Dream Girl: Set Free

By SANJEEV SRIVASTAVA

DREAM GIRL Set Free is the story of a man who has just come out of a good job following his Boss, due to their friendship.

The Boss places his trust in him yet again but this time with a project that is entirely removed from what he has been doing so far in life.

He takes up the challenge partly owing to lack of something else to do and partly due to the very attractive offer that the Boss puts out to him.

He finds himself all alone and in strange waters, the Boss is placed elsewhere and beyond regular touch. He needs someone to share his fears and apprehensions with.

His family is the centre of his world. But he knows better than to burden them with his problems and so he turns to his pet dog and finds in her silent acceptance an ideal anchor for that particular phase of his life, like many of us who do find or create temporary anchors in life for the various phases of our lives.

As his project hits success his life starts to fall apart and it all ends with the death of his pet dog and on that very day he gets another chance at life.

Life goes on.

Will he make another anchor for the next phase of his life? The story leaves us at speculation and expectation.

Told in a manner similar to Wodehouse it has its underlying humour swelling and ebbing through the course of the narrative and would keep the reader entertained throughout.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jan 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482843699

SANJEEV SRIVASTAVA

Sanjeev has the rare ability to see the underlying humour in almost all aspects, situations and events of life. Including people. He helps us to discover the same. He loves to read anything and everything and yes, he also writes books.

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Copyright © 2015 by Sanjeev Srivastava.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4828-4370-5

                eBook           978-1-4828-4369-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Partridge India

000 800 10062 62

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I was really getting late for the office and Brijesh as usual was having a good time driving my beloved Maruti 800 at a supposedly break neck speed which having said that is not fast as anyone who has driven in Delhi during office hours can tell you, but with Brijesh the Barbarian at the controls it could still break your neck, easily. God it was scary as the traffic was at its busiest best and for Brijesh the horn was yet to be invented. Sometimes I used to wonder if he had actually learnt driving in the Americas. I am given to believe they don’t normally blow horns there. Then why fit the damn things in the cars, again I wonder. I was and guess I still am pretty good at wondering. I think all men who are not good conversationalists are good wonderers, if we may be called that. What else you can call someone who is good at wondering if that’s not the word, I wonder. There I go again.

Anyways coming back to me in my beloved Maruti 800 being driven scarily by my driver Brijesh, let me proceed. It was a warm sunny morning of March 2005 and I was going to my new office. New in the sense that I had just joined my old Boss in his new office or new business endeavour or trying to be a new business endeavour as it was yet to be decided what we were going to be bnusinessing at or with or what, oh what the bloody hell!! How I hate the guys who know what to say and can also find the right words to say it with. Can this have something to do with the genes; I wonder… or English medium Indian schools? Must be the schools! Or the teachers teaching in those schools, after all a student is only what the teacher can make him, or is it? I wonder.

A loud angry tap at the window glass and I abruptly abandon my wonderings and try to focus at the face looking in. it was not a pretty face but had a lot of character in it. Bad character! Dark and menacing and slavering at the mouth and mouthing obscenities in Punjabi and daring me to come out, I thought. I rolled the window down and it was then that the full force of his character hit me. Hit me hard with its wetness as his spit splattered on my face, hands and shirt front.

The sleeping tiger in me woke up as if someone had thrown a bucket of water on his slumbering form and I tried to force my car door open. I say force because whereas the gentleman of forceful character was trying in a very evocative language to get me to come out he had actually applied the better force of his personality against the door so I could not get out!

A typical Delhi road encounter I thought and slumped back in my seat trying to soothe the tiger in me back to its slumbering den. Why try to fight when you actually don’t want to? All my years in Delhi I have wondered at this strange everyday phenomenon of Delhi roads. Is it an indigenous form of stress busting? Or perhaps entertainment, I wonder. I really do, no jokes man!

