My Friend Mustaque, Part-2

My Friend Mustaque, Part-1

After we joined hostel, for the initial 2 months we used to visit our relatives quite often. The more appropriate term would be "LG", i.e. Local Guardian.  Almost everyone had some form of LG in the Guwahati city. LG need not necessarily be a guardian, in the true sense.  It could be any damn known person, could be a friend as well and we only had to say to our seniors that we would go to visit our LG. During the ragging period it was kind of customary for the fresher’s to visit LG over the weekends. After a few LG visits, it got quite monotonous to drop out there so frequently.  But there was no other option left, as most of the fresher’s preferred not to stay at the hostel during the weekends. Once the ragging period is over, the LG visits decreased exponentially for all of us.

In those early hostel days, one Saturday afternoon, I was well prepared to visit my LG. I was seated beside Mustaque inside the college bus, which used to go till Kachari, the heart of the city. I and Mustaque planned to watch a movie and I thought it would be better to watch in a theater, which was located in the other part of the city. So, we went to Anuradha Cinema Hall and the movie they were showing  that time was "Dil Se". We bought the tickets and were quite happy and relaxed, as we were quite sure that none of the college seniors would come that far for movie.

The movie was OK, not that boring and the "Chaiya Chaiya" song and it's choreography was fantastic. After a few minutes, I asked  Mustaque something regarding the movie, but he didn’t respond. Initially I thought, perhaps he's watching  the movie with his full concentration, but to my surprise he was actually sleeping. I woke him up and he started to smile and said that he was a bit tired. He was alive for a while and then started to snore like a lousy animal. I got little embarrassed, as people nearby got little pissed off and started to shoot glances towards us. Again I woke him up and he was alive for few more minutes. The same process repeated throughout the movie and I was literally frustrated with him.  I thought Mustaque might be very tired  that day and that’s why he acted like that, but later we realized,  it was actually quite difficult for Mustaque to survive the entire movie, no matter how interesting the movie was. 

When I was in my 3rd semester, my father bought me a desktop computer, the one which had Celeron processor inside. That was the first computer in the entire hostel, so it deserved a fabulous welcome and it actually got the kind of welcome it deserved. On the inauguration day of my desktop, we bought 2 movie CD’s on rent, out of which one was those exotic kinds of movies. The system was up the entire night and it delivered countless number of shows. For the next few months there was tremendous load on the system and initially I was little possessive about my desktop. I strictly asked my friends to leave their shoes/sandals outside and not to smoke inside the room. But those 2 rules were followed only for the initial  few days. By the next semester, gradually many more guys started to keep their own computers, so the load was distributed and instead of having show in one particular room,  we used to have multiple shows in multiple rooms simultaneously,  just like a multiplex. 

In those days, one afternoon Mustaque bought a movie CD from somewhere and said to us "it’s a damn good movie, let’s watch it after lunch". Very soon, many of my friends came to our room to watch the movie. Everyone took their position  in the bed and literally each and every corner of the bed was utilized. We didn’t have enough space to sit comfortably, but Mustaque out of his usual habit, somehow managed enough space for him to lie down. The movie Mustaque recommended that afternoon was “A Beautiful Mind”. No doubt it’s a damn good movie and it even won a few Oscars, but such kind of movies could be boring as well, depending on individual’s mood.

As usual, after watching the movie for 10 to 15 minutes, Mustaque went to deep sleep with his mouth wide open and after few more minutes he started to snore piercingly. By that time, we were already aware of the fact that there’s no point to wake him up. Mustaque continued to snore all throughout the movie and came back to life, just few minutes before the movie was about to finish. Finally few of my friends felt happy, as ultimately the movie ended and at that moment, Mustaque became little serious and commented "Wow! Bohut accha movie tha yaar"    "Wow!  It was really a great movie to watch"

My Friend Mustaque, Part-3