Wednesday, April 14, 2021

"Loyal World" - Infosys, Mysore Diaries - #BlogChatterA2Z

 The next day, I reached class and took my seat. 

"Who do you think is going to take today’s session?”, I asked Anusha.

“Should be Gaurav”, Anusha said. We’d decided not to address him as “Sir” because he was a temporary instructor.

Right on cue, Gaurav entered the classroom. 

An email popped up – it was from Myra, with Arjun in cc.

“Enjoy the class”, it said. 

I smiled and showed Anusha the email. She gave a big smile.

Gaurav suddenly looked at the two of us, we must’ve looked very silly. 

“Good morning”, Anusha said and smiled.

He gave us a dubious smile, but nevertheless, he smiled at us. That was enough for the day :D

“Congrats”, said another email. It was from Arjun. He must have seen our entire exchange, he sat in the first row too. 

“Silence”, Gaurav said. The class started settling in. He then took attendance and switched to the session.

Gaurav covered some important concepts and the session went well. He was a good teacher. 

After the session, we had a long break and decided to go to Gazebo to have bun samosa. Myra and I had run out of groceries in our hostel room and did not have breakfast that morning. Chetan, Suraj, Arjun, Anusha and Swati joined us too. Seeing us all go, another college friend of ours, Rishi also joined us. Rishi sat between Anusha and Swati, we spoke occasionally during practice sessions. 

“Is something going on with the instructor?”, he asked Anusha and me.

I was shell-shocked. I did not expect this to be so obvious. I instinctively looked at Anusha which he did not miss.

“Then, something’s definitely going on”, he said and started laughing.

“No, what do you think is going on?”, Anusha shouted at him.

“Raising your voice doesn’t prove your point right. If you’re getting defensive, then am sure something is going on”, he said. 

“No, there’s nothing of that sort”, I resorted to a very calm voice and gave him a serene smile. 

“Your pretentious calmness further proves my point.”, Rishi said and started laughing. The others joined him and of all, Chetan’s laugh was the loudest. 

“So stupid”, he said. I turned around and glared at him. He was walking with Myra, Arjun, and Suraj. There’s definitely some rivalry going on between him and me, I was sure of that.

I sent a text to Anusha which said, “We need to be careful, Rishi seems to be very observant”. She checked her text and nodded to me. 

We reached Gazebo and ordered bun samosas. 

“Hey Myra, let’s go to Loyal World today. We need to buy groceries”, I said and regretted it instantly.

Chetan said that he’d join us. The whole while, he’s been smirking at Anusha and me and was not letting the Gaurav thing go. This was all okay, but going to the “Loyal World” supermarket was like “me” time and I did not want him there as well. 

The "Loyal World" supermarket was located in the ECC building beside Multiplex and was always busy. However, we’d discovered some timings when it had less traffic and often spent a long time there -choosing, checking, and buying our favorite ready-to-eat items. 



At around 5PM, we started to Loyal World. “We” in the sense: Myra, Arjun, Chetan, Suraj, and I (Chetan was always followed by Suraj). The class usually did not disperse until 6 PM and people usually finished all the problems and then left for the day. We, however, did not finish our assignments for the day yet but the instructor hardly checked our work. 

5 – 6 PM was usually the best time to go to Loyal World. We reached the store and headed off in different directions. I went straight to the ready-to-eat section and picked up Kellogg’s Chocos. I then started browsing the store. There were rows full of groceries. You could find everything and anything in this store. As the campus had about 10,000 people, one can estimate the product range and quantity. The store itself was not very huge but it had everything available.





I picked up some ready-to-eat noodles, chips, biscuits, and fruits. 




I was just heading to the toiletries section when I saw something unusual. Chetan and Suraj were reading the instructions written on a sanitary napkin packet. Suraj was holding it in a secretive manner. I was startled, I did not know how to respond. I immediately went to Myra, signaled her to be quiet, and led her to that section. To my luck, they were still reading. Myra looked stunned, she looked at me silently and then laughed at them loudly. They both jumped and threw the packet.

“Is there so much to read on that packet?”, she said and left the section. 

I stayed back and laughed for an extra minute. I’d taken my revenge on Chetan for laughing at me that afternoon. He seemed to have understood it and looked angry.

We soon went to the billing section, paid for our groceries, and started to the hostel. 


On reaching the hostel, we bid bye to the boys and just before they started leaving, I said to Chetan “Want to visit the Loyal world any time soon? “. Myra and I laughed while Chetan and Suraj looked sheepish. Arjun looked confused.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, Arjun”, I said and left the place, feeling satisfied…


-- To be continued


This post is a part of the Blogchatter A2Z Challenge.


2 comments:

  1. Writing a series is one of the most challenging things for atoz, all the best
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    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks a lot. It is indeed challenging.

    ReplyDelete

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