ISB friends- Mr.X #$%^ &*

"hmm kya ho raha hai." that is how X starts all telephonic conversations. If that sentence is followed by 3-4 gallis in hindi you know the person he is calling is a guy. If no gallis then its the rarest occasion when the person on the other side either happens to be of more feminine origin or a CEO of some hot shot company. Odds by the way are more for the latter than the former. Still thats X for you. No niceties about the dude. On your first interaction with him I will bet he will rub you the wrong way. On further interactions he will still rub you the wrong way but then you will ignore that; cause by then you realise that if X is nice to you then somethg is terribly wrong. Either you have just lost you pet pooddle to a road accident or the doctors have told everyone :"Humnein sab koshish kar li. Abb sab uppar wale ke haath mein hai. Dua kariye." So you get up in the morning talk to X and he says something incredibly offensive or innocously mean and you smile and know that all is well.

All those who like X (yea you will find some) and more importantly all those who X likes (thats a shorter list of people) will testify that he seems like the ultimate "friend in need" to have. If you fall ill hes the one to call. Not only will he stay up the whole time (day AND night) but run to the chemist, get the medicine and wait for the next day to hand you the bill. He will fight all your battles for you if it serves some purpose for him. Otherwise at crucial times hes forever missing. If a rickshaw walla bhaiya is troubling you for more money then i cant think of a better person to negotiate the deal than X.

Some how during the grad school, X and I managed to strike a friendship. Pretty strange that is if you know either one of us. But still i think we are friends because we constantly amaze each other by our reactions and actions. X will never do the stuff i have done in my life and i will never dare to replicate his. X dabbles in all sports. There is till now not a single sport i know of that he hasnt played and lied about being good at. I stay away from sports and never lie. X likes to show people that he reads all sorts of books. Hes one of those compulsive readers who has to finish a book if he's started one. I read the book only if i am sure i will like it and if somehow the author manages to piss me off midway, I dont waste my time finishing the book. X is people crazy and organised; I am creative and more of a loner. This has the potential to turn into a really long paragraph so I will cut it short here. In brief, X and I are different.

But then this is true for everyone X hangs out with. Its difficult to club X with anyone. Where do you put the guy whose idea of a compliment is to say: you are not looking as fat as you normaly do today. The guy who will stop a cricket match in the middle to fight with the captain of the oposite team (they nearly came to blows). The guy who ABSOUTELY hates losing (Gen. rule: Stay away from X for 5 hours after he's lost a match which happens with efficient regularity). The guy who cribs about everything under the sun and is never happy until everything is exactly his way - all the time.

So thats X for you. Do't trust his words becaue he can be a compulsive liar and barring 5 conversations with X, in almost all the remaining ones I have felt frustrated, irritated,annoyed, angry, hurt, sad and other similar mixed emotions. Hes criticized everything about me - my clothes, my friends, my attitude, my writing, my cv (for 2 full months i never sent him a copy fearing his lethal feedback), my car (on the day i bought it), my (again this has the potential to turn into a really long paragraph so i will cut it short here. You get the drift.) But despite all the criticisms and brickbats we have remained friends. I dont know why.

Now since he might criticise this post too I will reserve the ending post his feedback. :)