When life happens

A special guest

The next morning, Neha woke Tani and Siri up very early, hollering, "We've not been working at all for the last few days!"

There was a lot of truth in her words, so Tani got up immediately, because though she had been taking things a lot lighter in the last few months after her talk with Virat bhaiya, her meticulousness was part of her and always would be.

Even Siri woke up fairly quickly and a few minutes later, all three of them could be seen working in silence, till Neha said snidely, "Doesn't it bother you that you have to work alone while Siri and I work together?"

 "Of course it doesn't. If it hadn't been for my paper I wouldn't be here. Virat bhaiya would have remained the great unreachable Virat Kohli... imagine!" said Tani.

"It does seem unimaginable," said Siri, trying to think back to the days this team had not been their family. "How we had worshipped them, we even worshipped Hardik, can you believe it?"

That made them all laugh, because now they could hardly think of the words 'Hardik' and 'monkey' separately.

"I can't even imagine worshipping Virat bhaiya anymore, he's mad and definitely human," said Tani.

"I still worship Rohit bhaiya," said Neha firmly.

Siri and Tani, of course, looked like they didn't believe her.

"The only cricketer I still worship is MS Dhoni," said Tani after a while, her voice full of feeling.

"Me too," said Siri.

"I think he's great...but," said Neha.

"We know, he's great but you don't worship him," said Tani.

"And that's what makes her mad," put in Siri quickly.

Before Neha could retort, Jassi and Hardik barged into the room, as if it was not 7 am in the morning.

"Why are y'all awake?" asked Hardik, aggrieved. 

"Why are you so disappointed?" demanded Tani.

"We wanted to wake you up abruptly and give you an awful shock," admitted Hardik stupidly.

"You were not supposed to tell them that!" said Jassi exasperatedly.

"So you're allowing this monkey to influence you these days," observed Tani darkly.

"It was his idea in the first place!" protested Hardik.

"Don't lie," said Neha.

Hardik looked at Jassi tragically, overacting as usual.

"Ok," said Jassi. "It was my idea. But only because there's a great surprise coming up for you three soon."

"Virat bhaiya wants to take us to the casino in London next month!" cried Neha excitedly. [She and Hardik had been nagging the seniors about that for a few days.]

"Kuldeep has stopped guilt tripping about Ahona?" suggested Siri.

Tani was trying to think of something that would count as a great surprise for her, and then the door opened again.

Virat bhaiya, Jaddu bhaiya and Rohit bhaiya entered, followed by...

"MAHI BHAI!" shouted Tani, losing control over herself for probably for the first and last time in her life.

Siri tumbled out of her chair in shock.

Then Tani and Siri recovered themselves well enough to dash to get closer to him and Tani attempted something like touching his feet. Neha watched the entire scene unfolding with a grin and uncharacteristic calmness. Jaddu looked like he would start howling with laughter any moment.