Stranger in the city

"They put more ice than liquor in the LIT here, you would rather do well ordering the muggers' pitcher...very potent"

And that is how the conversation between the man in the green chequered shirt and the one in the Chelsea jersey started. Had one been there for hours or days one could have seen the Chelsea guy almost permanently fixated to this place for hours and days in the bar cum pool joint, so one guesses he knew about the drinks when he set out to make his recommendations. LIT btw is referring to the drink known in its long form as Long Island Iced Tea, though probably the only liquer the drink lacks is tea.

Why the Chelsea guy had made that comment to this chequered shirt man is quite unknown since of all the time that he had been here other than playing pool he had always kept to himself sitting at the barstool just observing the crowd.

It could have been that he want to pry the chap into ordering a pitcher, for having ordered it the chequered shirt guy realized that...well one pitcher of that stuff really wasnt doable by a singleton.

And so the two of them got down to demolishing it, together. And when they did, like most times when one finds himself in a train journey or a bar with a stranger one ends up sharing the most deeply personal things of one's life before coming to such trivial stuff such as exchanging names. so spoke the chequered shirt guy, of his girlfriend having ditched him, his dog having gotten run over and a bad appraisal all in one week. And though he had liked his girlfriend a lot and didn't care much for the dumb job he was in, he really missed his dog.

The dog had been his companion since college days, having found him lost in a park as a small pup with an injured leg, a fine little specimen of an alsatian, he had taken the shivering little thing to a vet and then to his hostel room and while the hostel didn't really allow dogs in the premises, most wardens would find themselves unable to resist a soft spot for a little whimpering pup. And that had been the saga of the two of them. The pup grew and the guy graduated and the two of them together adapted to a new city, the pup to his new colony and the guy to his job as a software coder.

At the half pitcher level the chequered guy talked about how he really didn't like his software job, how he had lofty goals of doing something meaningful when in college and now he really didn't know what he was doing other than being a small part of a huge system repairing one small piece of a gigantic machine.

Some of his best friends had also been ripped apart...having taken up jobs in different cities and here it was time to reband, though in a strange city all he had with him were his colleagues who seemed to suffer from the same gigantic machine syndrome, with weekends spent mostly catching up sleep or some other laundering of pay in silly things which after a while got boring.

Life would have become hell had he not met Sarita (finally some names). By a rare chance in a crowded country the two of them found themselves together and alone in a slowish lift for about five floors wherein she pointed out to him that his shoe laces were open, in response to which he managed to prove that girls can make a guy go very clumsy by dropping his files upon trying to lace them back, which evoked a light cackle from her and made her bend down to help him and then the exchanged names and rest is history. But alas the gigantic machine could not see its nuts and bolts getting together so they posted Sarita onsite for two years. It was a great move for her career but for a relationship only into its eighth month it was a death knell, they both knew it but played along till one day when she called and told him that she had started seeing someone else there.

After all of his sob story was over, he looked at the Chelsea guy probably expecting some comforting words to come out, but what happened was totally different after looking at him straight for like a whole minute that guy just burst out laughing...a laugh loud and resounding, for a moment it left him flustered and then he couldn't but help out laughing himself, almost as loudly as the the Chelsea guy.

And just like that the evening turned from one of mourning to one of laughter, from bitching about the boss or to some of the wierd things of his now ex, to the F1 season to the treks he had been to and on and on and on

They crashed at the chequered guy's one room flat ordered pizza...watched die hard series and conked out. Then next morning...or afternoon one should say late afternoon the Chelsea guy dragged him out of the house to another small apartment half way across town. The door opened to reveal a bunch of cronies similar to them huddled over maps, almost as if to plan a robbery, though they were into something a shade less exciting, trying to finalize on the destination of their next trek. The chequered (though he is now wearing a different shirt ) shirt guy didn't know when he started of as a stranger and when he became one of the gang. After an hour of deliberation on location, date and other such details everybody slunk out for lunch, some split up to head out elsewhere while in the remaining another deliberation as to where to head for lunch began only to be cut short by one member who was just getting of his cell to anounce that Ramesh had just set up his Nintendo Wii, not that one would begin to think how many of them there knew Ramesh, but they all knew the Wii and that quickly decided where they were to head.

Cramped up in a taxi with half of the gang...the other following in another...the chequered shirt guy smiled...wasn't it just yesterday that he felt a stranger to the city.