Its almost 12 years since I left my home and have been living without my family but fortunately with very beautiful companions every single time. Though reasons for living outside have changed from high school education to graduation or job postings to post graduation but certain things have more or less remained the same. First, as already mentioned those wonderful people around me and secondly some common thoughts or frequent flurry of sarcastical remarks being impounded on me and on some of my habits by those wonderful people around me. The first of those mocking remarks came when I was in the very 1st year of my life outside home. It came from those excited and hep bunch of friends who had there priorities well cut out right from the moment they stepped out from the barricades of there home and the agenda topping there list was SMOKING a cigarette. I still wonder how much and what they understood about the taste of various cig brands but they certainly looked very confident and preachy about each of them. I somehow never felt the urge to try out this extraordinarily exciting venture, initially because of the fear of my parents knowing about it but majorly because I myself never felt like doing it just for the sake of feeling like a MAN or to experience that MACHO feeling or for what ever insane reason a teenager dos it for at that point of time. I often use to hear it from my friends that ‘he don’t have the balls to try it out, he is mamma’s boy, he is still a kid and what not in the world’ but nothing moved me even to taste it out. The trend continued from school days to engineering days, the set of beautiful companions changed but the mockery and the remarks still remained more or less the sameJ. Now even the studious and bright guys of the group have started doing it, and the circle around me have graduated from being a smoking bunch to a regular drinking bunch. Drinking being the latest and the most exciting venture in the first year of engineering, excited one and all. But I was again on the wrong side of the table, when all my close and dear friends enjoyed those heavenly drinks I comforted myself with sweet sips of Mango Slice!!! Trust me I said Mango Slice not even a ‘Coke’. The remarks kept on getting worse, none of my bloody scoundrel friends let the opportunity go by, by not making fun of me on every booze party, some even treated me with milk bottles, but I enjoyed all this as much as they enjoyed doing it to me. But that still remained the way I was or rather I amJ. But never did it happened that they stopped taking me to any booze party or I stopped accompanying them in every cigarette break in the TAPRI outside the college. I enjoyed my Mentos as much as they enjoyed their stick, I enjoyed my peanuts, chips and cheese lings as much as they enjoyed there drink, rather invariably I have been the one who urges them that ‘come on yaar lets go to the TAPRI and have a smoke or it has been ages man since we last had a booze party’ and they have always treated me as a guy who is a voracious smoker or a sumptuous drinker. The trend continued in office too where my companions changed from my roommates/classmates to my project leads and project managers but my company to them still remained as loyal to TAPRIS and BARS as it used to my other mates. Though a new set of gyaan came my way preaching the fact that if you are a smoker or a drinker you climb the corporate ladder faster and you make friends rather quickly but even this didn’t worked in my case and I was always lucky to enjoy a good rapport with all my colleagues and seniors for whatever reasonsJ.Another rather irritating cause of worry for my friends remains the fact that I don’t even eat nonveg stuff and so they can’t really rely on me before ordering a full ‘Tangdi Chicken’ or ‘Chicken Tikka’ as they have to hear those boring ‘Paneer Tikka’ or ‘Veg Crispy’ orders every single time, though I have graduated to ‘Tawa Mushroom Masala’ and ‘Egg Fried Rice’ off late but that hasn’t soothed there irk by any meansJ. Now there isn’t any specific reason for being an eggiterian when even my dad, bro, most of my close mates infact all those special people with whom I am gonna spend my entire life are Non VeggiesJ but then even I don’t know why is it so, but that’s the way I am. So none of my friends actually hesitate to give me a treat or a party as I always turn out to be the most innocuous invitee to those parties who neither smokes, nor drinks, nor ventures for the most expensive non veg delicacies.
The most recent remark on all this weirdo lifestyle being ‘
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