It's just too complicated.

Valentine’s day ritual for the three ‘little’ singles and one “it’s complicated” guy who shared a flat in central Bangalore started a day earlier with stocking the fridge with the strongest alcohol money could buy. The translucent window curtains were replaced with thick bed sheets, the door was bolted shut, the wire to the calling bell was cut, the TV was pulled off from the plug.

Why was this done? Well Valentine’s day was the most hated day for all three. It was one of those rare instances when they all agreed upon anything. Saju, one one such valentines day in a drunken stupor wrote an inland to the Pope in Vatican to enquire if Saint Valentine was indeed a Saint? The moral turpitude of the Pope who ordained him made him even consider shifting his affiliations away from the Roman Catholic church. Swear, there’s no other saint who has caused so much misery to so many men around the world and that too so long after his death. “the evil that men do lives after them…hmmm”.

The plan was to sleep till late in the afternoon and then inject alcohol into the system so that the day spent in consciousness would be reduced as much as possible on the fourteenth of February. But apparently BESCOM had other ideas and shut off the power supply to the house early in the morning and it was a surprisingly warm day for that time of the year. Saju was the first one to rub his eyes open when he could no longer pretend to sleep as the heat was getting unbearable. He so wanted to open the windows but that could be disastrous. No he shouldn’t. But now that his sleep had run faster and farther than any girl had ever run to whom he had extended a red rose, he couldn’t stand it that the other three were still fast asleep.

He kicked Riyaz on his butt hard.

Saju: Da, get up don’t you have to go see your girlfriend. It’s Valentine’s day

Riyaz’s relationship status read “It’s Complicated” in his social networking site.

Riyaz: Dude, she’s not yet my gf. She would be soon.. I’m working on a complicated strategy. But for the moment we are just GMAT buddies.

Riyaz was an MBA aspirant and had a strategically planned approach for everything ranging from catching a mouse to ‘pattaofying’ a girl. This time it was the classic ignore till she notices approach after the “overwhelm her till she succumbs” approach seemed to have bore no result.

For more than three months now Riyaz has been sticking around for Nisha on her beck and call. He’d pick her up from her home in the morning every for the GMAT session and drop her to the office afterwards…go shopping with her and the story goes that he even bathed her dog once.

Riyaz took out his phone which was lying underneath the pile of bed sheets and yesterday’s office clothes and dialed a number.

The Caller tune was the song from Amitabh’s “The Great Gambler”. Do Lafzon ki hai….

Saju: Isn’t that the song in which Amitabh speaks some weird thing in Spanish or French or something sitting in that ‘kettuvalam’ with Zeenat.

Riyaz: That’s Italian my friend and that thing is called a Gondola.

Saju: Whatever, he sounds like Lyngdoh after he’s downed three of his Rum and Cokes. Hehe(Lyngdoh was the third roomie and he was from the Meghalaya)

Riyaz: Hey Nish

Girls voice on other end (background noise indicated she was somewhere outside): Huh, who’s this?

Riyaz (Seeing that Nisha wasn’t too impressed with the new nickname that he had thought for her…decided to do a switch strategy): Nisha this is Rii (See this time it was Rii for Riyaz).

Now it was time for the implementation of the ‘ignore plan’.

Riyaz: Well anyways, I’m busy I’ll have to go now, I’ll call you later.

Nisha: (confused) Then why did you call in the first place??

Riyaz: Err..err..just like that.

Cuts the phone.

Saju: Dude, what was that all about. You called her and said that you were too busy to talk and put the phone down.

Riyaz (Grinning like a Cheshire cat): Hehe….you see if it’s working on you imagine what she would be going through.

Nisha on the other end had without another thought to the weird conversation gone back to sipping the red wine she was sharing with Anil.