And here is the first one shot! Vineet and his family enters!
The character Ruhana Agrawal is neither DayaVineet'sGirl nor based off her, but my own creation which is greatly inspired by one of my ex classmates, who is quite a sweetheart. Hope you enjoy her.
I'm over at Anjali's house. The two of us are finishing off our history assignments. We're in the we- should've-finished-this-shit-assignment-five-days-back-but-we-were-too-lazy-to-do-so phase, so we're scribbling as fast as we can on the bloody answer paper.
Predictably, I finish first.
"Aha!" I grin, pushing my bloody ball point pen away from me. Rohit, who's acting as supervisor for the both of us on his parents' behalf, looks through my paper.
"You got question five and seven wrong." He informs me, one eyebrow raised.
"Who cares?" I ask him, stretching my arms out as I lean against the foot of the sofa relaxing. "I'm not applying this in real life, am I?"
"History is important." He reprimands me. "Without your history, you are nothing."
"Oh sure!" Anjali sarcastically replies as she puts her pen down in relief; she must have finished as well. "I'm pretty sure they'll be asking on my job resume, 'In which year were Daniel Defoe's books published?' when I go for CID training."
"You just missed three questions." Rohit ignores the sarcasm and continues, looking at her paper. "Jeez sis, at least try to answer the question, will you?"
"I did not find the answers brother dearest, that's why I didn't answer them."
"Only because you were too lazy to find them out yourself-"
The verbal tirade is broken by Daya uncle's, "Ahem!" He has his car keys in his hand.
"I'm off to the railway station. You kids coming?" A quick affirmative nod leads us into the Shetty family's Scorpio, which sets off on a half an hour journey to the railway station.
"Who are we picking up again?" Rohit curiously asks the driver Daya uncle.
"Vineet, Nithya and Ruhana." Daya uncle replies. The last name comes as a surprise for all of us.
"Ruhana Agrawal? Vineet uncle's daughter?" Anjali asks in confusion.
"The one and only. You remember her, don't you? The both of you were playmates with her."
"Dad, we were all four." Rohit sort of protests. "We hardly remember her."
"Well, here's your chance to bond with her again." Daya uncle says. I try to remember Ruhana, but all I can faintly remember is Vineet uncle and his wife Nithya aunty. Oh well, the get together will help us bond.
I guess I ought to explain.
All the former CID officers of Mumbai are coming over for a get together with our team to visit us (get together will happen the day after tomorrow). Already, some families have reached and are staying either at hotels, or at someone's place. Vivek uncle and his wife Tasha aunty are over at Freddy uncle's place, Suraj uncle and his wife Sandhya aunty are staying at a hotel close by to the venue (Which is the party hall of Dawat restaurant). Vineet uncle and his family will be staying with Anjali and Rohit.
"What does she look like?" I ask Daya uncle. He only shakes his head and smiles as we pull into the parking lot of the railway station. I hate it when adults do that. Why keep us in suspense?
"Where's the internet when you need it?" Anjali scowls in frustration as she looks at her phone screen. Railway network is really terrible at times. The Wi-Fi is so slow, a hundred years can pass and still the screen will show 'Loading'.
"What do you need to look at your Facebook account for?" Rohit asks her quizzically as he peers into her phone. We're all waiting for the train at the platform. The train should have been here by now, but it isn't. We Indians are always in a hurry, but we're never on time.
"To look up on Ruhana Agrawal." Anjali says and sighs in relief as the Wi-Fi gets accessed to. Really, for all its faults, if there's one good thing about railway station Wi-Fi, it's that it is free.
"You do realize that there may be hundreds of profiles named 'Ruhana Agrawal', right?" I remind her. "There's also a chance Ruhana may not have even made her profile on Facebook."
"I could try." Anjali shoots back at me and types in the name in the search box as soon as the Facebook app gets running. The minute the search button is pressed, the 'loading' symbol appears.
"Loading, loading…" I murmur as I reminiscence about that Idea network ad with Abhishek Bachhan in it. Anjali tries to whack me, but stops as results flood in.
"Yes! We have…five million people named Ruhana Agrawal." She scowls again.
"Single out those Ruhanas who appear to be teenagers." I advise her.
"Okay…yeah! Here we have a Ruhana Agrawal who apparently studies in I'm jobless and I know it." We look at the picture of a girl with twin braids and a goofy smile who appears to be thirteen at the most. Definitely not Ruhana.
"Shit. Okay, our next Ruhana works at Charlie and the chocolate factory." The profile picture is of a seventeen year old teen with acne and geeky glasses who attempts to give a cute pout to the camera. Key word: attempt.
"The others all seem to be in college or middle aged ladies! Now what?" Rohit asks us. I'm about to answer when the horn of a train interrupts me.
"Is that…? Yes, that's them!" Daya uncle squints a little, then grins widely. Someone's standing by the second train door of the third carriage. Unless I'm mistaken, that is definitely Vineet uncle.
As the train slows to a halt, Vineet uncle (yes it is him) steps aside to allow a fifteen year old girl to step down. She has dark skin, long wavy brown hair that's pulled into a braid and light brown eyes. She wears a blue shirt, black jeggings and light blue converses. She's pretty and has an athletic body.
"Ruhana! Good to see you again!" Daya uncle exclaims in delight as he goes to help Vineet uncle to bring down their bags. So this is Ruhana Agrawal. I turn to look at Anjali and Rohit-and then I start to snigger.
Rohit's eyes are as wide as they can be. His mouth is open in the shape of a perfect O. He looks like someone who's just struck the lottery big time. The expression is so comical that when Anjali looks at the poor boy, she has to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing.
Ruhana looks at him in confusion. "Um, hello?" She tentatively asks him waving her hand in front of him. He only responds when Anjali snaps her fingers in front of his face.
"Uh…uh, h-hey!" He stammers in embarrassment. "I'm Shohit Retty. I mean, Rohit Shetty. Not related to the actor at all."
"You mean the director." Ruhana answers, smiling a little now.
"Yeah, the director! So, um, it's been a while since we met." He says, awkwardly looking at his big hands. Seriously? That's the best that he can come up with? He really needs to take classes in conversing with girls and flirting.
"Quite." She says, a little unsure herself from the looks of it.
"I'm his twin, Anjali." Anjali shakes Ruhana's hand with a grin. "And that's Priyanka." She points at me. I wave at Ruhana, who merely smiles before turning back to Rohit.
"Wait!" Anjali says again, preventing Rohit from speaking. "Aren't you there in the Prithviraj Chauhan High School basketball team?"
"How do you know that?" Ruhana asks her, astonished.
"My friend Rittika is in our school basketball team. She said an R. Agrawal was there in that school team. Your team beat ours in two matches, didn't you?"
"Holy Angels High School, DPS?" We nod. "Oh. Well, it is true. I love playing basketball. Maybe we could try playing against each other sometime?" She directs that question to Rohit with a grin.
"I'm inexperienced in that field of sport. But you could teach me sometime, right?" Rohit smiles back blushing a little.
"Let's go kids! Talk in the car now!" Nithya aunty calls out at us. As we move toward the exit, Rohit attempts to make further conversation with Ruhana on basketball, which is hilarious because he has no information about the game and has never shown interest before.
"We should've taken a picture." I whisper to Anjali disappointedly.
"Yeah, think of all the blackmailing we could've done to him." She whispers back unhappily as she fiddles with the phone again.
Rohit is actually based off this chap who hates me since I can sing better than him. The geniuses who I base off Ruhana and Rohit actually are crushing on each other, but have not told each other since she's going back to India (They're actually a pretty sweet pair. Karma's a bitch sometimes. :P).
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