30. She is the one

Exploring the entity of feminine population is like blind men trying to figure out the elephant. Men’s perception vary drastically based on what they have encountered in their personal experience.

Vicky, a friend of mine used to say ‘You’d realize all girls are good natured when you start moving close to them’, which I interpret as ‘Girls can be good natured to people who get into their good books’

But this story isn’t about my or Vicky’s perception. We are mere props in the world of Santo. And unlike Vicky, Santo never got deep insight into the world of women. For him women were of three kinds

•          Women who don’t know him and hence completely ignore him
•          Women who just know him as a passerby, and hence think twice even before entering a lift with him (there’s an explanation for the ‘hence’) and finally
•          Women who really know him and realize that he’s no rogue but a mere ‘comedy piece’

By the earlier description you’d have known that Santo is not the ‘alpha’ of our gang. That was Vicky. And there were many betas & gammas where the ‘normals’ and ‘geeks’ fit in. Santo is more like the ‘in-betweens’ the guys who don’t form any vital part, but without whom the team could never exist.

He’s like the glue who’d just be there and facilitate all the happenings we plan. Go for a trekking? Count him in. Go for a ‘counter strike’’ battle? Count him in. Or the odd ball quiz or Ad-zap? You can still count him in. He’d be like the ‘out of focus’ guy in the Trek photos, or the other survivor in addition to the ‘commando’ who killed’em all in game battle, or the comical standing tree that tilted the judges to award us the ‘best Ad’ award.

And to the main area of concern… Santo and Women. Though he’s not the desi version of Tom Cruise, he can pass of as the innocent friend the heroine would finally settle with, in ‘chic-flicks’. 

It had more to deal with his behavioural attributes. He was really poor in role-play, that’s the reason he was the standing tree in Ad-zap. And however naturally sweet a guy is (trust me, no one is), you have to act a bit before the fairer sex to gain their respect.

Poor Santo just frets off when he gets near a good looking girl, and either bends down or turns his head to the direction opposite to them… or worse just stares at them making them compare him with Hannibal Lecter  from ‘Silence of the lambs’. And this is the ‘hence’ for women having reservations about getting into lift with him.

So what changed? How did Santo finally end up with the ‘one’? Or did he?

Puppy dog looks

Girls like injured puppies or the ones who nurture and save them, cos they actually think they themselves are the most miserable creatures in the world, and could easily relate to the puppies. So it was natural when Santo came out of the mud pond with an actual injured puppy in his hand, he had so many 'aawws"

Meera, our PETA volunteer, her natural instincts taking over, rushed to help out.

“What happened? “she asked

“It broke its leg. And I can’t let it go all by itself” he said.

He did not tell her it was he who broke its leg while pouncing on it to get Vicky’s bike keys, which Santo had dropped by accident into the pond. We were on a picnic to nearby hillock, and while rest of us came by the bus arranged, Vicky like the usual show-off he is, decided to come by his new bike. (His ploy worked though, as he convinced and did drop Shreya, the hottie of our batch, in her home which is a slight detour from our bus route)

The dog had caught the keys by its teeth and was running deeper into the pond, hence Santo had no other option but to drag it along with him to the shore.

We were watching a few seats behind in the bus as the new ‘Marley and Me’ was unfolding before our eyes

“Is he hurt…?” Santo asked her

“Looks so… he seems to be in pain…” she said

“May be should get him to a doctor” they said together. She looked at him and smiled on realizing that they both had said the same thing together. She liked that he too, like her didn’t want to call a pet’s doctor anything different. Little did she know that he didn’t know a pet’s doctor is called a vet.

Days went like a suburban train, slow for the one’s who wanted just to reach the destination, and fast for those (like Meera & Santo) who were just enjoying the journey. They started going out together, movies, lunch, eating out on weekends…

Meera took Santo’s clumsiness for cuteness, and his stupidity for innocence. You always see what you want to see.

And Santo thought he had finally found the ‘one’ in his life. Or was she?

Please stand up

All stand-up comedians have a similar career graph. They start off with a couple of good acts, work their brains off to bring out a couple of laughs and stay low. And after some time, when they get lucky with a side role in a movie, or good P.R about their skills, they become more casual, and since people know they are funny, people laugh at whatever they say, even jokes that weren’t meant as a joke in first place.

That’s the same thing with girls. When they find someone in a sale looking at a dress they had just passed by, their first instinct would be grab from the other girl’s hand telling they had reserved it.

So it was natural that once Santo started moving freely with Meera, other girls started realising that he was sweet and sensitive. They said that he was a really nice guy, and there was no pressure while hanging out with him, they could be themselves.

So Santo got to hang out with more & more girls, and he started liking it. And it wasn’t dangerous until one day Anitha, Meera’s rival in almost everything from academics to co-curricular, approached him for a dine-out.

