Painfull Pleasure Called Friendship

You guys would need patience for this ,its gonna be a lone one(puppy face)

I hadnt slept for three days for more than an hr or two, coursty, Tenzin, one of my friends, who was over from Delhi. The tortures a human being is put through on the pretext of friendship(this is only for the firm believers of this idea).You gotta stay awake till 12 to wish birthdays, the big holes that gifts burn in ur pockets, lying to parents to go to barista with her so she cud check out the cutie whose a permanent resident there(of course she ignores the fact that he doesn’t have anything else to do).Anyways before i go rambling about the unfair nuances of friendship(at the risk of getting abusive calls from me pals)i shall get back to where i started.....
So i was sleep deprived, aggravated cuz i had burnt myself while taking a hot water shower to relax the muscles(so much for that *rolls eyes*),no breakfast cuz had no LPG and to top it all i had been waiting for the past 45 mins for her highness to get ready(this one reduced me to being emphathectic with men) and of course how can i forget the perpetual financial crunch thats become my middle name. Not a very interesting start to a day i had been planning n looking forward to all this while. Anyways tench(as i call her) came out beaming and beautiful in the new pink top n denims she had recently bought. Grumbling at the unfairness of me being not able to remain pissed with her, i complemented her on the results and before she cud think of anything else to delay us, quickly usher her outta the door.
Finally we were on our way. P.O.A of the day was elephanta caves and then it was beer and prawns wrapped in bacon rolls. We reached the Goregaon railway station. One look at the line in front of the ticket counters was enough to make us wanna take the taxi. Alas! that luxury we cudn afford so we got into the line with our long faces. Like always in each other’s company, we were laughing our asses off within mins, talkin abt nothing in particular. The line seemed to be moving painfully slow. Suddenly Tenzin said “lets board the train without the ticket”. Catering to my penchant for trouble I obviously jumped at the idea only to sadly realize she was kiddin. After throwing a few lines at her in order to convince her to carry out the idea, i backed off. By this time we were at the counter. We bought two tickets for Mumbai central and were on our way. Being complete illiterates abt how local trains work, we asked ppl around about which platform and what compartment were we suppose to get in.

Finally the train arrived and it was population explosion at it best right there. Mercifully, we had first class tickets and we were utterly happy when the compartment turned out totally empty, boosting only of the two of us as passengers. Empty train compartment, one of me closest of pals and a joint. Ah! thats a perfect recipe of temporary bliss(temporary cuz getting the three of together is baking the cake n eating it too and as per God’s sense of humore that doesn happen to us humans very often). We guys got so busy experiencing that space, that we missed our station. Tenzin cudn stop laughing(the joint ofcourse) neither cud I. We then got off at the next station. As we were walkin towards the exit, one of the railway officials call us to check the tickets. Tenzin, who was busy telling me a story, looked for it in the bag and handed it to him,still busy with me. We were both so busy in ourselves that something that guy said completely skiped our attention.I asked him again and he just handed me the ticket back, to have a look at it. I realized to my utter surprise that the ticket was 3 days old. We put across the fact that we had just bought the tickets from goregon station. There had to be mistake. Refusin to believe us, he insisted we either pay the fine or speak to his boss. Annoyed as hell, we went. That confrontation was the most aggressive and the funniest I had ever had. Tenzin and me were outrageously cursing their entire system, demanding that there be some sort of system where in these guys cud take the ticket no n confirm if its been bought right now or not. But our luck, the boss was a tough cookie. We had to pay a fine of rs 620(that’s more than the taxi fair from goregaon to town).Imagine our plight!! It wasn’t so much abt the confrontation but that the whole point of not traveling by a taxi was defeated.

Surprisingly though the moment we stepped out of the station we bursted out laughin. The 3 days old ticket was still a mystery cuz Tench just cudn find the one we had bought. All of this for nothing? We might as well have boarded the train without the ticket. At least the fine would have been justified.

P.S – Apprantely when the trip ended and Tenzin was on her way back to delhi,she hugged me at the station, gave a very guilty but naughty smile and said “ Maddy I just found out last night that the ticket was their in my pocket the whole time, I just never checked the pockets as I thought I had put the tickets in my bag”
WHAT???
That says all about the tortures of friendship. . . J