It was eight in the morning and the earliest movie screening began at 10:30. Although Chanakya Cinemas was quite a lively place, with unwarranted people ambling around all day and fast food joint owners stealing each other’s potential customers, there was hardly a soul in the vicinity that early.

“DPS?” She asked enquiringly.

“Yes.” I said, twirling my pompous teen moustache. Delhi Public School was quite a brand name.

“Suraj Bhan,” she yelled back at me jutting her sweaty masculine hands to my face, almost demanding a hand-shake as opposed to coyly suggesting one.

“Suraj Bhan, are you sure? That…umm…sounds more like your father’s name.”

“That’s my school, you dick. I - AM – K A M I N I.” By the look on her face, I knew she had been asked the same question a zillion times before. Her tone was more like an open challenge to anyone and everyone who had the damn balls to ask again, politely or otherwise.

“I am Sahil. Hello.”

Kamini was rather unattractive and I am not saying that because she had called me names seconds ago. Her albino-like skin, of the colour of nude nails, left hair and discoloured betel-stained teeth made up for repulsion.

Minutes crawled by, insignificantly. Her indifference struck my public school womaniser ego and threatened to tear it apart. My eyes shifted from the leather boutique and the ticket window to the Chinese girl strolling aimlessly, to and fro the bus stop and the pungent pile of garbage across the street. If at all I looked at her, her disdain was too evident to brush off.

I figured I had to stop being a sissy about it all, and say something. Whatever happened to the indomitable Stud, who could juggle a dozen girls on his fingers like they were dices?

“Its really difficult getting tickets here. Do you…err…come here often?”

“No. Yes, actually. Never mind that. Are you done thinking of ways to talk me up now or you’ve got some more? Will you join me for a smoke, instead?”

A smoke? Where the fuck did that come from? Are my lips too black? Do I look like a smoke junkie? What is a smoke junkie, anyway? Is that a test, failing which I’d be deemed a child forever?

I thought myself a fool to have started the conversation.

“I don’t smoke with an empty stomach, you know.”

“Oh, come on DPS! You are not a child, are you?

I was right, wasn’t I? She just called me a fucking child. What next? Do I just give in? I could run away and spare myself the inevitable. Oh, to hell with it! What harm is a harmless smoke?

So be it. Between unapproving stares and maniacal coughs, I smoked my first cigarette. I wonder if it was just that or the ultimate emotion of having proved myself to this beast of a woman - I stood there with a pretty retarded smile on my face. Yet again, she stole away my moment of glory, affirming herself back to dent my battered self furthermore. The nerve, I say.

“Listen, its just 9. We still have an hour. Let’s go to the mart and have some ice-cream. We can get the tickets later.”

The thought of her speaking for the both of us did not sit well with me. I, as all other testosterone-charged boys, relished the company of a girl. Kamini, however, was hardly a girl, not that her muscles intimidated me but she did question my self-nurtured image of an alpha-male now and again.

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t want any ice-cream. As a matter of fact, I think I want to get my movie tickets first and NOT dig my teeth into a sundae. YOU go ahead and do whatever.”

I could have put it all together in a sentence but I chose not to, because if I had, I would not be able to use the word ‘I’ that often.

We boarded an auto-rickshaw. She did not have to convince me into it. One long piercing vernacular stare was all it took.

Warped as it may be, the human mind outdoes certain situations – as if there was much left to be outdone, you would think. Chanakya Cinemas was all over the news channels a week ago, largely because of a scandal. Words echoed blaringly in my head like they do out of a faulty transistor.

It was the God damn scandal.

………In the early hours of the morning yesterday, Delhi Police, in a sensational series of events, busted a flourishing sex racket north of Chanakya Puri. A few girls, reportedly, are said to be missing as they fled the scene. It seems the locals had little knowledge of………

Suddenly, her name ‘Kamini’ started making a lot more sense to me. For all I knew, she could easily be one of those girls. She wasn’t holier-than-thou anyway. I mean, what sort of a girl studies in Suraj Bhan School, if at all such an institution even exists?

“Here, your ice-cream. Pay me later.”

This mart looked more like a closely knit, two-storey colony to me. By now, I had begun imagining things. Amidst all the confusion, God decided to play a practical joke on me. All I could see around me were chemist shops.

The faulty transistor blared again. Louder, this time around!

“Listen Kamini……errr…..I……..was thinking……why don’t I……….we…err….buy the tickets in the meantime?”

What happened after that is of no consequence. As was the order of the day, the movie too, did not make much sense to me. I was quiet mostly, for a good part of the movie. Actually, for the entire two and a half hours, and the fifteen-minute interval too. Kamini, I would guess was watching the movie for the umpteenth time, since she seemed to deliver the actresses’ dialogues way in advance. Although, her voice would suit the conniving vamp a hell lot. All in all, good fun!

A brazen air had stalled all activity outside as I ran my way to the bus stop after the movie. For once, she let me be. She just walked down the theatre stairs onto the same spot where she had been, lit a cigarette and rested herself back on a little sidewalk chair. You could sense a wait, like a pendulum that has just completed an oscillation and was gearing up for another. She looked at me once and possibly, for the last time and let out a tired puff. Afar and alone, beyond the glitter of sun rays off a water puddle near the sidewalk, she waved at me crassly - bidding farewell to a day, a child-boy, a movie and a fucking scandal.