Lizzy's OSs - The New York Chronicles OS 27 Up! - Page 6

Lizzy.🤗

Onu dreams about Taani and too a nightmare...🤔 Bound to, he keeps thinking about her 24/7... And regarding Taani in danger, maybe he feels that her mota angel is not with her anymore so she needs protection... Awww..☺️

Orindam decided to take them to Yosemite Park n Nups took Onu to Bridal Veil instead.. And interesting story... The way Nupur explained it... 🤔 🤣 Chick n all.. 🤣
Onu ko kyaa hua, he just vent out...😳 Just one step n 😕😕

Coming to the letter and P.S and P.P.S
Onu is literally counting days... Awww.. Missing Mishti way too much... 🤔 😒 His feelings that even if he does write to her n she reads it or vice versa, both cant do much about each others situation, I mean Onu can just feel bad about it and Taani cant come to USA to comfort motu..

One day you'll ask me why I didn't write. That day I'll tell you why, and I know you'll understand.
Awww... 😳😳

So Onu has been losing weight.. And Onu cribbing over yellow shirt n red tee... Awww😳 And Onu also told Mishti about smileys.. 😆 and how he learnt about it from the cute devil Gigi...😆 And Gol Matol Ganguly is on a verge of getting extinct..😆 Welcome Interner Illiterate Ganguly... 😃

I loved this one.. The way Onu found his screams similar to the Bridal Veils one... He almost getting lost in it... Writing in to Mishti and thinking if she ever wrote to him, it wud be all this and that..😆 How well, these two understand each other... Kehne se pehle hee samajh jaate hai...😍 Loved it...🤗
Waiting for the next one...😍

Nahi: Right on, Birthday Sister 😉 Glad you're liking it and absolutely loving the in-depth review!!

Deeps: Reading response from you guys is a big treat for me too...😃

Shobi: Abhi toh I'd not thought of giving him an accident but now...😈 And btw you're as good at reviews as Kali is!

Kali: Mai re...tu toh reviews ki rani ho!! Lovely review. I think saying 'chick' would suit her as someone who doesn't like the idea of love v much 😃

Simran: Thanks!

Inspired by the Ramlila scenes to some extent.

--

The Ten-Headed Question.

"...And so it was that Ram had defeated and killed the wicked Ravana, installed his brother to the throne, claimed his beloved Sita and left the forests to rule Ayodhya. The end."

When Onu got no response, he looked up to see Gargi starting back at him as if to say...

"That's it?"

"Um...yeah?"

"That's it?"

"What do you expect? This isn't Bold and the Beautiful, Gigi!"

He didn't have the heart to tell her that Ram left Sita in the forest much later, because some random dhobi told him her proof for fidelity was cock-and-bull. Gigs would never let him out of that quandary alive.

Gargi replied huffily: "Whatever, it wasn't as long as that Ramayan serial Mummy keeps watching..."

"Well I'm not B. R. Chopra, and you asked for this story, and I gave it to you, and if I went on as long as B. R. Chopra did I wouldn't be leaving this house till sometime next year!"

Babysitting was so not his thing, especially if it was someone as high-maintenance as Gigi. But their parents had a meeting to attend, Mrinalini was out working on a summer project with her classmate Jeremy, Nupur was down with a fever, and suddenly he'd become everybody's guinea pig.

But these days Gigi was becoming more and more fun to talk to: old enough to talk almost like a teen, and young enough to wrap everyone she saw around her little finger, himself included.

Gigi looked at him thoughtfully. "I liked Ravan."

Onu stifled a small chuckle. "Really?"

She giggled. It was a cute, gurgling sound, like she was laughing underwater. She was a smart kid, their Gigi. Over the year somehow they'd managed to make her their very own personal little mascot. Somehow he'd always seen her as one of those kids you'd miss terribly the moment they grew up.

"He had ten heads, all of which would be talking all at the same time and giving him headache, and still it took the hero so long to kill him? If that's not coolness I dunno what is!"

Onu threw his head back and laughed. Weren't his first few days as Ravan devoted solely to getting used to so many heads? Sometimes they'd flap over his face while he was in the middle of an important dialogue, and Mishti ' who kept slipping up her dialogue delivery anyway ' would laugh till she had tears in her eyes...for a scene where she was supposed to cry her eyes out waiting for silly Subodh to come to Lanka. And then Meenu Miss would frown at both of them and he'd forget his carefully learned dialogue instantly.

"Still, Gigs, Ram's the good guy, remember? He killed Ravan because he had to, didn't he?"

"He could have just gone to his house and asked for her, right?"

"Um, no, he'd be squashed flat like a fly in two seconds if he did. He needed an army."