And just when I was busy doing what I do best – wondering; that Brijesh Ji found something better to do than plain driving, he braked. Is that a past tense of brake? I wonder… anyways since Mr. Brake guy Brijesh had done his braking job with something of a beginner’s passion my wondering had to be pushed back to the backseat – literally since all of me with my wondering inclusive had somehow tried to lodge itself next to the braking Brijesh. Having successfully pushed back to the backseat if that is the correct form of putting things, even if not that is exactly what we did, me and my wondering. I was in the process of trying to ask the reason behind the braking with a lot of passionate character that I saw him jump out of the car and run out to where a delicate mob of typical Delhi crowd had begun to gather. Typical Delhi crowd. Fat auntys with fatter bottoms, jat boy with four size smaller T-shirt, Uncle no gooder et al. Wow! I was in a driver less car in the almost middle of a busy Delhi road and a horde of happy honkers behind me were immensely enjoying doing what they did enjoy the most – honking!

I cannot even begin to describe the alacrity if that’s the word or dexterity if that first one doesn’t go well with you, with which i jumped out and jumped in, the second row in the first instance and the driver seat in the latter to be precise. Guiding the car to a tiny vacant plot of ploughed up sewerage land next to the now getting bigger every moment mob was but an everyday feat for me and i patted myself on the back mentally not literally you realism morons, for a job well done.

Had to lock up the jolly old thing and climb up next to a delicious fat, fair, flamboyant and frumpish aunty ji to have a look at the centre of attraction myself. Frumpish yes man the aunt was oh so very frumpish. Frumpishly tearing at a bag of mixed bhajiyas and elbowing her way ahead with a fierce frumpish fervour which worked in my favour as hiding at her abundant rear i too got to surge ahead after her.

Well i had my look at the cause of it all, or whatever look could be had after accommodating in the frame that so abundant of all bottoms of my dear aunty ji who too had her look and emitted a most encouraging – Oye! To what was to be the center of attraction that night, sorry day.

A pair of brave hearts from the D.M.C. having received at least a thousand complaints from the residents of this area, you see its a matter of sheer order to have the number of complaints at least the magic four digits for these brave souls to embark on a mission so dangerous of Catching Stray Dogs! And the braver dog family with the typical tenacity that the Delhi roads so generously bestow upon their faithful were having the time of their life with a public show of their life, free! For all! And a much lame old man cursing their entire fore fathers one by one and counting who i guess must have had objected to the doggy pair for their act and been bitten to the bone.

With the expertise of someone who is an expert, only experts have expertise my dear, at spotting the cheapest pair of pyjamas at a Karol Bagh road side stall i picked out my erring driver Brijesh who i suspect had actually begun taking bets on whether the old lame man would run out of abuses before Mr. And Mrs. Dog finished their business or not, hauled him back to the car and we started once again our daily routine of trying to get to office before the Delhi roads and their incessant attractions of the day got me into trouble with my Boss.

Boss! Ouch man that word hurts! I wish I had the time to tell you the story of my Boss and the late coming excuse of the year that I had childishly thought he would not have heard in his entire career of bossing! But my dear child a boss is a boss is a boss and he has heard it all. Wonder why they don’t publish it in a book… a whopping book of maybe ten thousand pages. Wonder what kind of royalty would they pay for such a heavy book… wonder how much the Kabadi would pay for such a book once you had finished reading it or given up reading it… I wonder yet again. They say old habits die hard… I wonder who said that… and why… I wonder…

Getting into the elevator and pushing open the office door was with me an act i could do half asleep, which is what i do most days anyways.

The guard on duty at the main door pushed open the door only for the boss and that too only when he was there. Mostly he could be found either in the pantry chatting up with the pretty old thing we called Ammaji or loitering around in the reception foyer ogling at the pretty young thing we called… er whatever everybody but myself called Chiku! Boy the cheek, not Chiku’s but everybodys.. er that everybody had.. oh gosh I mean the cheek everybody had calling her by the name her boyfriend had christened her with. She had a perfectly nice and serious name- Pummy!

