Chapter 2: Teja

Disclaimer:
All characters in the following story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real-life persons is entirely coincidental.

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 Over the first week of my introduction to Teja, I had wondered what a person of his caliber was doing in our college. I oft wondered how a person like him was not making news headlines elsewhere in the world. He could have been a rockstar, a youth icon and so much more. The only stupid decision he seemed to have made was that to drive down the engineering road. Maybe none of his well-wishers knew anything much about engineering at all to divert him from the miling crowd of endeavouring engineers.

“I think I know what it is.” said Jojo unexpectedly one day when I voiced out the abovementioned thoughts. “TMK doesn’t sound cool at all. We know how cool he is because we know him, you know. But those of him who don’t know him, will have to know him through his name or his initals, you know. And you know they aren’t cool.” I took a minute off and retreated to fully absorb what Jojo had told me. Well, yes, Teja Murali Krishna was not the ideal name for a rockstar and neither was TMK the ideal nickname for a youth icon.

Teja hadn’t been blessed with the best looks either. He was rather ordinary looking to say the least. But he knew how to dress. He never tried too hard, as with everything he did, but always managed to pull it off. Even the simplest of costumes looked good on him. In many ways, he contrasted Jojo. Jojo had the kind of dreamy looks that girls somehow always fall for. But even they got repelled by his dead-brainness. “Nothing repels girls more wonderfully well than a hint of bad breath, a touch of body odour and an ounceful of Jojo” as Juggy once put it. Teja on the other hand had,in my book, everything that a girl could possibly want. He had a coolness quotient beyond compare and a bring-it-on attitude that should have ordinarily squeezed even the faintest of ‘ooo’s out of girls. But somehow he never seemed attracted girls. He did once have a girlfriend, he told me. “But she had a problem with my smoking. She told me if I continued smoking, either she’d start smoking too or she would dump me. So I dumped her instead.”

We found Teja in his room later that day. “Drop the case, Jojo.”, he said, without bothering to look up. His guitar always got more attention than it could have asked for. “Oh only if it was a girl.” Jojo had once said, referring to Teja’s guitar. “She would run away out his over-posessiveness and over-obsession and I could have had her on the rebound”, he added with a wink. I assured him that he would have won plenty of girls if that had indeed been the case.

“Girls are nothing but trouble, trust me.” said Teja once he finished fretting over the invisible marks on this guitar. “You are better off without them. Besides, you don’t want them to get to know how stupid you really are.”

Jojo made a grumbling sound and set himself down on the bed of the-engineer-who-never-was. The-engineer-who-never-was ought to have been Teja’s roommate. But he never arrived. Instead there was a pair of unclaimed shoes on the bed on the first day of university that probably belonged to him. To quote Teja, “Maybe he was out to be an engineer but he knew he never was one. So our engineer-who-never-was simply legged it and left his shoes behind in the hope that maybe I would leg it too and would join him in the wilderness. But I have failed him. I have let down his trust. Oh engineer-who-never-was, please forgive me. I have let you down. I’ve never had the guts.” Teja had succumbed into violent sobbing the first time he uttered those words. Juggy had to run over to comfort him and Jojo felt Teja should be thrown into the nearest asylum with a couple of hefty guards who would ensure he didn’t set the place on fire.

Jojo made himself comfortable on the bed. “Do you think the-engineer-who-never-was had a girlfriend?”

“Probably yes.” was Teja’s reply. “Maybe he had legged it for his damsel in distress. That force would have been alone to motivate him.”

Jojo was lying back staring at the ceiling. “Do you think he would have kissed a twin?”

“No that can only be done by a person of your supreme intelligence. I have always wondered why God didn’t give you a lizard’s body. It would have fitted your brain so beautifully.”

Jojo muttered something that sounded like “Cut the crap”.

Teja smiled at the effect his words had brought about. “But well, on a positive note, maybe it is fitting that you kissed one of the twins.” Jojo looked around at him with a ray of hope. “Ya, you never know, you could end up courting the other one instead and consequently getting murdered in cold blood by the former. Anyways, you’d do the world a favor by getting your fat ass off it.” Jojo gave him a look that plainly said ‘I could ask for nothing better than being able to strangle you’.

Posted by harichetlur on June 9, 2009

https://almostaverage.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/chapter-2-teja/