"But he was god. Gods don't need armies. Gods don't get squashed."

"Of course gods need armies, a good climax always needs a little blood and gore."

"If he hadn't chased that stupid deer he wouldn't have needed the blood and gore in the first place!"

"If he hadn't chased that stupid deer we wouldn't have a story!"

"So? Who asked him to leave Sita for some nonsense deer?"

"Who asked Ravan to take her away?"

"Who asked Ram to chop of his sister's nose? If someone chopped my Di's nose off I'd take Mom's meat cleaver and chop him into three hundred fifty '"

"Eww, gross! You didn't have to be that graphic...besides, who asked Ravan's sister to go flirting with a married guy?"

"Who asked the married guys to play ping-pong with her?"

"They weren't playing ping-pong!"

"Pfft, like hell they weren't!"

"Kids!" Mrinal's mother called from outside the sitting room, signalling her entry. "I'm back...sorry I've kept you waiting for so long!"

"No sweat," Onu replied grinning, and found that he meant it. All said and done, Gigi was a kid after his own heart, a someone he'd been before he'd stopped being a child...

Gigi was grinning. "Ragi Da was telling me the Ravan story."

Onu wished her mother wasn't there, just so that he could give Gigi a sharp rap over her head.

Gigi's mother smiled, shaking her head at her little daughter.

"Stay for a bit, I got you something..."

"No aunty, like seriously, you fed me enough to last three days before you left..."

"Please," she said, "I insist. Over here we don't get that kind of opportunity to feed people anymore. Not the way we did back home, going from house to house with a pack of sweets."

Onu nodded, taking Gargi back to the sitting room to wait for Asha aunty's food.

"Was Ravan all that bad?" Gigi's eyes were like puchkas, round and wide.

"Well, it depends really. He was wrong to take Sita away and all, but he didn't really do anything to her, did he?"

"So what did he die for?"

"Because he was a jerk." Like Subodh, he thought with a pang, and Subodh didn't deserve to die.

"Do all jerks die then? Will Katie Parker get whamooshed for calling Jasjit a towelhead?"

Gigi's lip trembled a little as she said this. It was she who had spotted Jas at the playground two days ago, and while Jas somehow managed to appear calmer afterwards, it was Gigi who seemed more affected.

Do all the bad guys really die?

Onu smiled. How long had it been, since he had asked Meenu Miss the same question during one of their practice sessions? Why did Ravan have to die when he did things that a lot of other kings ended up doing? He decided he'd give Gigi the same answer Meenu Miss gave him.

"No, Gigi," he said, trying to swallow the lump in his throat, "because nobody deserves it, no matter what they've done."

"How do they get punished then?"

The way we all do, he wanted to say, either for our own mistakes or someone else's. Karma has its own way of biting you in the backside without you having to do anything about it.

"You just do, Gigs," he said, patting her on the head and purposefully ignoring how puzzled she looked, "you just do."

Hadn't karma brought him here? Hadn't he ended up braving lonely nights and endless days, hours of being among people and still feeling so incredibly alone? Hadn't he been punished enough for taking a bond his parents built too seriously, when no one else ever would?

New York was a wonderful place. One day he'd see it for what it was and give it the chance it deserved. Because it was home for so many people like him. He'd had a place to stay. Neighbours who cared, albeit from a distance like Aunt Letty. A guardian who did whatever he could whenever he was around. Friends like Nupur, Mrinal, Benoy, Gigi.

But no Ma. No Taani.

There would be people out there who would kill to be in his place.

"Ravan had everything, Gigs," this time, his voice was in a low whisper, "but he refused to be happy with what he had. He wanted Sita. And his kingdom. Together. But you can't have your cake and eat it too..."

Gigi's brows connected in a frown, confused by the metaphor. "What does that mean?"

Asha Aunty chose that moment to bring him a box of sweets. They must have been from a genuine Bengali restaurant because the sweets melted the moment they touched his tongue.

"Ravan had a life people would have killed for. But he craved something that was never his to start with..."

Never mine to start with...

He needed something to hold on to. Something to keep his hands from fluttering, his mind from going to the directions it would eventually end up going. Something. Anything.

The mithaai box!

He looked at the gilt-edged cover. Chappan Bhog, it said.

What had Meenu Miss said when she gave him the role?

Imagine, Onu...Ram ate only ghass-phoos, and what did Ravan have? Chappan bhog!

His relief knew no bounds, and for the first time since Gigi had asked those questions, Onu smiled.

"But Ragi da...if you don't get what you really want, how do end up happy again?"

He put an arm around her. It was a lesson he hoped she'd learn, but not the hard way like he did.

