Donuts At The Bar

Chapter 2: On Diet

The London skyline illuminated with innumerable skyscrapers welcomed me with open arms as I rode my taxi to my new house with Roger.

Meet Roger. Tall, dark skinned and long-haired smarty with a mind-blowing accent who happens to be my monkey best friend now.

He was constantly drifting between introducing London city to me by pointing at literally nowhere in the dark and describing my would-be home and university at the same time. My ears were drowning in the updates that Roger filled me with regarding my lost week here.

And we drove to the heart of London.

Remember the clumsy girl with me at the bank? Her visa procedure wasn’t clumsy though and here she was at the entrance of Wilen House awaiting my arrival to complete the trio.

She had packed in all her motherly affection and a homely feeling in her embrace which was as necessary as my morning tea for me.

With a deep breath, inhaling all the new energy, I stepped into room 211, my very own “home sweet home”. My soul leaped out of excitement and an inner voice in me exclaimed, “Finally it happened, and I AM HERE!!”.

It was after hours of virtual conversation with my family and chitchat with Tams while I unpacked my luggage that the thought of Kevin struck me.

Not a single call or even a text message enquiring whether I landed safely or not. His absence didn’t bother me much though because neither did I feel the necessity to check his active status.

Thinking about the long day ahead, I dozed off.

Morning in London city was indifferent since I woke up to the voice of my human alarm clock, my mother, which didn’t fail to scare the shit out of me even from thousands of miles away. Not just my 24/7 functioning alarm clock, mommy was my manual too. Starting from numerous recipes for a quick breakfast to figuring out my outfit for the day, mom pulled off the physical distance like a boss lady. Indeed, she is one.   

But now, I had another mom, or it would be better to term her as my chubby best friend who loved the job of “mommy-ing” around, Tams. She shared her kitchen supplies and even her mug with me because I surely didn’t carry groceries and crockeries in my luggage.

I immediately grabbed my notebook and added ‘shopping’ as no.1 in my to-do list.

Now it was time for another adventure which was finding my way in these busy streets and figuring out my bus and tube to my university.

This was more like a solo adventure because Roger and Tams had classes late in the day and they couldn’t accompany me on my first day.

Yeah sounds pretty scary but according to my squeaky sister, “I got this!”
Since daddy raised no weakling and being the proud Leo I am, I made it to my university and ON TIME.

Registration was a tiny process of few minutes, but the registration officials handed me a trolley of books for my entire course WHICH WEREN’T TINY AT ALL. Quite obviously it was impossible to attend my classes with this trolley and having an hour in hand, I decided to drop my books home and come back again for class.

But sadly, on my way back home, I let my zodiac sign down since I WAS LOST!

Rode the wrong bus, got down at the wrong station, with literally no familiar face nearby and a load of books to deal with but trouble had only begun since now I had to make countless desperate calls to my guardian angel, Roger who just wouldn’t get my location from my so-called silly descriptions of the nearby shops and street colours.

But I didn’t call him a smarty for no reason, right?
He is the reason I reached home safely, but no smarty or genie could have helped me to reach my class on time now.

And I was in trouble again.

Chasing the midday London traffic while rehearsing my apology for being late, I landed into a classroom full of unknown faces, some with nerdy glasses while others had punky hairstyles.