“You are stupid to accept it.” I told Santo

“It’d be rude to not accept. May be I should try other fishes too, why should I settle for less?” he replied

“Do you realize who you were a month ago?” I reminded him

“Chill off guys… Let our kid enjoy for a while” Vicky took his side

“Have you told Meera?” I asked

“No, she doesn’t need to know. They are from different cliques, they hardly talk to each other”. And that’s where he made the mistake. Girls who are hell bent against each other, would know if their rival even sniffed a little different.

And any way it’s not the girls’ fault. They are like gravity, they behave the way they are supposed to behave. It’s up to guys to do the right thing.

But the good thing for Santo here is that girls don’t think that way. They are always ready for a cat-fight, what not a more opportune moment than one with a boyfriend stealer.

The third dimension

The word that Meera and Anitha are fighting over Santo spread like a wild fire.

“Even getting Anitha is ok… but Meera??? You are a genius bro” Vicky addressed Santo, with undue respect for the first time

And it was a virtuous cycle, getting a girl makes you confident and more attractive, and that confidence makes you perform better everything, and hence better and more attractive…. The cycle goes on

 So Shreya was naturally dragged into the events. She was interested in guys for reasons other than that of the  two cat-fight girls… Meera for companionship, and Anitha for benefits like assignments, projects etc.

As for as Shreya is concerned, guys are like trophies… it’s enough for her to say that she had gone out with so and so guy, whether they parted ways later doesn’t matter. Only precondition, the relationship should be ended on her terms. So she was naturally pissed when Vicky unilaterally started avoiding her after that bike trip during our picnic. She was looking at an opportunity to get back to him so that she could dump him by herself.

So going out with Santo gave her an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Going out with a guy who is popular, and making Vicky jealous by doing so.

So when Meera and Anitha were having street fight during our theme park visit, Santo was enjoying the roller coaster and water rides with Shreya.

When Meera and Anitha were fighting a terrific debate in the conference hall, Santo & Shreya were having an eat-out at the nearby cafeteria.

Things were going smooth and shiny for Santo, he could act anyway he wanted with girls, and they still wanted to flirt with him. But things can be good only until the two girls in your life are fighting. When they get together, it’s hell for him.

And two girls fighting each other need a common enemy to forget everything and formulate truce. Unfortunate for Santo, he became the common enemy, when they realized that he was going out with Shreya behind their backs.

E.T’s call

Once she realized Santo was no more interesting Anitha decided to end things with him on her own terms. And Shreya realizing that Vicky was not buying her ruse found no more benefit hanging out with Santo.

Columbia Pictures CEO Frank Price had the rights for two sci-fi movies: Starman & E.T. He felt that there was no place for two sci-fi movies in a year, and hence decided to make Starman which he felt was a better bet. And instead of shelving E.T he decided to sell it to Universal so that he could cash in on that as well. And the rest as they say is history.

Starman bombed & E.T went on to make movie history and is still regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made even after generations. And Price is remembered as the person who made the wrong call. Girls being very sensitive as they are do not want to end up feeling they made the wrong choice.

Had Price just kept the movie in his shelves or ensured that the story writer did not get to sell it to someone else, he may not have gained this notoriety at all. The world of course would have lost a gem of a classic, but Price had nothing to lose. You always are better off when what you turned down is not picked up by someone else, or fails miserably.

Girls too do the same thing. Anitha did the former, though she wasn’t going to have Santo as her first choice, she kept up the hopes of Santo, so that he would never end up with someone else. And Shreya did the later, she spread rumours about how creepy he is and thereby ensuring no one else would have a thought about being with him. And her ploy worked… Meera naturally started having second thoughts about hanging out with him, and started avoiding meeting him in social events and gradually stopped interacting with him altogether.

“I don’t understand. Vicky does the same thing to girls, even worse. But they still hang out with him” Santo complained. Of course girls like jerks who behave like a jerk. But when you act like a ‘sweet guy’ when you really are not, your mask would come off one day and you’ll end up worse. Still there are exceptions who have perfected this art of deception, but like I said they are exceptions

The moral of the story… no.. I have no plans explaining Karma or life’s tendency to gravitate towards fairness. Life is not fair. 

Simply put, if you are not good at juggling balls, it’s better to hang on to only one or like the pockets in a snooker table wait until one is being pocketed. (If you didn’t get it…. the former is monogamy and the latter is arranged marriage)

Twist in the tail

Just when we thought things were back to normal, and Santo back to his bunk of loneliness, something we never expected happened. Rumours of Santo going out with Shreya started dripping in.

When Santo didn’t deny it, we thought it was his ploy to reclaim his societal status. But I couldn’t disprove my eyes when I saw him sharing a plate of Paav with Shreya in the canteen (the fatso doesn’t give even a crumb of the three burgers he used to buy for lunch)

It happens that Shreya was bowled over by his ‘simplicity’ and lack of ‘acting’. She had told one of her friends “He asked me to play ‘Counter-strike’ with him. No guy has asked me that before you know” she had told with moony eyes to one of her friends

Weird are the ways women folk react…

Like Power star Srinivasan says "It's not action or comedy... it's finally sentiment that clicks with girls"