Utho Laal ab aankhen kholo, Coffee laya hoon muh kholo! Poet laureate par plagiarism of office Mr. Puneet Pandey floating in front of my half closed eyes swigging deeply from a cup of perhaps coffee but more likely the sorry tea from our Kallu Daku downstirs. Time to get to work dear fellow, do you think I have the luxury of time to sit here telling you stories about my always -the -same daily life in Delhi? Fat chance! I wonder why they had to go call it a Fat Chance. And why are all such things taken to be feminine? Fat Chance, thin edge, tall talks, short stories… have to be females you bird brain with so many figures (conscious) of speech!

Get to work! Get to work! Get to work! Oh all right Pandey ji, I get your point nice and clear.

Put some life into the lap top thingy, put your specs lower down the nose, put on your best frown from hell expression and the stage is set. Lights, Camera, Action! The work show is on darlings for the next half an hour or till the Boss comes in that guard or without guard door, Good Mornings Everbody and disappears down the dark alley of his ominous lair, the cabin of soul rendering experiences except on his birthday which sadly occurs only once a year- not fair man life is not god dam fair!

Pick up the intercom, deepen the frown and whistle slowly to Chiku- Get me the Buying Office please… I wonder why everybody used to whistle saying Chiku! Takes effort and time to master the art but then again you really had to do it and do it bloody well if you ever wanted Chiku to put your call through to someone. No one had a direct line in that office, well only the Boss but then he never used it. He was the best at whistling to Chiku! Well you had guessed that before I said it, right? Wrong! How could you, you were never in that office by any chance were you?

Well then let’s see if you can guess this one? What had to be done to get the Boss out of his secret lair? No guesses? See I told you, you are not as smart as you think yourself to be Smarty Pants!

I wonder whoever created that one- Smarty Pants! My God what creativity and in the pants section too! Wonder if they meant gents only pants or ladies or unisex… I wonder…

Guess it will be good work done if I finger my lap toppy thing for that one. You know googling is best form of fingering something for ecstatic results. And you can do it with one finger or many the lappy toppy is always game for fingering, googling games.

I finger and I google and I finger some more and the googling is getting better and better with more and more results every time and oh! Oh! here it comes! Dictionaries of the world unite and also throw in Smarty Boots with Smarty Pants – Buy one get one free here too?! Guess the world is not the same without the Marketing Smart pants or boots or the smelly toe jammy socks or whatever.

The intercom politely buzzes and by its very politeness i think i sense that Chiku is on line with my unwelcome call connected to the B.O.

Yes it is and the voice with the garlicky breath at the other end wants me down to their warehouse with lightening speed and socks pulled up to my neck with readiness at facing the worlds noisiest musical. Garlic Breath singing national anthem of Mayhem, at double bass!

I know! i know! You want me to tell how i can tell its garlic breath on the phone; you mean how can i smell the garlic on the breath on the phone? And you are right for once, i cannot! But then i have more experience at it than you. I know from experience that if there is a garlic breath on this earth, its Mrs. B.O. or there is none, you know she eats raw garlic by the dozen for breakfast? Well you know it now, I just told you. Says it keeps the good old B.P. down. I don’t know about the B.P. but it does keep the others voices down, down to the last rung of silence by God. You know someone who can speak while holding his breath? You ever tried doing it? By God i dare you to speak in front of the dear old garlicky breathy… you may do it at the risk of poisoning your precious smell glands forever and joining the Good Garlic Brigade if you want.

Didn’t tell the Boss i was going out. Not because I was scared of him or something, me – scared? That’ll be the day of the great sadness! They don’t call me the Fearless One just like that. No, i simply didn’t tell him that i was going out for the simple reason that I had not told him in the first place what had caused the great ire of the Garlic Breath B.O. No no not because I am scared of him – no chance – but then i am wise; wise to know how far to push the luck factor. You don’t want me to throw away my job do you? You fiend in friend’s fabric – You DO?!

Okay i am not telling you what happened when i did face up to the G.B.B.O.