"You find a way, Gigs. We all find ways one day or other."

New York was the reason he felt this way, but perhaps the same New York would get him out of this rut too. Karma had its ways of bringing you down to your knees, but it also had ways of lifting you up again.

--

July 16, 2001.

Mishti,

Maybe I should love this place.

Maybe the only thing wrong here is me, and maybe I need to change.

Motu.

P. S. New York has a Chappan Bhog!!

P. P. S. Gigs likes Ravan. So much, I almost refrained from telling her the side-story where Ravan starts serving pizza to get Sita a sari, and where Sita told Ravan off for getting her Ram's love letter...or where...where...

P. P. P. S. Forget I wrote that. Where nothing happens. Full stop.

P. P. P. P. S. Maybe the big ten-headed question really is: how on earth do we know what lands us where? I ended up in America because that was how wrong things were. But that wasn't the fault of anyone here, it was mine. What I did landed me here, and instead of whining about it I should give this place a shot. Maybe I should remember the past for what it really was: a very wonderful dream.

Lizzy, my LLS!!! Loved ur long update!!! Actually, love all ur long updates!!!

awesome update. The way you describe each and everything is very nice. Update soon...

Lizzy...🤗

Awesome update again. luved the way you described each and every thing. update next soon..

The character introduced in this OS was mentioned briefly in Onu's babysitting Gigi session. Thought I'd focus a little more on Onu at school but was afraid to because I don't know enough abt the way school's run there.

Matchmaking Auntie Ganguly

Often, sitting in class, Onu would remember his first few days at school and wonder how he'd made a decent grade in class without going completely mad. It had been pure hell a year ago, because not only was he trying to get used to the place, he would also get increasingly baffled by the way studies went around here. To say that the education system back home and over here were vastly different would be like comparing swimming to cricket. It was at times like this that he'd allow himself to get angry with Baba. Just what was he thinking, dumping him into a system that was so at odds with the way he'd learned things in Calcutta? Without preparation?

Had Jeremy Newman not been around to help him as much as he did, Onu would have probably defied all Orindam Uncle's rules, become a dropout and take up pizza serving again.

Jeremy was the kind of person who'd mastered the art of merging into a crowd and becoming invisible. He was a scrawny, lanky, awkward thing with brown eyes and brown hair and his locks kept falling over his head in a way that reminded him of Robi. In a normal environment he'd say next to nothing and generally chose to be by himself. But place him in class and ask him a question (or two, or three, or six hundred), and he'd leave people flabbergasted.

More often than not, he'd be paired up with Mrinalini because they'd taken most of their electives together. It was only this year, according to Nupur, that Mrinalini and Jeremy had actually started acknowledging each others' existence. And honestly things had been fine in the beginning: they'd worked on their projects together and often did a few out-of-syllabus things just for the fun of it.

Of late, though, Mrinalini was constantly complaining of how Jeremy was avoiding her. We used to make small talk in between projects earlier, she would say, and I've always ended up spending half my time with him. Now he doesn't even look at me!

Nupur, in typical Nupur fashion, had recommended flying off the handle and demanding to know why he was treating her that way. It was the way she dealt with things: by rushing headlong into action without a single thought. Mrinalini couldn't do that without thinking over it a million times, and she couldn't throw a tantrum to save her life. Sometimes Onu couldn't figure exactly which style of dealing with a problem was worse.

When it was his turn to offer advice, though, Onu decided he'd give her nothing. If his suspicions were true, and he was quite certain they were, Mrinalini would end up being terribly offended by what he would say, and probably never talk to Jeremy again.

While the first word to come to anyone's mind regarding Jeremy was klutz, Onu couldn't help noticing that around Mrinal he dropped more things than usual, slammed his locker door with more force that he'd ever done since Onu had been in school, tripped over just about everything because his eyes were focussing on something else altogether.

Onu realised that if they'd all been paying attention to him rather than themselves, they'd have dated his appalling eye-hand-foot-everything-else coordination to roughly a month after Mrinal and Jeremy had found out they'd taken the same electives.

What really convinced him was a walk Jeremy had taken with Nupur around the school grounds. Onu had been at the library till then and had come back to clear a few doubts with Jeremy. When he returned, he found them talking to each other like old friends and almost choked on his urge to laugh. It was like seeing a pair of old sandals talking to a fruit hat.

Mrinal seemed to appear out of nowhere while they were walking together, and as if on cue, Jeremy lost his balance over a stray branch and fell over. Mrinal steadied him just in time.

"Careful, Jerry!" she hissed, "Seriously, be glad these are open grounds and not filled with those monkey bars made of steel. You would have ended up with a concussion."

