PRANISH - LAST NIGHT'S DREAM

While in Ethiopia

POV Pratik:

I was checking out the menu at the airport restaurant when my eyes landed on a particular item.

"Grilled almond butter and jelly sandwich"

A slow smile crept on to my face. Without thinking too much I ordered two sandwiches before the growling beast in my stomach starts protesting.

I have barely eaten anything since 8-9hours now excluding a spoonful of rice I had from the airline meal considering how awful it tasted.

Our first flight took off at the scheduled time from Mumbai airport. I didn't get to interact much with Nishant on the flight because we weren't seated next to each other. We were pretty much briefly introduced to all the contestants of the show at the airport itself since we were flying together in the same cabin. Nishant sat on the other side of the aisle beside that TikToker guy called Faisal Shaikh, a fairly decent looking energetic boy almost of same age as mine who was kind of an emerging name on the social media apparently looking at his follower count. I got good vibes from him on our first meeting and I even tried to swap the seat with him so that I could sit next to Nishant but the crew on board told us that it would be difficult for them to keep a track of individual food preferences if we changed our seats and since I was a vegetarian I didn't wanted to risk it.

Therefore I was stuck in my seat next to Rajiv Adatia whom I teasingly called Gaathiya in my previous show where I got to know him as a fellow contestant. I share a love hate equation with him and it gives me utter joy to annoy the fuck out of him let's just put it that way.

In short the 5hrs of flight wasn't as dreadful as I thought it to be though I am not sure if I can say the same for Rajiv.

POV Nishant:

I was talking to Tushar about how things were going for him back at Mumbai. Well I can't really call it "talking" since he was the only one doing that part and I was only hearing him gushing about his fiancée Triveni.

One cannot really do much when it comes to avoiding a friend whom you've known since 10years from the same choreographer fraternity as yours and now as a co-contestant in the same reality show.

We were currently at the Addis Ababa airport since we had a layover of 1hour 15mins at the Ethiopian capital before the connecting flight to Cape Town. I was starting to get bored in the conversation with Tushar when I excused myself and went for a cigarette break.

I was going to enter the smoking zone when someone nearly crashed into me.

N: What the fuck? Watch before you--- Pratik? Tu kahan tha itni der main tujhe dhund raha tha.

P: main yahan hi tha...tujhe dikha nehi shayad or maybe you didn't try hard enough..

N: what?

P: Nothing...I came looking for you but you were engaged in a conversation with Tushar so I didn't wanted to interrupt.

N: oh haan arey he was going on nonstop...wanna have a cigarette with me?

P: I already had one. Tune kuch khaya?

N: Nehi but I am not that hungry too.

P: take this.

Pratik handed me something wrapped up in a tissue. I took it from his hand and peeked inside to find out it's a sandwich.

N: ye kya hai?

P: ek bite leke dekh..

N: Is this almond butter?

P: hmm...utna achcha nehi hai jitna tu banata hai but I was hungry and nothing else on the menu looked familiar to me so I ordered this.

I looked at Pratik with an expression of confusion mixed with adulation. It's small things like these that makes Pratik unique..he will not do big shiny gestures for you but he will ask if you've eaten or not when he cares for you. When we bonded on our previous show we used to have a midnight snack everyday mostly almond butter sandwiches and I can't believe he still hasn't gotten over it. No offence I too ate those for 2months out of sheer habit even after the show ended but then one day I decided to stop because I have had too much of those by then. Nonetheless I took another bite of the sandwich.

N: It's not bad par main poora nehi kha paunga.. share with me?

Pratik let out a small chuckle.

P: itna sa toh hai nishant...khale bro..

N: nehi mera ho gaya...I am taking one last bite uske bad tu khatam kariyo..

I saw Pratik gobbled down the rest of the sandwich in one go. I was still chewing my portion when I absent mindedly scratched my nose with my fingers. I didn't realize the blunder until a camera appeared right in front of me with Pratik laughing and zooming in on my face where there were blobs of almond butter and jelly smudged all over on me.

Author's Note:

Hi, all. This is the end of this chapter. I did a little research on airline details from Mumbai to Cape Town for writing this but would still like to apologize if the timings or anything is incorrect since I have never been to these places in real life myself. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Do vote for the chapter if you like it and share your thoughts in the comments.

Thank you.