Do Fatichar

After passing out of engineering college, I was in Delhi for quite a few months with some of my close hostel mates. Being a Computer Science passout, I always thought I should have gone to Bangalore. But some of my close buddies already booked their tickets to Delhi. The situation in Bangalore was also pretty much pathetic, as the market witnessed serious kind of recession during that time. Without applying much pressure to my brain, I simply opted to go with my friends to Delhi. Recruitment was almost frozen and especially for fresher’s, there wasn't much hope. We used to stay in some kind of a Dhobi Ghat in south Delhi. Well, it was basically a Dhobi Colony, but not those traditional Dhobi Ghats kind of. They used to wash clothes in giant washing machines which had some kind of a local flavor, pretty much similar to those kind of air coolers.

For a few months, I shared a small room with my dear friend Rajat. He’s from Mechanical branch and at least, they used to get some calls. Even though, those days were quite memorable, but was a little bit painful as well. Apart from the anxiety and the uncertainty about our future, one more headache was to have fed ourselves. Most of us learned to cook that time and it was quite a challenge to have satisfied out tummies. Some of our friends were very focused for their MBA and already started their CAT preparation and coaching. I never thought of MBA though, also it was little out of scope for me that time. I think Rajat was also on the same boat and that’s why we decided to share our room. 

We lived a Fatichar life style those days and on top of that, Delhi summer made our life much more miserable.  One late night, as our room was completely dark and I was busy shifting my sleeping position every now and then. I tried to make myself a little bit comfortable in order to have had some sleep.  All of a sudden Rajat asked from his bed "what’s up dude? Still awake?"

I replied "Yeah, trying to get some sleep"

We chatted for a couple of minutes and then he asked "Do you have any cigarettes left with you?"

I replied "No dude, I already lighted my last one just before we prepared to sleep"

Our conversation continued and suddenly Rajat switched on the light. It was 3:30 AM and he tried to look for a cigarette all over the room. Without much luck, he then looked for some healthy cigarette butts inside the ashtray. He lighted one and could only manage a couple of puffs and then felt the heat on his lips. Rajat was getting little desperate and started to look at all those empty packets. As I looked at him and his activities, even I also wanted one damn long puff, but none of the butts were at lightable condition. Oh! Shit, it’s such a mind game and we wanted it so badly. I also started to explore my luck and looked at every possible empty packet. It was already 4 AM and we didn't bother much for some sleep. Fortunately, all of a sudden luck turned our way and I could find a cigarette piece in one of the empty packets. Well,  that was a fresh and a completely unused one. As soon as I showed that damn thing to Rajat, his level of happiness was clearly visible on his jubilant face. He was extremely excited and I was almost about to have lighted our revere, but Rajat interrupted and said "Just wait a while, I would make some black tea"

Wow! That sounded extremely pleasing and within no time Rajat was ready with his tea. I offered him to light our ecstasy. Well, he truly deserved it that moment and his happiness was pretty much expressive while it came out, along with those long and smoky drags. The caffeine and the nicotine, along with our extreme kind of craving, created a mesmeric environment altogether. Oh! That was some kind of a moment and we felt highly satisfied like hell. We continued to chat about our uncertain future for almost another hour and then later, had some sound sleep early morning.


With this post, I completed my first century. I guess my post rate is quite slow, but still it’s some kind of a milestone.