture of four of us sitting in the bath-tub..it will be fun! We can laugh about it together when we get really old and lose our teeth!”
“Yeeeeeah!” Sakshi said, jumping and running towards the bathroom. “The last one to reach the bath-tub has to eat all of our cabbage covered pizzas when Captain Shekhawat serves them next!”
The food incharge at school- Captain Shekhawat, had recently invented a new dish, which consisted of small,round cakes made of refined flour i.e ‘maida’, covered with pieces of capsicum, tomato and lots and lots of cabbage!! When it had been served for the first time for breakfast, Aniket had asked the passing Captain Shekhawat, what the new dish was supposed to be. The Latter had looked at him in surprise, blinking!
“But It’s a Pizzaaaaaaa!” he finally said, bowing low and holding out his hands as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Aniket!” Avtar said,in mock outrage, “It’s a pizzaaaaaa! How could you not knowww???”
At this Captain Shekhawat had beamed at Avtar and had shaken his head at Aniket’s lack of judgement before walking off.
Now, we all screamed and ran towards the bathroom, grabbing each other’s arms to pull back and trying to beat the others to the bathroom. None of us wanted to eat more of those ‘Pizzas’ than we had to!
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