Roadside Show

“… I could not believe it,” Mr. Singh was saying.


I had just sauntered of the basketball court, and wanted to speak to him about something. Only to find he was already speaking about something, and had collected a bit of an audience and so I would have to wait.

Mr. Sing, referred to as Mr. S, from here on, was our sports teacher… you would not call him a coach… he knew too little about any sport. Personally, I feel he was just a formality for the school. He did know a lot about the goings on in school. In our school sports were conveniently relegated to a position of no consequence. Equipment collected dust for most of the year, except on the day when it needed to be photographed for the prospectus, after the brief respite it was put under lock and key. The large, supposed football field had a fence around it, and placards saying, 'please do not walk on grass.' Obviously making playing or running on the grass a little hard.

Given the state of the sporting equipment, I guess its easy to figure out that the sports teacher was an appendage… he knew a lot about college, because instead of looking after the sports equipment, he’d sit in staff rooms and administrative offices, gossiping, taking stories from the top floor to the bottom, from the senior to the junior section… stuff like that.


So when he was in the mood, any story he’d tell would be amazingly entertaining. He had just begun when I joined his little audience, listening with rapt attention.

“I stopped my scooter, and walked over to the edge of the road, where this huge crowd had gathered. They were all staring at something below the road. Do you know that park, Gomti kinare… near laxman mela ground? You know, where guys take girls to have fun… well it was around here… anyway, I joined the crowd, and tried to spot what they were watching. First I looked out to the river, that was normal. Then, I thought may be near the restaurant… nothing… finally I looked at a bench, right at the foot of the slope.”

“There were these two sitting on the bench… stuck to each other, like some one had used quick fix… I bet there was not even space to breathe for one of them… their hands were all over, the guy had his hand under her shirt, going for you know what… but don’t worry the girl was not too far behin either… her hands were outside his trouser… right between the legs… where he’d really like it.” then Mr. S looked up, “wow! Look how happy you are,” he said indicating someone to my right, “you wish she was doing it to you don’t you?”

The congregation laughed a little, someone playfully slapped the back of his head…

Mr. S continued, “Still at least they were sitting on their own… suddenly, they started kissing. Open mouth, like they wanted to stuff their tongues down each others throat… the girl got up, and sat on his lap, and the he put both his hands up her shirt… it was disgusting… they looked up, and so the crowd even, still they did not do anything… they kept kissing, and eating each other like some kind of animals… and up here on the road, people, everyone who would come and go, staring at them… one uncle, with the white hair and everything, stopped his scooter, looked down, and very happily smiled, nodded his head and got back on the scooter. Such a blooming bastard…I got on my scooter and went away.”

“Imagine that he said, the shamelessness, they know people are watching and still they continue like that. Disgusting! And that uncle too.”

“Sir do you know who they were?” some one asked

“Nope, they were too far away, but I know what the girl was wearing… it was an orange tee shirt, with the american flag on the back… blooming, try to be american… and just being vulgar.”

“Sir, I think you were being more vulgar than them you should not have watched them like that,” that was me.

“Here is mister Eduard, he’s one of them…” said Mr. S, with a leer that made me want to slap him…

The point is, if those two were wrong to kiss in public, I think people watching are just as guilty… I mean who watches people kiss like that… what pleasure? Why?

I was done with practice so I got on my bike, and rode to my best friends house… she usually enjoys stories such as these. Though like me, she is glad because people are finally stepping out of the darker corners…

I mean people have been kissing and making out since before the words were invented, so what’s the big deal?

I knocked at the door, she let me in.

“Hi, guess what happened…” she began…

One thing about this creature that never fails to amaze me is her belief that everyone is simply dying to know what she has to say. I mean in my case it is true, almost always, but you know what… there are times when I want to tell her stuff too… if you say that to her, she’ll look at you as if, whatever it was I or any one else on the planet had to say could not possibly be more interesting than what she did. More important, may be, but not more interesting…

Any how, she had a story to tell, and I was going to hear it. Naturally without any regards to whether or not she had any reason to believe I was interested.

“He came over she gushed…” like a fountain fitted with a pump more powerful than it needed.

He was her boyfriend… she never calls him by his name. She does not talk about any other guys, and his name, to her, is way to cumbersome to say, every time she thinks of him. “I’ll loose to many seconds of my life trying to pronounce his name, it’s very twisty. And then what difference does it make?” Please don’t ask me for a translation, I am not even sure what language she speaks…

“And then what?” I have to give token encouragement, or else I am accused of being a bad audience.

“Two of his friends were also there, I know them too, very nice guys… anyway, all four of us went to gomti kinare.” She told me, her arms flailing dangerously close to upsetting a glass of water on her bedside… and even closer to slapping me. Her eyes are closed, and her dream like expression would confuse anyone who lived in the usual mortal world. She of course did not… she lived in her world, where she reigned supreme. The result was, she did as she pleased, and left poor people like me, and her boyfriend I suppose to clean up the mess.

By the way, I have not yet met her boyfriend.