I don’t tell good stories to bad people. Bad form. Bad for health. Bad for Society. Bad for the environment. Bad for the Government. Bad for beer fermentation. You get the drift i see.

Anyways please do get up, grovelling in the dust looking for pebbles to throw at my handsome face has earned you the balcony tickets to the famous show – Free stories freely told. That’s me your beloved story teller telling you about the times when the Skies were grey and the dust was far from settled at the feet of the fierce Garlic Breath… Listen you! You got to do me a favour old GBBO was not in her best of forms today, this i could sense immediately as the fierce garlicky cloud was ominously missing. Not fair springing such uncomfortable surprises on a lonely unarmed soldier. These war strategies i tell you – when a guy is used to piercing through garlic clouds give him garlic clouds to pierce through – that’s like being man. But yes she was no man, that’s why she did not give me the clouds; she gave me a truly womanlike smile instead. I got crushed, pulverised beneath the sudden change of armoury in the enemy’s hands.

Oh yes! Anything you say! spoken like a truly Grecian hero- don’t you think! Am not asking you only mentioning as if in a soliloquy.

Its not worth your penny going into the details of that solemn conversation held in a prayer like trance at my end and delivered like a verdict from the other. Suffice it to say that i had to baby sit the great GB’s aunt for sometime today as she was all screwed up about some things going wrong at the office and so could not even report home to her aunt she stayed with the night before and would not be able to sneak in till the evening today. Good thing that it explained the missing garlic clouds and the bad – oh hell the things you have to do today to make a meagre living. I had to do this for the sake of putting my daily bread on the dining table and more importantly into my gastronomically agitated tummy.

I went looking for my wandering bunny Brijesh.

Delhi roads have their own personality, full of character one moment and bereft of all activity the other. This afternoon they had chosen the latter form of portrayal and the cruise from Gurgaon to Greater Kailash did do justice to it. Brijesh tried his level best to provide entertainment to his downcast passenger, he even rolled down the window to throw coloured language at a poor devil driving on the other side of the road, travelling the opposite way and accused him of trying to overtake from the wrong side, but things were not to be. You can only make hay while the sun shines… i wonder if the fellow who said that meant things like this or…

Standing in front of our destined gate and having pressed the calling bell i had actually begun to wonder whether that thing was actually in working condition since i couldn’t hear it ringing myself i did feel like a salesman who has come to sell foul smelling soaps to your door and you won’t answer his bells. How he must feel – i was beginning to appreciate his inner feelings as if in first person when suddenly all hell seemed to break loose and i thought i had my heart shot up above my head. Fierce, dangerous and a lot of barking! Yes barking! Barking big, black german shepherd dogs, maybe a dozen of them at the first rough count but as i descended earthwards and my heart seemed to catch up with my body the score started diminishing and finally settled at two. Two big, black, barking german shepherds.

Having regained my focus and with the GSDs also somehow sensing that i was not the bad guy selling smelly soaps but had actually bathed myself that very morning with the best off the shelf at least deserved a politer growl rather than the quick firing staccato barking.

The gate seemed to have a life of its own and started opening without being touched by human hand and i immediately could empathise with the human offering on the sacrificial alter of some dark age ceremony, left to be fed upon by hungry lions or demons or in this case two huge but utterly beautiful GSDs. Ow… i know you guessed it. I would have told you anyways that i have a lot of dog in me and am drawn to the creatures as a brother of blood, someone of the pack, soul calling soul type or whatever and however you want to put it. I like thinking of it as my dog factor. Part of my being. My dog quotient. The dog in me.

So lo and behold the hand that reached out to push the gate further open now was in the mane of the first of the two and the other soon joined in the mane of the other and i wont lie to you that the thought of being immediately left without a few fingers did cross my mind as i fondly started appreciating the handsome white teeth lining the sleek, sloping jawline of my my two fierce greeters of the front door. I did feel they would have torn me limb from limb with the ease of a toddler doing dirty in his diapers but it never happened. What