JoIncidence with a C

Chandler Bing is my GOD.. well, one of them anyway. The others are Garfield, Douglas Adams... hmmm I could write a completely different post on this ( and I probably will ) so I won't go into further details. The Poker episode of Friends is definitely one of the funnier ones and one exchange between Phoebe and Chandler springs to mind...

Phoebe : "Hey, have you guys noticed, Poker is Joker with a P .. coincidence??"

Chandler : "Hey that's Joincidence with a C !!"

I don't think any 'emoticon' is fitting to describe my reaction to that so I'll just leave it at that.. Speaking of coincidences, one of the freakiest ones that has ever happened to me happened a couple of months back when I went to my first class at this coaching center for a competitive exam I'm gonna give in November this year. It is in New Alipore, just behind the Taratala Petrol Pump, which is about a 10 minute bus ride from where I stay in Parnasree. Parnasree is a nice place, it's not really small like a single locality but more like a collection of many. It has its own bus stand and three or four Auto-Rickshaw routes.

It was a Sunday and we were supposed to have an "Evaluation Test" or something, before beginning any classes. It was supposed to start at 10am but I was there by 9.35. Don't get me wrong, it was because that was my first class. I am NOT a punctual person. My studying in JU and being a native of Kolkata should be enough to back up this statement. No one really cares about punctuality except a few weird Professors here and there who are never late. Anyway I am diverting from the main story. There I was, 25 minutes early, the only guy who had showed up till then. I waited inside for 10 minutes, looking here and there, and here again.. there really wasn't much to look at except a few of those confidence boosting sort of posters your Moral Science / Value Education teacher probably showed you in school.

A guy shows up at 9.45. I had never seen him before (this is important ). Thankfully he is sort of smart and after a few seconds he extends his hand and says "Hi, I'm D" ( I have no idea whether it's ethical to take a person's name without his / her permission so let's just call him 'D'). I introduced myself and this is basically what I remember of our conversation..

D : "Hi, I am D".
G : "I'm Gairik"
D : "Your first class?"
G : "Yes, yours?"
D : "No I had joined in October but I missed some classes so they suggested I join the new batch".
G : "Ok."
D : "Where do you study?"
....
I am summarizing the next part. I basically learned that he's a third year student ( same as me ) of Haldia Inst of Technology, studying Electronics and Instrumentation. I tell him what I do and we talk about our colleges and syllabus and stuff like that for a couple of minutes. We see a girl enter ( I'm gonna refer to her as M ). I have never seen her before (this is important). This is where it gets interesting. After a few awkward glances shared between the three of us she starts a conversation which went like this...

M : "Excuse me, is this your first class?"
G : "Yes, yours?"
M : "Yes, mine too"
G : "Ok."
( I'm not much of a talker as you may have guessed)
In a desperate bid to reduce the awkwardness I ask her..
G : "I'm Gairik."
M : "Sorry?"
G : "My name, Gairik."
M : "Ohh ok, I'm M."
G : "Sorry?"
M : ( repeats her name slowly )
G : "Oh ok, so where are you from?"
M : "College or where am I from?"
G : ( In the form of a barely audible mumble accompanied by a shrug ) "College"
( Obviously you don't ask a stranger where he/she lives in a situation like this but she didn't quite understand what I had said which was evident from her reply )
M : "I live in Behala, Parnasree.. have you heard of it?"
!!
G : "Uhh yeah, I live there too.. Which part of Parnasree do you live in?"
D ( interrupting ) : "Hey I live there too."
!!!!
( Well, I ask myself, is it possible to know every person in such a big place? Of course not. Ok so that wasn't weird at all. )
M : "Near Bhuban Centre bus stop, you?"
G : "Me too."
!!!!!!
D : "Hey me too."
!!!!!!!!
( Ok now it was getting embarrassingly weird )
G : "Where??"
M : "Arey in that gali, ours is the first house."
D : "I live in A Apartments".
G : "I live in the house next to the one next to A Apartments"

The guy can probably see my house from his window and I can see his. I can see the girl's house from my balcony too. So it turned out both of them are sort of my neighbours who I haven't seen in my life. They haven't seen me or each other too. The guy moved here a couple of years back and lives in his college hostel so I may have a teeny tiny excuse not to know him, but M said she's been here for over 8 years!

"Man is a social animal". If I had a buck for every time I wrote that in an essay I would.. well I would have enough money to buy a Chicken Special roll from Bedwin perhaps but my point is clear. We just found ourselves the most unsocial man in the history of mankind - yours truly! It was weird. Anyway we had a few laughs over it and ultimately I made myself a couple of friends!

I've been meaning to write this incident for a long while now, but lyad overcame me and it's only because I am sick and stuck at home with nothing to do that I finally got around to writing it.

Feel free to comment.

More weirdness later.

PS. : I managed to do quite well in that test, thanks for asking!