Chp 80. Birthday Boy Tommy

It wasn’t such a long time ago when I came up with my “Meet my friend Tommy” post for which I actually got a couple of commendation from many bloggers who don’t know Tommy.

Well today is his birthday and since he is thousands of miles away in small town London and since I am too stingy to make an ISD call (Relax, I ain’t that kanjoos. Tommy bhen chod hasn’t mailed me his London number till now.) I thought I’ll just write a post from India wishing him a happy birthday.

I already wished him at Orkut on Saturday nite. It was around 11:30pm and I was at M’s place online from her lappy (haha faith_no_more, wipe that dirty smirk off your face). I was trying to spice up this really happening Orkut community that I created “Worst Pick-up lines/Intro of Orkut”. As I logged into Orkut, my Orkut b’day reminder back then said “Tomorrow is Tommy’s b’day”. By tomorrow, I just assumed they meant Sunday as it was still a Saturday nite then, but I never knew Orkut was already on a Sunday. So there I was happily wishing him at his scrap book from M’s place when the clock struck 12 that Saturday nite, wondering why nobody else had wished him so far.

Then yesterday, Sunday, Amol called me up from Gurgaon.

“Yo today is Tommy’s birthday”
“Bastard, you wished him a day early at Orkut. His birthday is tomorrow.”
“What crap. It’s today. 17th July. Check Orkut.”
“What check Orkut? Check your freaking calendar!”

And there I was, oooops! 17th is Monday!

“Fuck. Stupid Orkut”
“What stupid Orkut? Stupid Kima!”
“ok ok… comon… I goofed up. I don’t wanna be the odd one here. Please wish him a happy birthday too! Today! Right now! On Orkut! Give me company dooood!”

Asshole Amol laughed so much he couldn’t even speak. And then we started making some really crazy plans like trying to convince him that Sunday was actually his Birthday, and that we’ll even call up Haridwar to inform his parents that it was their son’s birthday that day and not Monday. Lolz. Maybe if it was Muthu, we might actually be able to convince him (Muthu is a friend of ours who will fall for any crap I feed him, however far-fetched it may be. He’s a legend from our Batch. Maybe I’ll come up with a post about him later.)

So here I am, to make up for my blunder, a post specially dedicated to him. Happy birthday Tommy (Arnab Deb who?)

His birth name is Arnab Deb, but everybody calls him Tommy. And after our summer internships, whenever our gang went out for a movie/dinner/pub, when it was time to pay the bill, Tommy was no longer called Tommy. He was then suddenly known as Mister Morgan. All of us would look at him and shout out “Mor-gan Mor-gan Mor-gan” in synchronized unison, and for the umpteenth time he would reach for his wallet while saying “Bastards, I swear this is the last time man”. LoLz. Tommy was one of the few guys who did their summer internship in an I-Bank, literally minting cash. He got into JP Morgan for his summers, hence the name Mister Morgan. His stipend was atleast twice that of our entire gang’s put together.

But comparing his real name and his nom de guerre, one can’t help but smile at the aberrance. This kinda reminds me of Russel Peters who made fun of Indians who go to The US of A and introduce themselves with an American sounding name that is completely different from their Indian name (Quote Russel Peters: “Hi. My name is Rajendra, you may call me Steve” ). Arnab Deb – Tommy? Atleast if this has something to do with Tommy Hilfiger’s line of expensive boxers, I can understand. But no, it seems the reason his IIT friends started called him Tommy was because he looks like a Tommy! That’s what he told me. I asked him “Which Tommy? Tommy Lee Jones? Tommy Lee Pamela? Tommy Ramone? Tom(my) Jones? Tom(my) and Jerry?” And he replied with a grin “I don’t know. Some Tommy. A typical Tommy.”

