Who is Priya Sharma !!!!!!!

This incident took place sometime back. I have been itching to blog about it but then again was wondering how to break the story. Anyways here goes.

I was at a friend's place the night before, where we played cards till 5 in the morning. We did take a break inbetween at around 2am and had coffee on the terrace, watching planes land and take off. The next morning I went to church where I prayed for clarity, something which is often elusive, denying me its company. I battled with rational from the heart and the mind and decided that today was indeed the day to make declarations. And so I called up my mother aka Mamamia aka Mumzee.

"Hello baba... how are you ?", her voice taking on an overtone of delight. "I'm ok", I replied in an undertone. "The little fellow is making so much of masti. He is soooo cute.", and then she told me about all the things at her end. "hmmmm", I replied every now and then, as if trying to punctuate the dialogue with subtleties of another one that lay in the darkness, begging to break free. "What happened?", my actions directed her question in the right direction. "Nothing", I replied. "What... your just saying hmmm, hmmmm. What happened?". It was a tone I recognised. The stage was set, her complete attention was captured; heart, mind and soul.

"Errr..... I wanted to tell you something", I paused as I let thoughts metamorphise and anxiety and curiousity tap emotions. Silence tiptoed, only to be broken by, "What happened?". The rhetoric of tones strengthened my choice of words, "Err.... here... just talk to her", words that transferred the burden of dialogue to the girl standing next to me. "Hello Aunty. This is Priya Sharma, I'm Alistair's friend. How are you?". I stood there as I imagined my mother's response. "How is Sydney and how is the little fellow. Alistair told me all about him. He also got me this Easter egg today. Easter is next sunday na." A smile brimmed my lips finding its way from deep within. "I'm working in Bangalore. I met Alistair a year back". The conversation between the two carried on for 10 minutes and then I took the phone back.

"So", the voice from the other end had reached even higher overtones. "So", I replied in rhetoric. And then I spoke about work and things I've been upto and went on for sometime. "So baba", the voice from the other end beamed. "Errrrr...", I interrupted, "Talk to her brother". And so that conversation went on for a couple of minutes and the phone found its way back into my hands.

"So", the syllable repeated itself. "Err... so what else is going on out there". My mom then talked about the Mr Bean movie that had just been released and tried to talk about things, all the time being preoccupied with the question that finally beamed forth, "So, do you want to tell me something?". And then I decided to let her in on what she wanted to hear all along, "April Fool!!".

Addie, Richa, Shyam and I then went through our phone contact list to find new bakras. We used the name 'Priya Sharma' each time. First we called Pallavi, Ayush's wife. Ayush is an ex -flatmate and a colleague from work. Some background first. Another ex-flatmate had morphed this picture of Ayush and this girl during his jobless days. It was a pretty good piece of morphing I must add. Pallavi hasn't seen the picture yet. A very decent picture with Ayush smiling to glory. His moustache giggling with joy :-)

So Richa told Pallavi that she was a friend of Ayush and that there was this photograph that someone had morphed with the two of them together. Richa then went on to mention that she was getting engaged soon and that the photograph somehow had found its way to her to-be inlaws. The picture seems to be causing some tension and it would be nice if Pallavi could talk to her in-laws. Pallavi then told her that she would call her back. She then called me up and tried to see if I knew anything about it, which of course I didn't. But I did ask her to ask Ayush about Priya Sharma. And then I could only imagine the scene as Ayush replied, "Err.... But her name was not Priya Sharma".

The next on the list was Himanshu. He had asked me to touch up an article that he wrote, which finally manifested itself in its final form out here. Read his article and you will understand which avatar Priya Sharma was transformed into this time. He knew we were fooling and played along. It turned out to be a fun day for him and his friends as it was for us.

We then called up a couple of other friends and Priya Sharma or her father or brother spoke to them :-)

Finally we decided to end the day with our meeting with Himanshu at Cafe Coffee Day in Forum :-)

On the way I felt a bit guilty of playing with emotions a bit too much. Apologise for any harm done and hope that everyone took it in the spirit of April 1st.... till the next April 1st.