The Matter of Two Minutes: Story of My Friend

By Pritam Konai

Hi, I'm Joy. My friend is in a critical situation and I doubt a person behind all these. Leaving him alone, I stepped out of the hospital to grab the person red-handed.
When I arrived there, I found the room locked from outside. Without wasting any time, I went back to the hospital and saw...
✓What happened to my friend? ✓Was everything pre-planned? LET'S FIGURE OUT TOGETHER!

"THE MATTER OF TWO MINUTES", is the first book by Pritam Konai. It is a collection of several short stories by this author, which builds a whole story that contains many more to explore like school & hostel life fun, so-called teenage love, adventures, mystery, and finally — suspense...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pencil
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9789356105492

Book preview

•PROLOGUE

 It's lockdown time. After a month or two I have engaged in cleaning my room. In general, I'm a workaholic. However, these days I have become a bit much lethargic.

 While wiping the ceiling fan with a wet cloth, I noticed —

''Crick, crick... crick-crick !", the sound coming from under the wardrobe, if I'm not wrong.

Sure it's a rat there. I climbed down the ladder and went near the wardrobe.

Silently, I pulled the wardrobe aside and saw a fat rat was enjoying his breakfast with the delicious pages of a diary. Gently, I extended my hand to the rat and miraculously it climbed up to my palm like a little child.

I don't know why animals love me so much; maybe because I'm still unmarried and they want to live with me. Or is it just a game of the almighty?

After feeding the rat with Bholu's (my pet dog) Pedigree I release it outside the house in the garden.

I climbed up to the hammock, clamped hard with the hook on the wall of the balcony, along with the diary.

Oh, yes! The diary— it belongs to my friend, precisely my best friend. The last time we met each other at a seminar in Dubai, then he has given me this. Why that I don't know. Maybe he wants me to know any of his secrets or something like that.

He is not only an extra-talented but also a romantic guy. I haven't read his diary till now, except for the page that contains his general biodata & basic introduction.

If you have no workload now, then we can explore his story together. 

 Are you interested? 

If no, then leave this and go, complete your work first. It's more prior than wasting your prime time reading someone else's diary.

And if yes, then activate your sense of humour; cause I guess we are going to enter into the life of my friend —

MIX UP

I

t ​​​​​was the day of the first examination, Hindi. Just slept all over the morning, cause I was busy covering the whole syllabus in one night. I had to take the white tiny spherical crystals which are enough to boost the soldiers within my blood.

Without even bathing, I put on the costume which appears to be the same for all students, and leave for the battle with a five-year-old blue writing pad, two little Agni 2020 and a broken piece of plastic with a couple of marking edges.

I could sense the throbbing of my beat machine when the hormones from the pituitary were coming into action before entering the hall.

 Now the film begins like this...

'Hey, you! Which one is your exam hall?', asked the creature with her funny specs – two times larger than the eyes.

'Ours — on the first floor, VII B classroom. Above Pinu's cabin.', I answered, stammering. She left.

After a while, I discovered another one for whom I was waiting— her straight hair, glazed skin, with an unforgettable facial expression of happiness, OMG— I mean, just mind-blowing.

I was expecting a gaze from her, but she just straight passed me towards her hall.

But no problem; following her another, who is much taller than the previous one (but very cute), wished me All the Best which touches my heart.

I did the same with her and moved into the room for the examination.

Overall, the exam went well. Not so tough, not so easy but yes, like everything is fair in love and war; asking for the answer to a two-mark short question is also fair in case of the final examination. Therefore we all friends utilised the precious last fifteen minutes for that purpose.

 •••

The rest five papers went politely but not more than what I expected, especially due to silly mistakes and my anxiety during the exam.

But the last one was amazing— That was the maths exam. Before the final bell for the exam to be started, suddenly Gopu uncle (P.A. of our Principal) came from the ground floor to our hall and ordered us not to make noise. We guys decided to leave that room right then. 

Taking support from the wall, I was standing on the balcony opposite the hall door. All of our group members were there— Kiran, Joy, Masum, Semo (Rashid) and Vishal (the tallest one among us with a solid body and a sharp knowledge of bikes). 

We were in a deep chat about an interesting element when the girl with specs passed by us suddenly along with her friends, gossiping loudly, breaking our conversation. 

Joy got angry due to their behaviour and shouted the F word at them. But no reaction came in return. 

The mathematical theorems ushered us to baffle up sweat, tears and blood inside the cold exam hall. But between the last fifteen minutes, as per our culture, we showed a lot of answers to each other from our respective answer sheets. And really, for that only we could attend eight marks. 

The final bell rang and we handed over our answer sheets to the invigilator. Then enjoyed the exam ending by tearing the question paper into a few pieces and throwing them up in the air. 

 •••

' Andy , mandy , sandy ! Je amaar English book niyeche , se ...', I almost shouted to all the boys in our hostel in my local language, as my English supplementary book ( Moments ) was missing from the stack of my textbooks and references.

But after some time I found that under my pillow. I kept the book on the shelf beside my bed.

From there I took a copy and started to think of some words. Approximately within half an hour, I was with a full poem written on that copy. After the dinner of aaloo chokha , dal and rice, I converted the poem into a song.

PASTIME

T

he experience of having a bath after eight days of the exam is indescribable. But the best bath of the year, we use to experience is on the day of Holi. I will not tell you anything about Holi at our hostel; rather I want to show you something :

For the feel of the enjoyment, we get during this festival, visit: https ://youtu.be/G48RX_-GDGs

The next program was to load the empty stomach with Sunday's special lunch— egg, curry, daal , and rice. It was amazing!

In the evening when l was making a sketch of Hrithik Roshan from TTIS (a student newspaper), one of my friends, Farhad, asked whether to book the coin booth for me or not. I dressed up saying nothing and walked with him to the booth.

We use to do crazy experiments with the coin booth. Like, last week we had dialled a random number and told the person on the other side that he has been selected as the winner of the lucky draw for purchasing a matchbox and he has to claim thousand rupees from the shopkeeper as the reward.

Sometimes, seniors do what, they use the keys of the trunk lock of some juniors having small locks to open the coin booth, take out coins from the storage inside and use them again for calling.

After ten minutes, my turn came. I dialled my mother's number after inserting a one rupee coin into the slot.

'Hello?', the sound came from the speaker and hit my eardrum harshly. There was a towel on the shelf adjacent to the telephone; so I took that and wrapped it over the speaker to avoid the shrillness of the Ten Years Old phone. Who uses a coin booth in this twenty-first century? But, no— our principal says, It's the strict order of the government, not to provide mobile phones to students.

'Hello, maa?', I answered.

'Hmm, how're you?'

'Everything ok. What about you all?'

'We are fine. Your health?'

'All is well maa !'

'And exam?'

'That's not well.'

'Why?'

'I don't know, but next time it'll be ok!'

'Try to work hard, otherwise—'

'Ook, maa... Now listen to me!'

'Tell,'

'Day after tomorrow you're coming. Nah?'

'Yes.'

'Ok, then I've decided to go shopping that day.'

'And your house-master; have you asked him for the gate pass?'

'No maa; actually he went for the election duty, next week he'll come