MOONBOW

New Friend

Ashwin was a well known boy in the school. As told by him, he was one of the oldest students of GEMS International. Listening music, reading comics, alcohol (drugs) and chicken were his favourite. But as for now, nothing was soothing him, as he had a fight with his girlfriend Akansha.

After becoming friends, he took me for a round of the school. We made our way to the TV room, which according to Ashwin contained the only cable TV on campus. He said hello to a few people but didn't introduce me. It took 10 minutes for Ashwin to fend his stuff and an hour more for us to make four trips back and forth across the dorm circle between the TV room and our room 69.

I was dead tired and wanted to sleep for a thousand years, but Ashwin seemed immune to both fatigue and heat stroke. I sat down on his couch.

The couch looked comfortable and warm. "I found it lying on a curb in my neighbourhood a couple of years ago", he said of the couch as he worked on setting up his PlayStation 2.

Ashwin is a good gamer. He loved playing those racing games.

"Do you like games", he asked me out of curiosity in a monotonous tone.

I gave the simplest answer 'No'. As I'm very fond of reading and writing fiction. I love reading those thick books, diving into fantasy and playing with vocabulary and then a story comes out of it.

Listening to my boring answer, he gave a sigh of exasperation.

"You will like Moonbow", Ashwin said meticulously.

Though this name 'Moonbow' was new for me, but I ignored.

After setting up the game he announced that he will not be my entrée to GEMS International's social life.

"Basically you have two groups here," he explained. "You've got the regular boarder, like me, and then you've got the Weekday warriors; they board here, but they are all rich kids who live in Delhi and go home to their parent's air conditioned mansions, every weekend. These are the cool kids. I don't like them and they don't like me. So, you have a choice for a week, me as the weekday warriors."