Chapter 18: Thank You, Mario!
While Kartik and Anand were busy dealing with Anjali, her ex and his group; Veena and Seher were at the bar, giggling like two retirees who had dropped water balloons on a bunch of kids. They made a game out of fending off suitors for Princess⁴⁴ Seher. Their bar game, which was called ‘Thank You, Mario!’ went something like this: Veena got busy on her phone while standing at least a foot away from Seher. (Veena replied to all the ‘Happy New Year before the networks are jammed’ messages.) A guy saw Seher standing alone and walked up to her.
— “You know, I’m the best in my company to spot a good investment in the market.”
— “Really?”
— “I can spot a good investment in a dark forest without a torch.”
— “Wow. You must be really good.”
— “Have you been investing? How much do you know about investments?”
— “Enough to know that you’re a bad one.”
Then Veena would rate the Seher’s attack based on technique and meanness quotient. She would pull out an image of decorative numeric typography using Google Images and show it to Seher, like she was the judge and the boys were divers or gymnasts.
For this particular one, Veena pulled out a 9 that looked like it was chiseled out of ice. After two more attacks, they realised they needed a guy-perspective to make the jury fair. Anuj refused to step in from the balcony. He preferred to be in a place where he could smoke freely. Also, Avantika. That was when Veena had WhatsApped Anand and called him tot he bar.
Anand figured that Kartik was now in a safe space and could land his hypothetical MIG onto the hypothetical airstrip he had located for him. So Anand excused himself from Anjali and Kartik to join Veena and Seher at the bar.
Veena put her arm through Anand’s elbow, pulled him closer and explained the rules to him. Anand quickly pulled his phone out and opened Google Image search while muttering, “Violence and peace. Violence and peace, violence and peace⁴⁵.” And Veena responded accordingly by moving her lips to say, “Peace and violence. But Peace and violence?” A few seconds into this pretend-conversation, Seher pushed some of the bottles of the bar backwards to park her butt on it. Her legs swung back and forth as her eyes scanned the room for the next guy who would be walking in her direction.
— “Hey babes.”
— “How drunk are you?”
— “What?”
— “I mean how many of me do you see?”
— “What?”
— “You just said ‘babes’, right?”
— “That was — ”
— “Come back when you think of a good comeback.”
The guy left. Veena and Anand held their phones up in Seher’s direction. Anand’s 7 had snakes at the bottom of the digit. Veena’s 5 was made of bricks.
— “Wow, you gave her more points than I did! Why?”
— “Babes deserved a mean hit. And I liked the comeback pun she ended with.”
The next guy to walk to the makeshift bar where the girls and Anand were standing was wearing an Afghan checkered scarf and Seher decided to strike preemptively.
— “So what do you do?”
— “I work with banking and finance.”
— “I know nothing about banking and finance.”
— “To be more specific, I deal with currencies. Can I get you a drink?”
— “Sure, but if I wanted to learn more about fiction then I’d still be with my ex-boyfriend.”
— “Huh? I’m sorry? Fiction?”
— “Isn’t money a fictitious construct?”
— “It really isn’t-” The guy paused as he spotted Veena sniggering on the side, and then he just raised his drink and left.
— “You’re not allowed to rate this one, you killed it.” Seher flicked Veena’s humerus. Veena’s hand jerked a little, spilling some of her drink.
— “That was like me going to Japan and refusing to sleep with a Japanese chick because she doesn’t understand English.” Anand’s screen had the digit two made out of gold.
Not much time passed before the next guy showed up. He checked out Seher and Veena both before he got to the bar but did not look at either women while he waited at the bar for his drink. When his drink arrived, he casually turned his head to look at Seher’s drink.
— “You’re almost done. You want me to get you a refill?”
— “Sure. If you can guess what I’m drinking.”
— “You are drinking a mojito or a caprioska?”
— “Actually, I’m drinking whisky. This is just my friend’s drink that I’m finishing.”
— “Have you taken a tour of the house?” The guy stepped closer to Seher as the bartender made her a whisky on the rocks.
— “I’m on my period.”
— “I’ll see you around.” The guy tried to control his shudder but he couldn’t. He just handed Seher her drink and managed a charming smile before he walked away.
— “That was too harsh for a party!” Anand gave Seher a 4 that had blood splattered all over it.
— “What was so harsh? If a girl is chumming, she just is. What’s the big deal?” Veena’s phone showed an ‘8’ made of flowers.
— “Plus if he already hadn’t undressed me with his eyes, he wouldn’t have shuddered.”
— “This is cheating.”
— “Welcome to life. Being a guy is being cheated.” The girls high five.
Seher jumped down from the bar, grabbed Anand’s elbow and slipped her drink hand through Veena’s to make a chain of three. “What is Kartik up to?” She dragged both of them away from the bar and towards the balcony.
⁴⁴ Princess because Thank You, Mario! But our princess is in another castle.
⁴⁵ According to Actorography, “Violence and peace” is something you say when you don’t really have anything to say but you want to make sure everyone watching you from afar (and can’t hear you) thinks that you are saying something to a fellow actor.
