"Hi!!! Do you work in Ernst & Young? I think I have seen you in my office premises." I could not believe that I used the same line which has been heard and out rightly rejected a billion times. But I had said this with an innocence that could even melt Genghis Khan’s heart. "I am afraid I don't. I think you are mistaken." She said with an earnest smile. My perception of going spontaneous had obviously backfired. But I actually did remember her face. I had seen her wandering around in our office premises. But there was no use anyway since she had shown me the indifference evidently. "Oh wait a minute" She said. "You must have seen me in the RMZ campus. I work at the Reuters." Now this could well have been an opportunity given to me to rectify the grave sin of uttering the first couple of sentences I spoke to her. "Oh that’s great. I have a lot of friends there." I was desperate and saying things that, given some time to homework...

I am elated. This excitement has certainly eluded me for some time. I am going to a temple tomorrow. The last time I found myself kneeling in front of an idol in a temple was on the first day of my 12th board examinations. The excitement does not emerge from any sudden awakened spirituality within me. On the contrary, it reflects my adventurous inclination towards the atheist culture. I have never been ‘spiritual’ as followers of most religions define it. But I have always been compliant to the family customs which warranted reasonable admiration towards faith and religion. Although all of my family members are strong believers of faith and religion, I find myself very neutral in these areas. I don’t recall myself ever praying to god thanking him/her of whatever he/she has given me in life. Till the time I was with family and participated in the festivals, I always prayed for ‘more’, when I was asked to pray. When my family members went abroad for work, they advised me lit incense sti...

And so… I moved for the kill. I was too nervous to be able to perform on the task at hand. Not because I had been out of touch for quite a while but because I thought the task was totally out of my league. I was put to this test because of an idea actually conceived by me which boomeranged into my face. I was with my friends in one of those boring and ‘broke’ weekends. Out of sheer boredom and also to steer away our attention from our misery, I came up with the concept of playing a ‘dare’ game. It was a simple ‘spin the bottle’ game. The only difference was that the person who performed the task could be asked to do one thing in the coming one full week. It could be anything, but something illegal. If the dare is not performed by anyone, they would have to treat all the friends (and their girlfriends) with an amount equalling half of one’s monthly salary. Everyone seems to have readily agreed with the game. I was happy too. I could be at my mischievous best when I had to put someone t...