Your reputation precedes you.

It was a lazy weekend morning. I wasnt home. I had gone to Bangalore for a couple of days.
Kaushik wasnt home either.
But that wasnt as surprising. He's rarely home on weekends.

So the only people home were Amit and Manish.

Manish wakes up earlier than any one else in the house. Usually when I'd get up, I'd find Manish leaving the house. There have been times when I've woken up and found the house quiet and empty. (Not quite, because I'd go to Kaushik's room and find a big lump under the bedsheets.).

Amit wakes up a little later than Manish. But he's so quick in getting ready that he'd leave the house with Manish. He pops into the bathroom and pops out before you can even blink.
Its really a mystery how he's so fair-skinned.

That day they happened to wake up at around the same time.
A little while later, after dozing off and waking up again a couple of times, both finally made it to the bathroom.

There in the bathroom, it didnt look as if they were making any progress with the essential daily activities, because Manish kept throwing stuff around in the little shelf over the wash basin.

'Hey Amit, I'm not able to find the toothpaste yaar.'

'Yeah, I tried looking for it as well. I cant find it either'

After searching a little while longer, they stand outside the bathroom with their palms on their hips, and look at each other for a second.

They nod in a common understanding.

'Oks.'


I think friendship is dangerous.
It lets out a little too much about you to your friends. Over a period of time they start knowing you too well for your comfort. They start predicting what you'd do.

You start getting a reputation.

Anything missing, any loss, any damage, anything broken in the apartment is immediately attributed to one person.

Me.

They do it with such unerring regularity that I have begun to automatically blame myself if something goes wrong in the house.

(By the way, they were right. The toothpaste mysteriously was found in my kit when I returned from Bangalore.)

(And yeah, it wasnt my toothpaste.)

Well, luckily this phenomenon of getting a reputation is something not limited just to me. The others are famous as well.
Look what happened once.

After a hard day in office, Manish and I happened to find each other at the bus stop. Luckily that day, we didnt have to wait for an empty bus. One came along, and we boarded it acrobatically.

As we were ambling the small distance from the bus stop to our home, I noticed a new apartment complex which I hadnt seen earlier.

'Manish, check out this building. Looks new. '

'Hmm'

'Nice isnt it? Looks like a hostel though'

'Wow.. hope its a girls' hostel'

'What difference is it gonna make to our barren lives ?'

'What are you saying? I'd get a pair of binoculars and check out the girls from our terrace.'

'Hmm. Not a bad idea' I said as I warmed to this idea. 'And we could divide it by 4 !'

It is an unwritten rule in our house. The cost of any purchase would immediately be put down in the common pool to be borne equally by all the flat occupants.

Another unwritten rule is that everyone would immediately try to detach himself from the purchase so that he doesnt have to contribute.

'No yaar. Amit definitely wouldnt contribute to this. So it can be divided by just 3'.

'Hmm. You are right, though I think that he can always use a close-up view of birds and trees'. I said as I pondered over this.
'Coming to think about it, it would eventually be divided between just the two of us.'

'How?'

'I will tell you why.
We would both be on the terrace using the binoculars on a time-sharing basis.'

'Hmmm' drools Manish.

'I would then zero in on a hot babe when suddenly the view would catch someone else - a guy actually, in the girl's room'

'We arent interested in guys.' says Manish. 'At least I'm not'.

'Me neither' I said throwing him a dirty look. 'But all the same, my natural curiosity takes over, and I focus the binoculars on him'.

'And' says Manish impatiently.

'It is Kaushik.'

For a minute, we laugh like idiots, scaring away the nearby stray dogs and inviting dirty looks from the passerbys.

'It wouldnt make sense for us to charge him for the binoculars if he's gonna be part of the scene most of the times, would it ?'

When we finally calm down we find that we are almost home. We find an auto standing right in front of the gate.

A normal phenomenon except for the fact that it had a not so happy auto driver in it.
In fact, he looked irate. Grumbling, he gave a final look of irritation at the house, and drove the auto away.

I looked at Manish and found him looking at me with a slight smile.

'Amit is home'.

'Yes. I think he just arrived'.

Amit is an auto driver's nightmare.

A Hyderabadi auto driver (for that matter any Indian auto driver) would always assume ignorance on the part of his passenger, and would do either of the two things.

• He would switch on the meter, and would take the auto through the longest way possible, accomplishing a mini city tour in the process.
• If the passenger is not particular about the meter, he would decide upon a price and would take the auto through a million short cuts and get him to his destination in a matter of minutes.

Not so when Amit is the passenger.

Amit would get the driver to switch on the meter and would direct him through nooks and crooks which even the driver would be unfamiliar with, and would almost always pay him about half the price which he'd make on some other passenger.

There were a couple of occasions when we had to save the driver from beating Amit up.

There were a couple of occasions when we had to save the driver from beating himself up.

There was an occasion when there was a large congregation of autos at a place. We believe that they were thinking hard to come up with solutions to tackle the Deshpande problem.

If ever you visit Hyderabad, and if you happen to take an auto please dont be surprised if you find his poster on the inside of the auto with the words 'Run away when you see him' under it.

Amit scares the living Jesus out of auto drivers. He really does.

Well, if you think that I'll close the post with this one, think again. I have a habit of saving the best for the last.

Check out the following snippet of a chat conversation I had with a girl. Lets call her Mary.

Oka: Wow, sounds great ! When would you be here?

Mary: I think we should be there by Saturday morning.

Mary: Hey, I would need directions to your place.

Oka: Yeah. I'll tell you how to get here. Dont worry about all that.

Oka: Wait a minute.. you arent gonna land up so early that he'd still be in his bed in his underwear, are you ?

Mary: Oh, I wouldnt mind that at all :)

Oka: What ???

Mary: In fact, it would be well worth the visit !

Never knew that Kaushik had this sort of a reputation.