Reading the title one can very easily understand that I am no fan of Gandhi. So I don’t have any revocations about using Gandhi’s only book and modifying the title to such a level. Also, for a few innocent species let me clarify that birds don’t refer to the class aves either. Meaning of ‘birds’ can only be understood by someone who has spent two years of his precious teenage reading Heisenburg’s Principle and Schrodinger’s equation. If someone still doesn’t understand it refers to the clan of girls.
Being in IIT is a great feeling (at least for the first month or so). But coming to a metro is another things that really gets the guys from far off excited enough. On my first day when I was going for registration towards IIT Delhi, located in a strangely called area “Hauz Khaz”, I saw the first memorable “bird-sight” in almost two years. It wasn’t like girls were absent in my city or they weren’t visible, I just never gave a damn about them (May be they didn’t try enough so that I get induced to at least give a damn).
But what studies can make you miss, you don’t realize until you miss the studies. (Isn’t this the same all of them say about love??? I guess it’s common with any intense feeling). Later in the next few days, I came across a lot of members from the clan, a few of them were recognized easily while a few forced me to take another look. I was happy to glare at them, turn back if they pass me by in the opposite direction or just sit somewhere still wearing my black sunglasses (they don’t really let anyone know where you are staring).
It was going on and on until a couple of days when I was on an auto rickshaw, and a girl with the mazimal amount of minimality passed by. I did not notice as I was listening to the Evanescence Song –“My Immortal” (It happens so very often that this song has become one of my all time favorites). Anyways…. Where was I??? yeah… then I saw the auto wale ‘bhaiya’ take his neck out of the auto and stared that ‘girl’ . Even I glanced at the bhaiya’s glance but then started looking straight. He tried to match the speed of the Black Honda Civic she was sitting in but his delight was limited to the blinking seconds on the red light.
Bhaiya stayed silent for a moment and he somewhere knew what I might be thinking. Then he asked – “ Naye ho kya delhi me? ” . I was surprised and said – “haan, abhi college join kiya hai…” Then he told me that “ Aji, tank me gas dekhne ke bahane mud ke neeche dekh lete hain…. Kisi ko ab kya pata chalta hai” and he added-“Delhi me reh ke in nazaaron ka mazza nahin liya to kya kiya?” which translates to –“ You have done nothing if you have missed the pleasure of these sights” . In a way I thought the same about Delhi but I was not interested in sights alone. I wanted someone close may be, but the words of that bhaiya made me go into deep introspection. I was in a dilemma. Have I become a pervert? Or am I the wanna be cassanova? Who am I? Is this what the decent guys are supposed to do? The thought remained with me the whole night. That day I proudly proclaimed that this is the very obvious thing to do for a tortured-self-deprived-introvert to do (I am referring to what I became during those two years), and forgave myself. Then I started making resolutions..
Making resolutions is never difficult but keeping them is (If I go on and draw the probability curve for the resolutions on the x axis and the success as a binary number on y axis, I see the graph is a constant y= 0 with negligible dots at y=1) but anyways, we always are taught to start afresh and forget what we did. Next day was a real test- A group of girls with a light reflection from the purple and the blue sides of spectrum and definitely a bright reflection of the ‘skin’ color (Dont worry, I didnt break my resolution, my friend told me all this) were at some 20 meters or so and were moving closer and closer. I was like walking with my head down and as the distance became smaller and smaller, I could not resist it so I had to close my eyes and stay there till I heard some feminine voices walk by and laugh and ultimately the sounds faded away. (This was the most practical application of Doppler’s Effect I ever encountered in my life).
I realized after two weeks that I have overcome my tendencies and need not look down or close my eyes to ignore those ‘nazaares’. I was happy because now I realized staring at something doesn’t make you get it , it just makes you repent that you just stared. I am not yet brave enough to go beyond gazing with my eyes wide open and talking to those angels walking on earth who would be perfect for anyone to be with all night long (For the people I can now safely call perverts, I am talking here about dreams) .
I feel better now cause I am a person with high morals and that is what counts. But I have realized that high morales don’t really help one achieve a high reputation. So all my friends started passing a common comment – “koi na Rohan …samajh gaye hum…. Ab to sab legal hai … chill mar!!!” But it turned out to be a week's euphoria among them and they turned normal in a week..
I did with birds what Gandhi did with truth …. Whether anyone likes it or not …
