The first time I saw Bunny was when we came to pay the fees. He was all of six feet two and robustly built. He had short hair, broad shoulders and a fully fledged moustache. My mom later told me that she thought he was the elder brother of some student.
I’m not sure when I first spoke to Bunny. I remember convincing the chap to come to coffee day with us. Immediately after that, Sharanaya said she’ll come and I ribbed her about that the whole day. Guess me and KK looked real scary in that first week. But the day when I got to know the guy was during the cricket trials. He came across as instinctive, unassuming and confident. We chatted the whole frikkin day. Bunny, KK, Bipin and me. The very first ball he bowled bounced right over the batsman’s head. I think his cricketing abilities deserve a separate post.
A few days later he came to my house and that was the starting point of our friendship. He became one of the regulars at the MCC. It was a pretty common sight to see Bunny, Aruna and me wolfing down loads and loads of food and it was kondattam time when my mom made chicken. She particularly loved these two bums as they were shamelessly uninhibited in asking for more food.
There was a period of time in the first year when he stayed back for the night once or twice every week. He’ll have dinner and he’ll say he’ll get going. Byes and goodnights are distributed to the chaps at home. Then the both of us walk out. He’ll lean on the car and I’ll settle on the kinetic as we discussed earth-shaking issues such as KK’s myriad love stories or exciting underarm matches of the post 12th-pre college season. He’ll tell me about Virudhnagar, his school, and the exploits of ‘thadiya’ aka Aruna in the hostel. I can still visualize him saying, “Dei, nethu thadiyan enna pannan theriyuma?” After some time we’ll walk towards the gate, still talking. We’ll spend loads more time yakking around (He was particularly amused by the story in which my brother beat up KK and slammed him against a pile of bricks) and finally one of us will discover that the time was past 12 and then we’ll walk back. Once we enter the hall the both of us, my mom and Mr. Sols will all start laughing. There were quite a few days when we chatted until 4 or 5. The n’th time we’d decide that we’d sleep would invariably be followed by the n’th ‘sweet dreams’ by Karthee and then he’ll say, “Dei, intha vaati avuthu thoongalam da.”
We had roaring fun those days. There was this time when Bunny, Aruna and I went triples on my kinetic. (Really, we did) that must have been one hilarious sight. Bunny was driving, Aruna in between and I was perched on the wheel behind. There was no food at home and so out we went at 11 o’clock. We found this Andhra mess that was somewhat close by and open. Aruna would have a piece of chicken and he’d immediately reach for water. Simultaneously he’ll blow his nose inwards. Bunny and I were laughing our heads out. Those were the days when he was exceedingly, and amusingly polite to me and he’d abuse Aruna like crap. They used to fight all the time but it was mostly good-natured. Somewhat similar to how brothers fight.
There were days when we played table tennis late into the night. He had just started playing and he was totally hooked. He’ll want to keep on playing until he beat me. Some days we’ll sleep late and we’ll start playing in the afternoon again.
We had loads of fun with ‘angittu’ and ‘ingittu’. There was this time when I took Karthee’s phone and I called Kavya. I used angittu and ingittu and she didn’t realize it was me. I remember telling her to go somewhere but don’t remember where. Bunny immediately called her up and started apologizing like crap. He was that nice a guy. A simple compliment like ‘machan intha haircut styla irrukku’ would actually make him blush. He’ll suddenly look at me and ask, “Dei, seriousa solriya illa kalaikiriya?” and I’ll go, “Illa machan, seriousa thaan”.
Then, his b’day, I was in top form that day. All of us laughed like crap as I constantly teased Yamini and she’d start shrieking like hell but the party ended on a sour note with the squabble between me and Sharanya.
Another thing I’ll never forget is the Indian ink Karthee spilt on me. He kept on saying ‘sorry’ as we walked from the department to the hostel. I’ll keep saying ‘vidu da’ and ‘no problem’ but he’ll look at the pant and say ‘sorry da machan’. He was ridiculously nice then. Especially to me. The only time he came close to being angry with me was in the canteen. He came up to me with a grim face and murmured, “Machan, did you call Sharanya a pervert?” I was like, “Yeah” .He was really serious then and his voice was a gruff whisper. He was like “Why?” and then he started to walk away. I caught up with him asked him what the problem was. He asked me if I knew what pervert meant. Finally, he whispered it to me. The bloke was under the impression that a pervert was a person who had abnormal sexual organs. I set the misunderstanding right and laughed at the whole thing then. But later that day, I realized that he would have bashed up 99% of the people who would have called her you-know-what and I was quite happy that I was part of the remaining one percent.
Our friendship was totally built on cricket. Though, in later times the amount of cricket we played and the visits to my place went down by quite a bit we were still pretty good friends. We had so much fun when we shot KK’s short film. He was handling the camera and we had to get this shot of the ball hitting the stump. We just had to hit it from a few feet away. I tried and missed a few times. KK tried. Missed. Aruna tried. Missed. KK. Missed. Subbu. Missed. Me, again missed. By this time he was so fed up with taking so many useless shots and constantly saying rolling and action that he thrust the camera at Aruna, said a few punch dialogues (Useless fellows. Naan adikiren, parungu) and then, he, as fate would have it, missed. He absolutely burst out laughing. The whole place literally exploded. Mundhra was on the floor banging his head. We laughed for a frikkin long time.
Late night football in my house was bleddy awesome too. The lad was drunk quite a bit and he didn’t want to come but Aruna got him anyways. None of us found out (he told me later) but my mom knew, somehow. The football was really wild that day. Bunny and I made an awesome combo as we thrashed Prithvi, Aruna and Srirama alias Mokkai. Srirama took Bunny’s pulsar for a ride and over an hour had gone by when we realized that he wasn’t back. We frantically took my bike and just as we were going out the guy turned up, pushing the bike. The bleddy fool had forgotten to switch on the fuel. As Bunny tried to start the bike Srirama was cracking mokkai after mokkai and really getting under Bunny’s skin. Then Bunny pulled a tube out and started sucking and suddenly he pulled back spat out petrol and he ran to the wash basin constantly spitting. The both of us were rolling around in laughter at around 4.40 in the morning.
The lad was dripping with enthusiasm. Without him nothing would have been organized in our class, especially the trip. I have loads of beautiful memories from the trip. His childish enthusiasm and the joy he derived from shooting everyone with his laser gun. He’ll go, “Raju”. I’ll look at him and he’ll shoot me. The both of us walked into the rapids as Aatha went ballistic. We were talking in the room in Hotel Visakh and the chap was asleep but as soon as I got the goodies out, he woke up with a sheepish grin on his face. The look of hurt on his face when I sided with Sharanya and called his sandals gaudy. The thrill he got from looking at other girls in Bangalore right under Sharanya’s nose.
There are some friendships that are built on the sands of time but the camaraderie between us turned up almost instantly. We were perfectly at ease with each other right from the beginning, even when we were silent. There was mutual respect and understanding. And, there are these unforgettable memories.
