Hello - 9 inches to the left

Mine has been an incessant attempt at keeping on writing whether anyone reads or not. It felt great, then, when someone chanced upon this blog yesterday and said it was nice. He had an immediate question - 'Why no post on A?" He was justified in saying that. After all, this person had sent too many chills down our spines at one time. And he has indeed left with us an unending treasure trove of laughter, to the extent where just the mention of his name brings to mind his myriad antics, and plunges us in waves of unadulterated laughter.

To get the context, we need to rewind to the early years of this century. Eight years ago, even I used to be enthusiastic - embroidering dreams on ambitions all day. It was in such a setting that my brother introduced me to the two people I mentioned in the last paragraph - the initiator and the protagonist of this post. In no time, a legal document pronounced us 'Partners' in a firm. 'A', he told, was a programming exponent with superb 'contacts' and an undying hunger for entrepreneurship. The other partner, let's call him 'B', was into graphic design which is so essential for what we were going to do. Fancy websites, to be precise. Being still in college, I came without any specialization. Three of us (3 is a number that both 'B' and I detest now), thus, started a journey on a not-so-auspicious day. The name of this association was also ironical. We called it Destination Future. 'A' was cool, he called it DF.

Anyways, in a couple of months, we could indeed complete a couple of nice websites solely on the basis of some neat user interface. Then we got some more. The clients were happy, some cash started flowing and I picked up some HTML and JavaScript. At the end of the first year, we ended with a positive in the balance sheet. After college and on weekends, we would assemble in the 'office' and 'B' and I would arrive at the correct design and alignment of the webpages after numerous iterations. Our man, however, did little in these things. He said he could hardly wait for the programming work to come, smiling to show his betel-stained teeth; with an eye on an equal share even on the refreshments that came.

Days passed and soon things fell into perspective. The attitude was, afterall, just a failed attempt to hide the ineptitude. Writing programmes was like asking for the Ganges in Rajasthan - he could not even write a few correct lines in an email. Upon close observation, we realised that the time he spent at the computer was on chats, games and emails to nondescript ladies in, as far as, Australia. Emails that lied through their teeth. 'Too hectic a schedule, am working 20 hours a day.' 'I lost my laptop since I did not lock my car. All my data is gone!' 'Microsoft, IBM - all are running on losses, we will also need some time to pick up.' One would have thought he already had his photo on the cover of The Times - they were waiting for him to date the issue.

It made us restive and angry. Each time he showed his teeth, we gritted ours. It was imperative that in such a setting, Destination Future had all but a future. Time passed watching him arrive late everyday, leave early offering the lamest of excuses, shoot arrows at balloons before they could rise up the length of the computer monitor, write 1000-line emails (sorry not progams) and take numerous phone calls. Talking of phone calls, I must tell you about his peculiar habit of saying many hello's whenever he got a call, bending 9 inches to his left for each greeting. Often, when the caller finally greeted him, his ear would almost touch his knee. He would keep talking in that position.

In some time, we canceled the agreement and decided to move on. Having gained tremendous confidence in his PR skills that now matches his design skills, B carries on with a setup of his own to this day. Having failed at a similar attempt with a few of my friends in college as well, I decided to take on the oft-treaded path of employment. Having done nothing, 'A' decided to continue doing nothing. It is impossible to write everything about him in this post. 'B' and I still have a great time bringing him up in our conversations and laughing out loud. We still start laughing everytime we are together or on chat - when anyone gets a phone call, someone says programming or some incident creeps out from the dungeons in the mind. I don't know of anyone else who makes us laugh more than him.

There he came and said he was a nerd
But little did we know
In our pastures we just let loose
A rampant cow from the herd.