Love Started With A 'Boo' | ✓

Episode 2

𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘩, 2017
𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘬𝘢

Lamberghini chalayi jaane o
Lamberghini chalayi jaane o
Saanu vi chutta deh do 
Kithe kalle-kalle jaayi jaane o

Reverberating the tune of the superhit, Punjabi song "Lambherghini" with the background music playing on the Radio, I was humming along with my sister-in-law who was focusing on the road, driving our car through the bustling and busy 8'o clock hour-rush of Chandigarh.

One thing I really relished was listening music and then singing it, how much ever frog-like I might sound, I never heeded about that, I tittered sardonically and resumed my discordant singing along with my sister-in-law. 

Changing the gears with her left hand, Simran Pabhi, my sister-in-law asked scampishly, "Preet, how was Meera's engagement ceremony? Noor was cranky yesterday, otherwise even I'd have joined you guys". 

Till now I was energised for the imminent day but after hearing the word 'yesterday', only one person started propelling in front of my retina and even if it was just eight in the morning, my face was already showing 12 in full-grown, striking letters along with the numbed hands of mine that were resting on my lap. 

Pranking was my favourite pass-time but I had never apprehended that I'd do a caper on a stranger and that too a hippo-like man. What, even Assam Hippo's wrath would be put at shame in front of the raging anger that was broadcasting off that man who was looking no less than a clown in his three-piece suit yesterday. I had never encountered such an offended person in my entire pranking career, I meant in my entire life. 

"What happened, Preet?" seeing my ashen-like face, Pabhi asked diligently, studying my features which was loudly vocalising about the terror that I had faced yesterday night. 

Swallowing the lump formed in my larynx, I tried to articulate but only contrived to squeak like a first-time babbling baby. "I...I..". 

Lamentably, our car too halted at a signal with at least one-hundred-and-eighty seconds of waiting span which felt more like one-hundred-and-eighty years with those scrutinising kernels of my sister-in-law, "You saw some ghost or what? Why sudden change of mood, Preet?", she asked me concerned after putting off the brazen engine. 

"Pabhi, yesterday...." I was not looking at my sister-in-law but outside the car's window when my eyes landed on the one sole person because of whom my face was shining like a corpse. He was just adjacent to our car and before I could've dug the road and hidden inside the mother earth, his eyes too caught mine, mirroring my visage. The look of sheer horror, recognition and then irritation started emitting on his face from the galaxy of expressions.universe. 

If looks could kill, I'd be already pranking with the gods and the demigods of heaven. 

"Who's he, Preet? Why is he staring at you like that? Men, don't they have any shame or what? Haven't they seen a beautiful girl before?" Simran Pabhi kept blabbering and all I could do was to pray for our well-being. Before she could've gotten out of the car to admonish the hippo on 'Feminism and women power' in utter haste and anger, the angry hippo was already knocking on the passenger's side window, browbeating me from so close with his blazing eyes and that soreheaded countenance in front to alarm me more. 

Yesterday was just a trailer of his anger, today was the film preview day as well as the review day too, I'd surely write a review but in heaven. Do they provide laptops and gadgets in heaven? I need to find it out, I panicked hysterically moving away from the window towards my sister-in-law. "Pritika, who's he? Tell me? Why is he behaving like this?" Pabhi asked me accusingly as she could sense fishy thing out of every unfishy things, this was a fully installed fishy-full thing.