“we are now a part of the whole conspiracy theory because we need to be united now.”

asserted Rahul.

“but how are we to help?”

“don’t you understand by the way the henpeck us. They’ve got it man. They’ve got the God damn papers already.”

“c’mon, then why would they hide it?”

“I exactly don’t know for sure. But sooner or later the cat will be out of the bag.”

Even this exams will pass through somehow, I thought. But a lot of things didn’t make sense at all. Like how they got the papers in spite of Mr. Adi, even if they did, why was it so classified etc. As a matter of fact Motu was too magnanimous to suspect any foul play. We spent the rest of the night on stale late-night movies and talking hostel rumour.





“yup, metallica was responsible for the napster controversy.” blared Eashwar, apropos to Bat’s nagging talk on pop stars. The were sitting on the steep wall outside their house. K6 was trying a hopeless trick with ping pong balls. For a change, Motu wasn’t eating (he was sleeping, btw). It wasn’t another dusky Saturday evening where they could just wile away the time and sleep. At the far end of the city, some eerie guy was seriously attempting to coax a printing press worker to do God-knows-what. Everybody were anxious and waiting for the phone call to happen, except some ignorant souls like Eashwar and a few others, who never knew the gravity of the situation. Minutes seemed like years, Bat couldn’t swallow his own phlegm. People were tongue tied and keeping their fingers crossed, for the “result”.



K6 and co became day scholars(not by the literal meaning of the word) circa 2005 november. The got a wonderful and partially furnished house at Tanjore. It was the unofficial HQ of Tobacco republic, the official one being 294, where myself and K6 were yesteryear roomies. The unofficial HQ of TR, was peopled by more then seven or eight members who lived a synonymous hippie culture surviving only on the bounties of Arya vilas and a faulty home computer network, engineered by Motu and a few others. They were fairly self sufficient, and had no worries in life, till tonight, where the worst was yet to come. And it came just in time.



Motu thought it was a usual cell phone scheduled alarm, but it was in fact a call from “him”.

He woke up as though he was charging in a battle front and saw the phone with sleepy eyes. His facial expression changed. “not this early”, Motu thought, and ran to the terrace. That was the third time K6 swore he saw Motu running, the other two being instances where they served ice cream at the hostel mess some time in second year.

“hello, tell me da…”

“look, its just not possible for all the papers this time ok?”

“ok…”

“listen, even jana doesn’t know this, only shivin from your gang knows and…”.it wasn’t that clear.

“I swear da. But you got to understand, it’s the first and last time. Next year everybody gets it done.”

“who’s along with you now??”

“nobody da. Only K6”.

Then how was that nobody?? White lie.

“I will call in another hour. You just stay put.ok?”

“sure man.”

K6 was a wonderful evesdropper.