The Beloved Tanki.

It was only after my boards that I decided to indulge in some masti. Nothing illegal.

Like MASTI masti. The kind of masti you saw your seniors do. And you yourself always wanted to do.

Now how should I express that in writing? I’m sure you’ve experienced it yourself. If not, let me go ahead with the story. We were desperately in need of a place that was uninhabited by a living being. After a lot of reconnaissance we came across this old water tank next to a huge playground. Little did we know that this water tank will become one of our most sacred places to blurt out our secrets, to confess any wrong that we had done, and most importantly it was our escape from reality.

One fine night, under the starry sky the five of us were seated on top of the tanki. Country music, chicken burgers. Life was good. We felt like grown ups. Just finished with boards ya’ll. A big feat for a teenager. A milestone. Equivalent to climbing a mountain. You know? We needed a break and therefore we were de-stressing. Here, I would like to mention that I’m the only person among our gang of scoundrels who is sober. Nothing wrong with that, just that I had to bear the most of the post getting drunk talks. It is an arduous task, you know. So the scene was that, two of the chaps were a bit tipsy and put a bet that whosoever goes and touches that Goal-post will get Rs.100 from the each of us. I was out of this shit, for two reasons. Primarily, because I was in slippers, second, the goal post was inside the Army Sports Ground. They had a few sentries at night. Nah, I value my life. Third, I was not drunk.  Now the guys, who put forward this bet volunteered themselves to go. The rest of us agreed, but there was no cash reward because it was obvious that we were broke. We always are. The reward would be respect. Something, that is of great value among men. They would bring themselves absolute honour, if they were able to get inside the Army Sports Complex, guarded by a few sentries. Holding an INSAS rifle, so what. No big deal. Later on, they were very near attaining martyrdom.

The ground was overlooking us from on top of the tanki. We had the best seats. Front rows. The boys handed us their cell phones and dismounted the tanki, and went ahead with their meticulously planned tactics to breach the walls of the sports complex.

5 minutes into the mission, the breach was successful as we could see them near the tree lines and then towards the football field. Now the football field was very much illuminated by this huge light right in the middle of the sports complex.  They were clearly visibly. They went ahead with their plan and touched the goal post.

Mission accomplished.

We expected them to come back the same way they had gone in. But no. They went in another direction, it seemed like they were going towards the washroom. Their backs were to us and there was no way that they could see us. This was a disaster. An absolute disaster. They had to be informed, that a sentry was cycling to catch them from behind.

Abort mission, I repeat abort. Come in, Mozaa and Juraab (Both mean a pair of socks in Hindi, well yeah that was their callsign.)

I took out my phone to call them, and then hit me that their phone was with us. Something had to be done, or else all of us were in great trouble. Two of our mates were actually going to attain martyrdom that unfateful night. And here on the tanki, the other two drunkards were laughing as if they had just managed to pass class 12th, but didn’t know how. That was actually true. Anyway, I looked at the two puppets who’d volunteered themselves to the government and were probably going to be disavowed in a while. Yeah, so they saw the sentry cycling towards them and started running towards the fence. One of them was an athlete and the other, an absolute bum. Now the athlete had no problem jumping off the fence, but the bum… Err. His shorts got stuck at the fence.

But you know what? You don’t leave a man behind.

We did.

We were supposed to meet at the bottom of the tanki and prayed that the Bum was safe and may God have mercy on his soul. The Almighty saved a soul that night. He came back. Alive. We ran for our lives that night. Our lives literally depended on how fast we would run that night. Cheetahs, rabbits, horses, pegasus’, Buggati Veyron’s were all left behind.

Halfway on our escape path, I stopped everyone.

“Where the hell is my bike?”,I said.

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that on the following night, a search and rescue mission was planned and executed flawlessly. No lives were lost.

All of this, by a bunch of scoundrels in pyjamas and slippers.

We came, we saw, we conquered. Or rather retrieved.

Cheers.

PS: Don’t tell my mum. xD