Kebabs & Nostalgia

The older you get the more important your relationships become. Relationships have just been there throughout your life. Its quite similar to the salad in your kebab plate. You just never happened to notice it. Until you were hit that by vitamin-z deficiency, or whatever it is your doctor is trying to sell it you. So like everything else you need a prick, who charges you Rs849.30/- per hour with a long and funny sounding degree to tell you that you need to eat more veggies, which you knew anyway. The veg kheera pudina chutney sandwich you grab at intervals between Reshma ki Jawani at your local theatre doesn’t really qualify you as a green veggies man.

Apart from that we really love approval. Specially approval we have to pay disgustingly high amounts for. If your friend tells you you've lost weight ,how the fuck does it matter? they're just trying to do you a good deed for covering their ass at Lonavla '07 when you told their wives consuming a half of Royal Stag was an office ritual But when your doctor tells you "you look a little underweight.", its fucking orgasmic.

& How we long for that delicious approval! We romance poverty, we start philandering fortunes, dress like Shaktimaan and god knows what else. But unbeknownst to you, it has roots deep in your childhood. No I am not going Freud on you.

You were brought up by a certain set of ideals which you thought were going to last forever, like how you and your best mates used to hate playing with girls and the biggest worry in your life was whether you would be the 'Denner' in the next game of 'Hide n Seek' and loved your parents approval on practically everything. Specially those frilly Birthday attires. And you knew you had it all figured out in life.

Then 7th grade happened.

You suddenly started noticing those pansy girls. 7th was confusing man. Because some of your ultra cool friends were not yet hit by that 'weird' feeling. Even if they did, mine never revealed it. You craved for their approval about 'That' feeling.

In 8th, enlightenment slowly dawned in the form of that 9th grader who took you in as his protégé and soon taught you most of what he knew. And you were some fast learner. You wanted and had your senior's approval.

9th was breezy, easy and cheesy. You knew theoretically what goes on in the world, education prepared you for that . You sure as hell believed you were ready for that practical which you had boasted about so many times to your mates on having completed. You had their approval but not enough respect.

Then came 10th.

Oh the boards! And my love for them! The home delivery guys have stopped calling you Ma'am while taking your order. The extra classes & 'Tuitions' we were to go were bustling with so much opportunity that you needed to be 'The Fat Ugly Kid Who Stinks' not to notice it. The heat would usually be unbearable. And you knew where it was coming from. The hurried make-outs behind the teachers building was the best thing that happened to you since you discovered porn! Your friends bowed down to you!

11th came and went in such a hurry. There was no more of the geography and other boring subjects. Hey you even got rid of moral science. You just sat back and enjoyed the name tag of the "experienced" one and basked in the glory of your previous deeds.

Then came 12th.

Boards were here again!! Accounts tuitions, Economics tuitions and alright alright for the science guys, you had tuitions in almost every subject you took up. Your friends approval suddenly did not matter at all. It was her approval that counted. And yea you got it. Just after the Business Studies exam. All those days of walking her back home paid off. And you discovered how much approval really counts in the backseat of your dad's car near the Zoo.

But somehow with those days seemingly a distant foggy past. Another world altogether. The zoo along with all its peers may have been desecrated, degenerated. All that remains are the memories in your mind. Very much like the empty kebab plate with the greens still gleaming freshly.