Hence or Otherwise

This post is dedicated to my friend Ankur Gandhi who is smitten by the sentence “Hence or Otherwise”  

Have you ever had to dig for information and knowing that if you did not manage to do it, you can come off as a total fool? Say for instance you meet an old college friend of yours, with whom who were very intimate in old days and you knew which company he worked in, where was he placed and now all you remember is his face and his name. Now to make matters worse, he knows everything about you.  So you bump into each other.

You- “Hello Bhai ! Arre yaar tum. Itne dino baad. Kya co-incidence hai”

He- “Haan yaar. Main to Mumbai mein hi hoon do saal se. Tera Schlum ka kaam kaisa chul raha hai?”

Oops !! Faux Pas !! Now the best thing to do here is to go ahead and ask which company is he placed in and settle the issue. The more you stall, the uneasy it becomes.

But I being I have to get a kick in the crotch. So I ask him indirect questions like “To tum shuru se hi Mumbai mein ho ki tumhaari company ne kahin aur bhi place kiya?” or  “Training pe kahan kahan gaye” or “Kaam to bahut hoga na wahan ?” in the hope that he’ll blurt out the name and then I can swoop in easily and act like I’ve followed his past and not been an aloof jerk. But I never get an answer. And finally he says

“Abe tum to Goregaon mein hi rehte ho. Kabhi mere yahan aao. Kandivili paas mein hi hai”. WTF ! He knows where I stay and I do not even know where he works. That’s insane. But I’ll leave this story here and come to the point of why I started this explanation. 

Why I started this is because two days back I was sitting in the Engineering Library and poring over some text when this Chinese “Person” (notice the word person) comes and sits across the desk. Honestly this is not made up, but I could not guess whether it was girl or a boy. Now since I cannot use He or She yet, I’ll use Xhe. Now Chinese people have very smooth skin so that factor is ruled out and Xhe had long hair so I was kinda stymied. Xhe smiled and I said “Hi” and the voice had no clue either. I wanted to concentrate on my studies but the thought of not knowing “what” was sitting across me was unsettling. I “Looked” but as Keira Knightly fails the test, Xhe did too. So I decided to strike up a conversation.

So next time Xhe looks up I say “Hello I’ am Siddhartha” and Xhe says “Hi, I’am Xuan Xi Li”

Wow !! That’s helps. Mystery solved.

“So what are you studying here?” I ask.

“Electrical Engineering. Freshman”

“Nice. I’ am in Petroleum. So you from around here or International?”

“No No! I’ am from Taiwan how bout you?”

“I’ am from India” Focus. Buddy I need your information you don’t need mine.

“Oh how wonderful. Must’ve been an awful long flight from Taiwan to Austin”

“Yeah. But my sister was with me too so it was not boring” (if only Xhe told me whether Xhe was sister to her sister too or not) “and also they showed “Made of Honor” and “27 Dresses” so time passed well” 

Definitely a girl. Only then can she like such movies. And then the clincher. 

“So you live by alone or have a roomie ?” 

“Oh! I have a roomie. She’s from Taiwan too. I met her at the induction. So we are 2 girls living in a 2 bedroom apartment”

Bless you !!! 

“I gotta go now. I have a class. Nice to meet you Xuan” I left. 

Hence or otherwise proved. X=S