The Pregnancy Scare

Damn you Fridays. I am supposed to be off work already. How can there possibly be another dozen mails to reply to. Friggin' IT.

*phone rings*

Great, of course it's going to be some guy from NY office wanting help on something. 

'Hello, Amar here'

'Hi, Priya speaking'

'Hey, doll. How you doing?'

'I'm good, are you busy?'

Of course not, a dude never says he is busy, when it is a girl asking. 

Amar replies, 'Nah, usual stuff. Go on, wassup.'

'No, if you are busy we can talk later.' She trails off.

That gets our hero's attention. 'No I am not, kiddo. Um, gimme a minute.'

He locks up his machine and goes over to one of the empty conference rooms and closes the door behind him. 'Yup, now tell me what's happening.'

'I am just a little nervous. It is a girlie thing. I am not sure what to do, and there is nobody else I can talk about this right now.'

'Yeah, sure Priya. But tell me what exactly the problem is.'

She barely whispered her question. 'What do you know about iPill?'

As any guy in this situation, Amar gets a little defensive right about now. Even though he definitely knows he hasn't been around this girl, in that way. 'The contraceptive pill? Yeah I know a bit about those. Is anything the matter, Priya?'

As any girl in this situation, Priya starts weeping. Not the frequent sob-and-sniffle girlie cry, but the wholehearted my-favorite-Twilight-character-has-died weep. Amar looks around to be sure nobody's overhearing this conversation and even reduces the volume of his phone for good measure.

She somehow finds gets around to reducing her weep to an occasional blurting of 'I am so stupid'. Eventually becomes more or less clearheaded to say, 'You remember VJ, I introduced him to you when we met last time?'

'Yeah, the law school guy? Dude, you're kidding me. That guy?'

Amar could feel her going red on her face now. 'Yes, that guy. Well we went to Lavasa for a weekend and things happened.'

'Of course things did, Priya. A guy and a girl shacked up in a hotel room in a hill station. What else did you think would happen?' Typical jerk move.

'Why are you scolding me?' She again goes on a cry spree. Typical girl move.

Amar takes a breath. Realizes this was probably the reason she called him instead of her other guy friends. He was supposed to be the practical one. 'I am sorry, hun. That reaction was just reflex. Just stop crying now, calm down a bit and tell me what is happening with you.'

Priya stops sobbing, clears her throat a couple times, takes another moment just to gather herself and tells how things lay right then.

Apparently, she and this Vijay dude went on a weekend 'getaway' to Lavasa, a quaint hillside resort place out of town. They had planned to stay just one night in the hotel, and spend the rest of the time roaming around sightseeing, discover places and stuff. In all honesty they did do a lot of sightseeing and discovering, just not the touristy places kind. They practically stayed indoors the whole time they were there. And that was two weeks ago. She was supposed to have her Red Wedding this week. And she isn't having her pains yet, making her scared shitless.

Amar was never completely comfortable with this aspect of the female biology. As most guys generally do, for the sake of convenience, he put away all thoughts of the female cycle from his mind for now. And only asked Priya when was she due and did they take the necessary precautions during their tryst.

'We did. But I am scared now. I am due today. But I don't feel anything now. I am just really worried. I had taken the U72 pill instead of iPill. Is that good enough? Is there a way to know if the rubber broke?'

'Now? I don't think anybody keeps them stored up for future research, kiddo. And don't worry I am sure things would be normal tomorrow. Maybe you're just a bit late. That does happen sometimes, don't it?'

She is almost normal now, 'I guess so. You really think everything is fine?'

'I do. And in any case there is really not much we can do now is there. You say you had taken the necessary precautions, and all we can do now is trust in science to do its shit. If anything did go wrong. We'll.. think about it then. You remember Tina?'

'Akash's girl from Pune?'

'Yup, she is studying OBGYN. I will send you her number, I'll tell her you will be calling her. She can help you more on the medical angle. But as far as I can tell, things seem to be safe now.'

She smiles a bit now. 'Thank you, ji'

Amar sighs a bit at this. She is back being normal again. 'I don't want to be preaching you on these things, but dude, you need to be extra careful with these stuff. This thing is no joking matter. Imagine how bad you'd have mess things up.

She unsurprisingly doesn't weep this time. She comfortably lashed out at Amar, as was usual. 'Don't you preach about this to me. Weren't you the one asking me and Asha to come out of our comfort zone and live a little. You were the one who introduced Asha to her boyfriend remember? Do you think they don't do it? Who do you think I got my pills from?'

Asha was Amar's first cousin.

'Asha. Pills. What??'

'See that's the thing about you boys. You want your girlfriends to be all loose and cosy with you, but when you know that the same is being expected of your sisters and women close to you. You immediately go on a rage.'

'Dude, what are you talking about? Is Asha messing around with Vicky?'

Priya holds her tongue now, 'I am not talking any more about it. I have spoken to much already. You will have to ask her yourself.'