Jeremy didn't answer, but even at the distance Onu was watching he could see the way his neck had turned red, the colour raising itself slowly up his cheekbones till they finally reached his already-pink ears.

"Thanks," he'd mumbled. His voice was barely audible.

And then Nupur broke that spell by taking Mrinal with her someplace, and all Onu could see was the naked adoration written all over Jeremy's face.

It had gone on for several weeks, and the few times Onu had tried to get him to confess...at least to him...had ended up in Jeremy becoming more and more withdrawn. Since then, Jeremy had tried even harder to make himself invisible, something that worked with everyone except Onu, who knew why, and Mrinal, who was used to having him around.

He knew the look on Jeremy Newman's face, he knew it because that was the way he'd looked at Mishti.

That didn't work out, but this could.

All he needed was Nupur, a park and a pack of white lies.

--

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Nupur whispered a tad bit too loudly, pretending to lay her head on his shoulder.

"Positive," Onu replied, "Jeremy's in love with her. It's as obvious as the nose on my face."

Nupur snorted. "Right, and the first thing I'd want to do if I like someone is pretend they don't exist. Nice leap of logic, genius."

"Shh!" Onu said, grasping her arm closer and allowing them to sink into the bench. Nupur looked like she was going to throw up her canteen lunch all over his shirt. "Firstly, we're supposed to have our backs to them and pretend we're a canoodling couple. Second, you and I aren't supposed to be here! So shh!"

Nupur raised her eyebrows, but relented. "That makes absolutely no sense, but...oh, whatever."

"Shh," Onu placed a hand over her mouth for a minute, "I hear voices."

A pair of feet could be heard shuffling away a few fallen leaves before settling on a bench that thankfully didn't face them. Onu and Nupur shut their eyes tight, wondering how long Mrinal and Jeremy would take to start talking.

One...

Two...

...

"So...um, we're supposed to talk?"

Onu and Nupur let out the breaths they didn't even know they were holding.

"No, Jeremy Newman, we're supposed to sit here staring at each other all day."

Silence. Then, haltingly, as if he was labouring over every line: "Er...where are Rags and Nupur? I thought they were supposed to come along."

"Why?" Mrinal's voice was laced with accusation, "to make it easier for you to ignore me?"

"I'm not ignoring you!" For once in two months, Jeremy seemed to regain some of his lost spunk.

"Gee, I must be terrifically cross-eyed then!"

As the two argued over the validity of Mrinal's presumptions, Nupur squirmed closer. "I would never have thought."

"You weren't looking at him hard enough." Onu draped his arm around her, and Nupur wrinkled her nose. "I swear, as soon as we get back home, we're changing your cologne. It smells awful."

"No way in hell. This is musk."

"I couldn't care less if they called it roses and lilies, bozo."

Around the other side the argument seemed to be heating up to a level where they could have heard practically every word all the way from New Jersey.

"Go on, admit it! You're uncomfortable around me, aren't you?"

"Mrin - " he spelt her name the way he'd always spelt it, by making an obvious effort to enunciate the r.

"I'm the one who has to follow you around for everything these days. Jesus, do you even know how it makes me feel? I feel like your blasted stalker that's how!"

"But -"

"Admit it!"

"Yes!" he yelled, "yes! I do feel uncomfortable around you! I freaking wish you weren't there half the time so that I can concentrate on everything else for a change!"

Nupur gasped.

Mrinal said nothing, and two minutes later they could hear dry leaves crunching beneath her feet. Before they knew it she had spotted them, given them a look of disgust and stalked out of the park.

Jeremy sat on that bench for a very long time, his head in his hands. Nupur almost made a move to comfort him, but he stopped her in time.

Onu felt like the world's biggest failure.

--

August 6, 2001.

Mishti,

Remind me never...NEVER...to try matchmaking again. Mrinal's already not talking to any of us, and Jeremy looks like he hasn't slept in days. At first I thought she'd realised he was telling her in his own roundabout way that he had feelings for her, but now I know she'd taken what he'd said entirely the wrong way.

Gah, what a mess.

P.S. Add Matchmaking-Auntie-Ganguly to our list of names for me.

P. P. S. I like my cologne. Stupid Noorie.

P. P. P. S. Noorie's my new nickname for Nupur. She's into these long loose Hare Krishna batiks now and she looks like a technicoloured ghost.

P. P. P. P. S. I smelled my cologne again and it rocks. Noorie's just jealous because her deo lacks subtlety.

Nahi: I know...I've SO wanted to write something with the Ramlila in it in the story! And yeah, what was once supposed to be a bunch of random OSs is now a big fat plot bunny monster! 😲

awesome OS again. Update the next soon...