1983-Facts and Fiction

How pranksters grow on you

In which Maddi reflects how, over the course of eight years, Kirti's antics stopped being tiresome and became endearing.

***

Kirti was having a field day.

Since the day he'd tried to save Jim pa for being out at 11 at night from Lala ji's wrath by trying to imitate him, and Lala ji had trounced him by saying, "Oye Kirti, bachhe, mai Jimmy ka nahi tera bhi baap hu," he'd taken it up as a personal challenge to improve his imitating voice.

Jimmy's room being adjacent to the one he and Madan shared, Jimmy's phone was the one he most frequently targeted.

For example, suppose Jimmy had left his room for half a minute to borrow something from Sunny and the phone rang. Kirti would run to receive it, and say 'hello?' in Jimmy's voice. If it was Jimmy's mother, she'd say politely, "Give the phone to Jimmy, Kirti?" like she didn't know Kirti was pretending to be Jimmy. If it was Biku bhabi, she'd ask suspiciously, "What are you always in Jimmy's room for?"

If it was Lala ji, Kirti would keep down the phone and flee before the former could begin a, "You again, Kirti—"

Before long, Jimmy was begging Kirti to stop this.

"Dad keeps questioning me for hours, Kirti, he just won't believe me you're doing it just for practice. He thinks I'm always up to no good these days, and you're trying to cover for me," said Jimmy, adding aggrieved, "He asked me if I'm on weed these days—what does he think of me?"

Seeing that he was truly distressed, Kirti gave him a contrite hug and promised he wouldn't hog his phone anymore.

That got Jimmy instantly suspicious. "What are you being so nice for?"

Kirti opened his mouth to protest when somewhere down the corridor, another phone rang. He was on his feet immediately, and running towards the source.

"Christ, Kirti—" Jimmy followed him, hoping to save whoever it was whose phone was ringing.

It turned out to be Kapil's, and moreover, he was not in his room.

"Hello," Kirti said in a pretty good imitation of Kaps's voice. Then he went quiet, listening.

Jimmy motioned a 'what?' to which Kirti beamed maniacally, eyes glittering, which meant he must be cooking up some trouble in his head.

"What are you doing here, Jim pa?"

Jimmy turned to find Kapil and Maddi coming up to the room, drenched in sweat—they must've been out jogging or something—just as Kirti said in his Kapil-voice, "Right, di, no problem," and kept down the phone.

"Oh, I just came to—" Jimmy began.

"Hello there, Kukku, hope you had a good time jogging," said Kirti brightly.

Kaps, who was mortified of his childhood nickname and in constant terror of his teammates discovering it, was dumfounded for a moment, then rounded on Jimmy. "Why did you tell him my nickname—I told you to keep it from Kirti and Cheeka specifically!"

"I didn't tell him," said Jimmy, shocked. "I would never tell him!"

Maddi, who was the only one apart from Jimmy who knew of the nickname snickered.

"Who told you, then?" Kapil demanded Kirti.

"Of course Jim pa did, Kukku, who else would?" said Kirti in a saintly voice.

Kapil looked like he'd been stabbed in the back, which he probably thought he had been; Jimmy sent Kirti a desperate glance.

"Clearly you put too much faith in the wrong person, Kukku." Kirti was plainly bent on adding 'Kukku' as many times as he could in his dialogues. "By the way, Kukku, did you—"