Amar didn't talk much of anything after that. They said their goodbyes and he reminded her to call the OBGYN friend whose number he'd shared. And as for her, she asked him to not tell Asha that she was the one who spilled about her and Vicky. He said yes, he would have said yes to anything at that point. He was already on auto-pilot.

Amar wasn't sure how he felt about all this. Nor was he sure how he should handle this. Should he speak with Asha directly, or let her elder brother know about this. He didn't like to think what her brother would act like, probably go bash Vicky's head in. He was psycho like that. And he wasn't exactly close with Asha all that much to get her to openly talk about this with him. He was sure had to do something to help her.

Amar came out of the conference room, got back to his work. Hoping it would distract him from his personal crap. And as usual, it did. It was nearly close to midnight. He'd done a bit of overtime today. But at least nobody would be bothering him over the weekend. He packed up his stuff and was about to get up from his desk.

*phone vibrates*

A text message from this girl he was seeing -

"Roommate out of town. Wanna come over?"

To be, or not to be - The Political Correctness Dilemma

Alright alright alright. We meet again. I didn't think you'd ever show your face around here again after last time.

I sure didn't. It's been a long time since I have posted something here, so if you're coming here still I'm grateful for your readership. And for the fact that you probably didn't have anything better to do when clicked on a link somewhere that brought you here.

Click-bait. I haven't yet  while writing this thought of a title for this article yet, so if I really did write something genius to lure you in here give me a moment please to pat myself on the back. *pat*

So. What's up, doc? 

If you're a she - That's good. Of course, that shirt looks great on you. And I totally agree, you're guy was prick to leave you alone at last night for a game night with the boys. Come and sit tell me all about it, while I try and figure out a way to make a pass at you.

If you're a he - Damn dude. Did you see the game last night. Our guys *enter sports team name* killed it, man. Did you see *last name of favorite player* do that thing in the last 5 minutes, it was EPIC. What, oh you're girlfriend had called you up and you missed the shot. That's cold man, damn you're so whipped. 

For the ones reading this  and have now come to conclusion to go ahead and title me a sexist just by those couple lines above. Kindly go ahead, also on shut the door on your way out. Because I am not going to explain myself to anyone. Frankly I am too tired of trying to not come under any title, the society is currently trying run away from.

Whenever I read about any of big civil rights movements that have happened around the world, I've noticed that there has always been three groups in the conflict - the ones who are oppressed, the ones who do the oppressing; and then the ones who don't understand any of it but still are scared shit-less of inadvertently causing any conflict. In any of those major turmoils, the majority of the people come under the third category. Only a small portion of the world's population are actually evil (mostly the ones on a power trip) and do bad things; onto other equally small portion of people (usually the ones without any real power to speak of). 

And majority of the other people don't come under those categories, these are the ones who barely make it through their life each day to oppress anyone else or have enough time to contemplate if they are oppressed themselves.

This doesn't in any way mean that I have any reservations with people fighting for their rights. I say, more power to them. I am a liberal and am sensible enough to know that homosexuals are people, women are equal (or better) to men, and people of religions other than mine are not conspiring to take over the world. 

Gullible/selfish/political pricks are not probably thinking on the same lines as I am. But I am sure a large majority of the people like you, reader, think the same.

People are good at heart, and they are in some weird way biologically programmed to care for each other. I know that sounds very Anne Frankish. But I do think we all have a deeper sense of empathy than we give ourselves credit for. Whenever you see someone exploiting another living being in some way it mostly has to do with greed, stupidity, cruelty, or pure A-holery. And nothing to do with that guy's religion, sex or race. This a-holery is also passed on from one generation to other generation of like-minded a-holes in the form of propaganda and conniving greed-stories. If you just cut off the influx of a-holery into these people's bloodstream you begin to see that they are just like you and me. Weak hairless apes with slightly less confused brains. 

The population of a-holes are still nonetheless very limited. I am sure not many of you who are reading this come under this umbrella. You are mostly, like me, normal day-to-day commoners. Someone who tell sometimes enjoys a good sexist joke at workplace. Make insult jokes at both men and women alternatively. Make puns on people of all race and religion, including your own. Always with the hope of getting a laugh out of the people around you. It is not that you are prejudiced against other people, it is just that you are a attention seeking pretending-to-be-funny moron.

"Is this politically correct?" No.

Probably isn't politically correct to say that a man has gotten whipped when he hurries to home after a call from his wife. Nor would it be politically correct to joke about a female coworker spending more time fixing her hair than working for a change. 

But you see these things always get an easy laugh from people. And we by habit love to do things easy. You know, everyone is thinking it. You're just saying it out loud. Of course, they're gonna comeback at jokes of their own about you. Come on, look at yourself at the mirror someday, loads of material for a good bit right there. That hair, duude!

So for you my politically incorrect friends, I say - Rip it out. Next time you want crack jokes and someone else's expense go ahead. Vent it out. Vent out all those ages of prejudice and inappropriate jokes you've stored up inside of you. Have a blast! 

(Just don't do that literally, please. That's terrorism.)