Beat this!

Back in my school days, my best friend came to school in a car, with his own driver. I, on the other hand used to take the bus, then the train and finally I had to cycle a couple of kilometers back home. To avoid the hassle of the bus, this friend of mine used to drop me at his home, which was close to the train station. I knew his mother and father but never did mention about them with my folks, lest they see me as sponging off from my friend and their family and discourage my taking a ride with him in his car.

Back in those days I used to tell him about how a guy from near my home used to take out Coca-Cola bottles from those vans loaded with bottles parked by the road side. And then, to portray what a cool guy I was (and he wasn't just helping me everyday with my commute) I boasted about how easily I could do lift off some of the bottles too without the drivers of the vans noticing.

And it so happened one day, that there was his car waiting for him and I was walking with him, and there was this van loaded with coke bottles standing nearby as well. And then, you know what happened.. he had to tease me, I had to prove myself, I flicked a bottle from the van, and we ran to the waiting car..

Lo and behold.. who should we find inside the car?! His smiling mother!!! Of all the days she had, she had chosen that day to leave early and pick up her son on the way home. And there was I, standing stunned with a bottle of Coca-Cola in my hand not knowing what to say or do. I could have always said that I had bought it, but those days are not these days and I wasn't 30 and an expert liar then, and in that moment of nothingness, time and my brain just froze - infact, they stood still for the next 20 mins, when I couldn't bring myself to open my mouth till I got out of the car, and even then I couldn't even say thanks. I think I couldn't even bring myself to look back to see what was happening as I started walking towards the station.

All the while in the car, my friend was telling his mother about how he was the one who stole the bottle and how we did it to take revenge on the driver who was a friend of the canteen guy, and how the canteen guy always cheated us and all the stories that fell away into the noise of the traffic and the buzz that was starting to grow louder and louder in my head.

The next day, he told me how his mother had made him kneel down and confess that he would never steal again. And I, I never breathed a word about anything to my father or anyone I spoke to.

They say that the things buried deep inside come to the fore every now and then, in your dreams, in your subconscious, and probably define who you turn out to be later on, in life. In cruel, cruel life!