Bittu Part 1

Boy meets Girl.

No sparks fly, life goes on.

Boy keeps meeting Girl.

The Boy falls for the Girl.

The Boy starts to woo the Girl.

The Girl doesn’t respond.

Life goes on.

The Girl keeps meeting the Boy.

The Boy keeps wooing Girl.

Eventually it happens… Love (or something like that)

They live happily ever after.

This is not the story of the Boy and the Girl; this is the story of B2: The Boy 2. The Boy 2, the guy who used to sit next to the Girl in the class, who was the Girl’s closest guy-friend before Boy happened to Girl.

Summer of 2007:
A new first term at L, another new batch of wide-eyed kids, all of them wannabe CEOs, entering the gates of hel(L). Most of them were engineers from either the IITs or DCE/NSIT/NITs. And among this crowd of engineers was Shekhar “B2” Bharadwaj, B.E. Mechanical Engineering from DCE, class of 2007. Back in DCE the college staff had assigned him the roll number - 2K3/B2 and Bhandari, his soon to be best friend, not able to recall his name had called out loudly “B2” during lunch. Since then he had been known as B2 or Bittu. Bittu had had a love-hate (mostly hate) relation with the #2. Always #2 in the class, the #1 position had different claimants but nobody could dislodge Bittu from #2, not even he himself. He was in the college cricket team and easily one of the best players, but here also he was #2 and the vice captain. When the CAT results had come out he was waitlist #2 on the L list. ABC his #1 choice of institutes had bypassed Bittu. But he was still happy with his WL #2, he would easily make it to L, the conversion was a sure shot. Perhaps the only time he hadn’t grudged his #2 status.

But he promised to himself this was the last time he would be #2. Hel(L) would know only of Shekhar #1 (though he cringed inwardly at making himself sound like a David Dhawan movie). The first day at L was registration and section allotment. As he walked up to the registration desk, somebody tapped his shoulder from behind. When he turned back he saw it was a girl.  The girl said -Hi! Do you have pen to spare? I need it for just a minute.

To be continued…
-