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you ever want to know how a typical “Tommy” looks like, then I guess you should take a look at my friend Arnab Deb. Can you imagine what it would be like at a crime scene? The cop is busy taking notes from a distraught paranoid victim “The person who just tried to rape me… well… he is around 5’9… medium built… face description… somewhat like a Tommy.” I guess his photo will probably be there in our geography text books years from now. His full blown image will be in the “History of Human evolution” chapter, standing at the end of a line: Homo erectus… Homo neanderthals... Homo sapiens… Homo tommy.

After a stint at JP Morgan, he is now at Barclays, London. But in between these two Mints, he was still the same old stingy Tommy. We always had to wring him hard until he finally shelled out money to pay for the CCD Black Velvet coffee, which was just 3 bucks a cup. Ofcourse sometimes we made him pay for the Tequila bottle but… *Kima slyly points his finger to Monu and Amol* . I even had to literally drag him by the collar to the Reebok Showroom where he bought for me this amazing Iverson “Loyalty” tee-shirt as a treat for getting into Barclays. His last words to me before we parted ways were “Here Kima, take my 10 years old flickering fucked up permanently de-saturated computer monitor. Sell it and send me the cash”. I didn’t sell it. I donated it to the museum. That’s the fun part about Tommy. A lot of his things belong in the museum. His computer, his trademark fluorescent orange bag, his IIT days’ “Tommy” tee-shirt and his “Bank of Dad” tee-shirt. Barclays is definitely going to profit this fiscal year, after all, they’ve just recruited someone who will use the same office supplies throughout his entire career there . I won’t be surprised if Management Gurus use him as a living module example for an efficient Cost cutting method within an Organization.

He is the most fraud Bhong I’ve ever known. Doesn’t know any place in Kolkata and have never played or watched football in his entire life. Bastard doesn’t even like chaats or sweets!!!! Can you imagine that? I loooooove puchkas (Cal version of paani puri). I’ve even dedicated a post entirely to puchkas. Yet here I have as one of my closest friends, a Bhong, who can’t even stand the sight of any chaats or sweets. What a waste! And what a loser

He’s a big hit among the ladies. They drool over him. Although there was a brief scandal about him being a “silent killer” (read my previous post about him), most of the time he is completely clueless about the birds and the bees. He’s the type who would say “Thanx, I’ll call you if my Company’s on a recruitment drive” when a sexy voluptuous babe hands him her phone number on a napkin at a night club . He’s the type who would use “What’s your favorite subject?” as his opening pick-up line. And sometimes the girl makes the mistake of thinking this is some innovative pick-up line and reply “Biology” or “Chemistry” with a wink. That is when Tommy would talk non-stop for two hours giving gyaan to the girl that there is no future in Biology or Chemistry today and that she should do Finance and concentrate on Hedge funds and the Options market.

Sometimes we think he’s actually confused about his sexuality. Maybe it’s because some juniors in IIMB selected him as their mentor because of his “killer looks”, and a majority of these juniors were guys! Once, an old friend of mine from Engg College days, Paolo, came down to B’lore, so Tommy and I took him to a pub. We made the mistake of going to Bunkers on a non-rock music night. It was hip-hop nite and the place was filled with guys, a complete sausage fest. The DJ was playing “My Humps” and all the guys were dancing with each other to that song. Paolo and I were like “WTF!” and decided to leave immediately bottoms-uping our mug. We looked at Tommy and he was actually tapping his feet and nodding his head as his thought and trance were completely lost in the midst of all those guys dancing and rubbing against each other. We had to drag a protesting Tommy out of that place with all our might.

Ah… good ol Tommy. From all of us here in India, Amol, Monu, Kata, Momo, Ankita, Shubha and me, we wish you a happy happy birthday dude. We miss you (although we miss you footing our bill more ). Hope you have a blast there. And please, for once, just today, for the love of Almighty Lord, stop thinking or talking quantitatively and go to a nice Pub and get yourself a lap dance. It’s on us (we’ll send you the cheque later).

Happy Birthday once again bro.