Chp 131. Love – As one sees it. Part 1 & 2

A Journey through love and infatuation, as seen from the eyes of a certain character… who has done his Medical Entrance Coaching class, Engineering, MBA and UPSC. I have divided this post into two due to its length. The second part will be up shortly.

Part 1: The medical student’s heart surgery.

As she walked into the class room, my heart skipped a beat. She was the only reason why I never miss a class here at the Medical College Entrance Exam Coaching Center. She was also a student, a future doctor just like me. If only she could place those stethoscopes over my heart, all she would hear is the sweet sound of her name beating…

MA-RY--MA-RY--MA-RY--

My ventricles contracted, my auricles expanded, my veins and arteries became confused over which direction to flow. I could feel my adenine, guanine, cytosine and thiamine losing their grip on my DNA strand every time my nasal membrane catches a whiff of her sweet perfume. My X and Y chromosomes felt as if they were breaking down and making way for both her X chromosomes.

How do I tell her I love her? How do I tell her my hormonal secretion increases every time I think of her? That, thinking of her hurts a lot, as more blood is pumped violently into my cerebrum, cerebellum and medulla oblongata. My tympanic membrane was so adjusted to her sweet voice that I could hear her from a mile away. Woe is me, for even if I get into a premier Medical College and become a world renowned Doctor, no amount of medication will ever cure this heartache of mine if she is not by my side.

The other day she came over to my seat before class and asked me if I had an extra pen. I couldn’t breath! My trachea tightened, and all that came out from my larynx was a mere squeak… My superior vena cava abruptly stopped circulating blood. She stared at me and probably thought I was anemic. How could anyone explain the complete breakdown of my Central Nervous System whenever she’s within earshot distance? I handed out my pen to her, but my muscles suddenly tightened! She tried to take the pen but the muscular motor neurons attached to my fingers simply failed to obey my commands! It was as if I was paralytic! She pulled, she yanked, she jostled. But alas, the pen was still firmly in my hands! My nerve cells just couldn’t release any more Acetylcholine. Stupid neurotransmitters.

She looked at me angrily and called me a jerk. I didn’t mind. At least she called me by some name. Finally, I was no longer a “nobody”. Later, she would probably tell her other girl friends, “do you know that jerk who sits in our coaching class?” or “have you noticed how handsome that jerk is?” or “I’m asking that jerk for his hand in marriage.” Ah…

Still, if that is to become a reality, I need to work on my physical fitness. How strong would I look if my spinal cord becomes utterly chaotic every time she is around? I need to be courageous. I need to be brave. When Charles Darwin propounded his theory of Origin of species and Natural selection, he made a breakthrough in the scientific community. I had to be head strong just like him too. So I finally mustered enough courage to admit my undying love for her. One day, while the teacher was facing the blackboard, I threw my love-note to her. She read it.

It’s been two months now and she still hasn’t come to class since that day. She must be down with a fever or something. As I think of her, I can picture her smiling amidst all those sweating and injections, because of the thought that I was madly in love with her. Just as Louis Pasteur waited for months while experimenting on his germ theory of disease, I too shall wait for as long as it takes until she gets better and re-joins our coaching class. I have so many wonderful plans for the two of us together.


Part II: The Engineer’s Love postulate.

Mary never came. I switched to Engineering from Medical because anything briefly related to medicine reminded me so much of Mary. Even when I was down with malaria, I refused medication. I now type with two fingers, the rest no longer function. And there’s this sudden involuntary twitch…

And just when I thought my infatuation over Mary will never end, in walked my electrical Lab partner, Pooja.

Pooja was the most beautiful girl from the Mechanical Engineering department. Even though that doesn’t speak much, she was still the number one. Apart from the pungent aroma of the bunch of jasmine flowers tied to her hair, and a small miniature replica of the Grand Canyon on her heels, and an occasional display of her bleached hair on her arms and sometimes face, she had the sweetest voice I’ve ever heard. Now I know why sometimes people close their eyes while listening to their loved one speak.

Anyway, Pooja and I grew closer and closer everyday. Whenever we stand together inside the Electrical lab in our khaki lab uniforms and our hands brushed against each other, there was definitely a presence of static electricity. The particles around us were heavily charged, and it doesn’t take a fool to notice the anions and cations radically bouncing off the two of us, as if there was always a valence electron hovering around us. If the lab was an electrical circuit and she was the current (I), then there is no resistance (R) between the two of us, considering I was the voltage (V), then we could easily form the equation [ I = V / R ] . Now, she’s never going to find a guy more romantic than me!

We defined a perfect electro magnetic attraction. That’s what I thought, until I moved to second year of College. That was when I saw Pooja for the last time. She was a Mech Engg and I was a Computer Science Engg. We never had common classes together again.

Life at the Computer Science Department was dull and boring without Pooja. All we ever did was sit inside the AC Lab the whole day and program program program. One day, I just happened to look at my neighbor’s programming code. There was something about the way she had typed her “#include <stdio.h>” It looked much more… sexier. Maybe it was her hash function, or her redundant compilation error, or the way she executed her bubble sorting, I really didn’t know. But I just realized then, that she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Her name was Priya. Venkatasubramanikantarashankaracharyapriya. And that’s just her first name. She was the first girl in my class I’ve noticed who didn’t look down at the keyboard while typing. What a gold-mine! She turned to me and asked if she should use generic data-structure pointers while implementing a code for dynamic memory allocation. I smiled and replied, “Yes, I love you too”.

Two weeks later, my term of suspension from the College for harassment was over, and I made my way back towards my class. I love Priya soooo much. She knew I needed a break from College because I’ve been working extremely hard, so she let me have a couple of days’ break. As I walked back inside the classroom, I looked over to where Priya was sitting and winked at her to thank her for giving me such a wonderful vacation.

Four weeks later, there I was again, walking back to class, just after serving a 4-weeks suspension from college, with a stern warning from the Principal’s office that I would be expelled immediately if I ever make any sort of contact, physical or visual, with my classmate Priya again. I of course promised I wouldn’t do anything so stupid.

That very same day, I was expelled.


Part III: An MBA’s profit maximization coupling strategy.

Two years after my expulsion, I finally managed to get a fake BE Graduation certificate from Charminar locality at Hyderabad. Priya never answered any of my e-mails and e-greeting cards during the past two years, so I made a fake account under her name at orkut.com and filled up her album with pictures of Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton. That will serve her right not to mess with my heart. Yeah!

I decided to go for an MBA. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew a guy who knew a guy who had a cousin whose girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s sister had an MBA degree, and that was a reason good enough for me to study for MBA.

[ To be continued ]