She got off her bed, and skipped to the switchboard, and turned the fan up to full speed, then turned around… her eyes closed, hair hiding half her face, smiling like a baby, and all in all being one too. So she looks at me, and says, “You remember the shirt he gave me last week? I was wearing that.”

“Which shirt?” I really did not know.

“Hmph! The one he gave me, I showed you.”


“Nope you did not.”


“Yes I did,” she look indignant, like a baby being cheated out of a lollypop… “Okay fine I’ll show you,” now her face lights up like a baby being given a lollypop…

She skipped across the room, and then in one bound… stopped still infront of her cupboard…. “Ok no, I’ll tell you my story first.”

“Hmm shoot.”

“So we were at gomti kinare… it was a beautiful afternoon, and there were birds there, and some ducks were also swimming…” her arms waved above her head, and around her waist as she sailed across the room, demonstrating the flight of birds and that the sailing of ducks… some how I did not laugh…

“And then those two, he told them to go boating…” the place, it seems had some paddle boast. “When they had gone far away,” she stretched her arms as far as they would go, and looked at some point behind my head, “we went and sat down on a bench in the back of the park.”

Now I know you probably think that this girl is slightly, kooo koo, please harbor no such illusion… she is not. She just prefers to talk like this. Now that the stage had been set, she with regard for the drama that was to unfold, came and sat down next to me on the bed… lost the super happy look, and with a normal expression… naturally I am referring to normal by our standards… you may need to look up eccentric.

Began telling me what happened.

"First, he took my hand and held it, and was gently massaging it, and then he na, suddenly pulled me closer to him… so we were sitting so close, so close that not even air was passing between us. I could feel his breath all over me, and smell his after shave… oh its such a nice smell… listen if you want to impress girls you better start using it too… any way, put his other hand behind my waist… and slowly started massaging me… I start feeling like that.” Like that means, well like that… if you cant figure it out, put the book down, grow up and come back… or on the contrary if you think it’s a stupid and highly inappropriate euphemism, I’d agree with you, but she is telling the story, and this is how she speaks, so shut up. Now back to it, “so I leaned towards him, and put my hand under his shirt too. Then he leant forward and kissed me. It was a long hot, and wet smooch, and I was totally turned on…” yes she is not longer using like that. “I felt very embarrassed… I asked what he was doing, in the middle of every thing… he smiled, you know the way he smiles…” obviously I don’t know, but “yes I do.” ‘“I am kissing you he said… why it’s not enough?”’ He was grinning now. His hands were all over… and uf! I cant tell you anymore…” she says. I was surprised she’d told me so much. I mean we are best friends, but I always thought there were some inviolate walls between men and women. “Anyway, I was very nervous… but I checked, there really was no one any way near there… I even looked up towards the road but no one was there… when I looked up, he pulled me onto his lap. And… Nothing… I am not telling you anymore.”

“Okay, show me that shirt.” I was blushing, like I don’t know, tomatoes blush… anyway, it was getting a little awkward… what if one day she asked me to discuss my gf with her… I doubted I’d have the guts… I’d probably die of embarrassment… anyway…

She was not too impressed. But bounded up from her bed, to the cupboard… and found it was not there. “Must be in the bathroom, in the dirty clothes, I’ll get it.”

Now all writers have to contend with these cheeky little blighters, who’ll try to guess the story before its ended, and try to look oh so smart, because the story was so predictable… I know, I am one of them… so then… you have probably already noticed the parallels between the two stories… and have begun to suspect that she was the girl my teacher saw… well, okay may be she was…

“Found it,” she shouted.

Look you super intelligent people, if you have found out so much about the story already… you should know her boyfriends name, and his mother’s name too… stumped you ha? Good now keep shut till I finish.

She stepped back into the room, holding a red tee shirt. It was plane red, with a pretty bit of white embroidery on the back… nothing even remotely like the American flag. I was relieved, because honestly, I was beginning to think along those lines too… the relief? Well what if Mr. S actually recognized her, her school life would be ruined. And she was amongst those who believed opinions mattered.

Well now that that was resolved, I started feeling very cheerful… but I had forgotten all about Mr. S. and his story. We were discussing something to do with our class teacher and the amount of homework we had to complete, when I decided it was time to leave…


I got up, picked up my things and was leaving…


“You know what we did afterwards?” she asked me.

“After school?”

“No after coming back from gomti kinare,” she was talking about her bf again.

“No obviously not,” I was not there… “Okay, fine then listen.” We dropped his friends home first, and then we came back here. We sat in my room, for so long, I was in his lap… just sitting… and holding hands, he did not say anything… he did not do anything… it was so nice… you know he was wearing a denim jacket… the back was dyed orange, and on it the American flag was there… damn smart.”

The information struck me as a little strange… but already having defeated the argument that Mr. S and found her that afternoon, I did not bother with reconsidering it. Besides the girl was wearing the American flag right? So it could not be them…

Or did Mr. S say, he was wearing the flag. May be, my best friend borrowed his jacket… or may be in the middle of their caresses, she put it on. Nah! Okay, fine I’ll ask her next time. And I’ll ask sir when he’d seen the couple.

Naturally I am still waiting for those next times, and would you blame me?