The good thing about having a brother who earns and is head over heels in love is that he suddenly becomes so mushy that he hardly refuses you to anything.I badgered mine for a treat at our Indian coffee House,assuming that he'd flaty refuse,but then! surprise!!surprise!!. He smlied coyly and agreed to it.Only condition was that his girlfriend would join us over coffee and I would have have to let them have some private time.

Hell man!! You can have all the private time in the world as long as I get to gorge on good food! Seriously,I'm such a pig. But then, I've another word for it. I like to look upon myself as a voracious eater, one who appreciates good food. But then, my grandmother loves to act like a wetblanket sometimes and calls me a petuk(the Bengali equivalent of glutton) right in front of a roomfull of people when I'm happily tucking in some of her mouth-watering delicacies.That's so embarassing!And on top of that she goes on rambling "Eto boro meye! etto khay???keu pochhondo korbe na!!!"(now what has my marital prospects got to do with my food habits???)Not that I care! :-))

Coming back to the main topic, I went to have coffee with my brother and his girlfriend at Indian Coffee House,a hole-in-the-wall eatery at 8B Stand, Jadavpur,a popular haunt of the students of JU who're almost perennially broke! Anyway,we reached the place,thronged with apparently respectable people,So I nudged my brother and reminded him that no "handholding-sholding will do here.People will stare!" He was like "D'uh! As if I care!". Anyway, I reminded myself that I'm here only for the coffee and because my mashi has entrusted me with the responsibility to keep her informed about his whereabouts and activites. Ahem! I do have a reputation with mothers of being "reliable,mature and blah blah blah!". So I automatically get the job of keeping a constant vigil on their unfortunate kids who loathe me with a passion. And I demand to be bribed and appeased with good food,esp coffee, as in case of my brother.I'm so mean!!!

The laowers were smitten with each other,but the boy had an eye on me,lest I order something overpriced. Money-hungry jerk! All the time making me cover up for his romantic escapades while I get the flak from his frantic mother! I had half a mind to throw a tantrum, but the the docile angel that I am, I had to remain satisfied with cold coffee.

My oh my! How the lovers stared at each other,blushed, smiled and blatantly disapproved of my presence!! D'oh! As if I wanted to stay with them right now being a kebab mein haddi as the popular Hindi saying goes. I savored on creamy cold coffee and watched their scalding hot coffee running cold while they smiled and crooned words not meant for my ears :-)). It was nice to watch them( at this point I stop and point out to my readers esp Choi that I've refrained from using the word fun which shows that I'm not so insensitive as I used to be before).It was like watching two mature adults who had retrograded to being shy kids first introduced at the kindergarten.They didn't touch even the piping hot pakodas which i had ordered and I shamelessly gobbled them up.They didn't even talk.All they did was to sit and stare at each other and sometimes,almost blankly at me when I tried to initiate some sane conversation.

Suddenly my mashi called me up."Tora kothay re?? bhai ki korchhe??"she grumbled.I assured her that everything's okay and her son is not upto something funny.The premik-premika meanwhile looked like a pair of dead rabbits. Poor dears! I felt so sorry that I was about to offer them my share of the pakodas.But then! they went back to being laowers and my offer went unheeded.

The girl left. The boy had such a oh-man-i'm-gonna-miss-her look on his face that I felt sorry and bought him chocolates.(I can be surprisingly nice when you're least expecting it)He gave me a big-brother smile and we went home too.All the way,he smiled at everything and everyone he saw-the dusty road,the overpopulated para,the mad,frenzied crowd,the honking snake of autos and lorries had morphed into Dreamland in his love-struck eyes.And I was happy for my tummy was happy.

And that my dear brother had a great time too.God bless.