Night Life

The wind blew gently whipping against my blue striped t-shirt,i looked up at the sky.Thank goodness there was little cloud-cover and the moon lit street was visible clearly.i flipped open my mobile phone to check the time.11:15 pm..thursday...travel back in time by 90 minutes..
9:45 pm. I was at home, sitting in front of my laptop ,chatting with a couple of friends on Yahoo messenger...I heard a buzz going nearby and absent-mindedly flipped open my mobile phone.I knew it was my friend Vignesh on the line." machan come down , walk down your street ,I shall meet you on the way"..Now dont jump down to any conclusions, i dont want you to be mistaken .Well my friend was calling me for a late night stroll which we are quite used to these days." catch you in 10 minutes da " i flipped my phone shut...I was dressed only in my shorts and was bare-chested.I scrambled to find a loose-fitting blue stripe t-shirt and pulled on my red track suit.Well it doesn quite complement each other.Nevertheless i was just going on a late-night stroll,not a date....I bid goodbye to my friends on Yahoo Messenger with the customary salutations which most of the net savvy youngsters by now would be quite familiar with...gn sd..tc...bbye...ciao...seems neverending huh..

9:51 ..i steped out of my second floor apartment .Climbed down the stairs ,taking two at a time, reached the ground floor in 20 seconds..I pulled open the iron-gate at the entrance , and hit the road..It was not a new-moon day and i was quite thankful ...duh..It is chennai and one cant quite expect the street-lights to be functional..Be grateful if you can spot those lamp-posts in your street..A few vehicles were parked on the street and i was walking alone..I was reminded of the track " I walk a lonely road on the boulevard of broken dreams"..courtesy green day from the album " The american idiot"..Humming it slowly under my breath i started walking at a brisk pace..It took me exactly 7 minutes to reach vignesh's home and i knew it out of practice.But the impatient fellow messaged me" where are you"..Feeling the vibration, i flipped open and replied him...

9:58...I was standing outside the entrance to Vignesh's apartment.He greeted me with a self-effacing look on his face, which by now i knew shouldn't be mistaken for..lol....Attired in a non-descript Tshirt going with a pair of shorts he looked his casual self..Straight-away we hit the road ...Now put rest to your speculations..We are just a bunch of normal teenagers and between us we had not more than 50 rupees and we were heading nowhere in particular.." so machan how was ur day" he startd." nothing much man..vetti all day been online for sometime till you called up"..In case this conversation seems familiar and sterotypical, i cant help it but this is precisely how we most often start a seemingly mundane conversation..

10:10...We have been walking for exactly 12 minutes and we had entered into a by-road leaving behind the main road..Most of the shops had downed their shutters and the remaining ones were entertaining their last few customers of the day..Walking alongside a petrol-bunk i noticed it had been closed for quite sometime and remarked..My friend replied indignantly" It is closed today in-view of the hike in petrol and diesel prices coming into effect from tomorrow"..It didn require any further explanation from him.I understood the reason.Nevertheless we started talking about the price hike and the consequence it would have on our lives....Our pace slowed down quite and our conversation started drifting towards the soaring inflation which the country is currently facing ..Now you might wonder what a couple of youngsters would achieve talking about this..The answer is just self-awarenessl;nothing more.

10:35...We had been walking for nearly 40 minutes and decided to take a drink..We spotted the nearby Mcrenett;the shutters were half pulled down and we were the last customers to walk in.
finishing our drinks, we paid up and started to leave.10:41..We stepped out of the store and slowly started walking towards his apartments on the main road..10:50..we reached the entrance to his apartments,squatted on the compound wall ,continuing our tirade against the present day inflation without any particular political affliation.11:10 we decided to call it a day,when vignesh got an angry remainder from his mother to come upstairs..lol..Bidding goodbye to him i started walking homewards..

11:15..The moon-lit street was clearly visible and i had two more blocks to go further.As expected i covered the distance in 2 minutes..In case you had been scrolling down all the while expecting something drastic or spectacular to happen, you are mistaken,because as i have mentioned earlier i was just out on a late night stroll with my friend..11:29 I finished up my milk and switched on my laptop to sign into orkut.com for the n-th time that day..11:41...After having reassured myself that there was no scrap left to be replied to, i decided to log out and hit the sack....