A true to God event

This is about my very very very close childhood friend, some one who has played with me, danced with me [while i was twiddling my thumbs], roamed the streets of chennai with me, ate with me, probably from the same tiffin box [his of course!].. thats about it.. since we both are of the tendency to completely become oblivious of where we are when we sleep, i refuse to comment further.. so as i was saying, we were THISSSSSS thick..
Ladies and gentlemen, Meet whats-his-name [of course i wasnt gonna reveal his name... security reasons you know!]

so whats-his-name has this insuffrable tendency to end up in the wrong function with the wrong kinda attire. And after this once, he had regretted it so much that till date i have seen him wearing tie and polished leather shoes to office.

This one day we find the apple of our eye in a bus with the most uproariously bright yellow and orange Mediterranean shirt with fluouorescent green leaf marks... and the most funny looking baggy cargoes with 8 pockets! I travelled on a very crowded chennai bus with this specimen...Without commenting aloud, i kept gazing at the ostentacious trousers...Made excuisitely with threads hanging from every conceibable place on the trouser. People would be able to remeber and place my good friend within a 100 metres, after seeing the trousers or the shirt once... just once!

And then the fiasco happened. Becasue of the extreme crowd, i had hopped on to the bus from the rear end and my buddy, from the front. Since our stops were a few hundred metres away, we didnt bother to weave into the crowd to reach the centre of the bus. It seemed unnecessary. In the mean time, the conductor asked me to pay up. I said, there is my friend at the other end and therefore he will purchase 2 tickets. He gave me the proverbial "saavu graaki" look [another one of 'those' kind of people]. He went inside and when my amigo at the other end said the same thing i had said, he growled menacingly at him like Eduthaathu maama's german shepherd.
[eduthaathu means the house thats in front of ours, maama is a general connotation for a man whose name we either dont know, dont care about, cant really say or is too old to be addressed by name even if we did know.. this particular maama lived opposite door to us and in all the 10 years, i never knew his name! no one did.. nor bothered to find out.. so his name became, as i had alluded, 'the opposite house guy'.. and as i had prudently mentioned, he had a dog the size of a calf..er.. the animal, not the body part]
Coming back to the point.. the conductor growled and our hero had to reach out into his trousers for his wallet.

Conductor seemed pacified, and waited with the ticket torn out from his lot. A comical scene in itself... ball point pen sticking out of his left ear, half balding forehead, and fully balding centre head, a moushtache that should have served better had it been on his head.His eyes were round and brows furrowed..if his tongue was hanging out, he would have definitely be mistaken for the afore mentioned doggy. and our hero was slowly climbing up his tree of patience, swaying it hither and thither. "I had a coin here some where.." he began giggling nervously. He patted his chest, slapped his tushy, felt his way to his hip pocket.. and then he realized with horror that he was wearing the wrong trouser for the occasion. but a man of infinite cool, he patiently went from pocket to pocket, letting out the nervous hyena laugh every now and then. He was so engrossed looking for the coin, that he had missed noticing that his wallet was in fact with me. And as luck would have it, an unfortunate pick pocket had chosen the wrong pockets to pick that day. Our juvenile delinquent was an arduous worker who had learnt not to give up ealry in his career. With his scissors, he had gone through all 8 pockets of our friend's trousers.. and obviously had expasperatedly given up, thanks to not finding anything worthwhile. [this is days of yore gentlemen, no mobile fones..]

As our hound..er..[did i say hound...i probably meant round!] conductor had lost his fuse, and had started barking, baying and almost began to start scratching at our flustered friend. In our days, as our moms would hand us the exact change for the bus to and from the place we would want to go; our darling grandmoms would hastily stuff treasure troves in our hands just as we left the house, ten rupee notes, 5 rupee coins and so on, which we would judiciously save up, and in the right moment, the surplus of our granny's love poured out of his shirt's inner pocket [didnt we say judiciously?] as he was groping clumsily at the last lower most pocket [and didnt i say 8 pockets] bending down. With a cry of relief, that sounded like a tarzan cry muffled by a pack of gorillas, He dived at the rolling coin. I watched a group of people moving hurriedly away...A well bred iyer maama with thick white stripes on his forehead and very well plaited pony tail, "tched tched" at our spectacle of a man. Completely indifferent to the glances he was getting, our hero, rolled with the lurching bus, and finally managed to grab the rolling coin. Did they say certain vague things that rolled dont gather fungus or algae or some thing green and slimy? our man's bright hues were marked with lines of footprints and shoemarks! But he exultantly gave the coin to the horror struck condcutor, who was quite a small tread away from declaring insanity on my friend.

Sigh!!! its been 12 long years since then...when i see him in his marriage suit today with cufflinks and silk handkerchief, and give him a naughty grin, i sure hope you see the fear-riddled eyes he sports.. no one knows how that shirt got foot prints on them even today!!!