Chapter 12

Here's another chapter to hopefully keep you all smiling!

Chapter 11

A month had passed since Diwali and all of the groups had continued their plans. Well, two groups and one lone agent had continued with their plans.

Navin and Tanu kept observing Raj and trying to work out exactly what his feelings were. They didn't have to do much work themselves, as they usually sent Alekh to find things out for them.

Alekh was happy to be involved, the only thing was that it took up a bit too much of his time up because either he was listening to Navin and Tanisha's plans and carrying them out, or he was listening to Raj and Naina's plans and carrying them out. Finally Alekh had had enough, he wanted a day off. Then he would see exactly how well both teams did without his help.

Alekh began the day by announcing separately to Raj and to Navin and Tanu, that he was taking a day off. Raj was fine with it, he hadn't had anything big planned for the day anyway, it was Navin and Tanu who had the problem.

"But what if it's something really important?" Tanu asked, "I mean of course we wouldn't bother you if it wasn't, but what if…"

"Then you find some way to manage it," Alekh told her, "Today is my chutti, and I'm going to enjoy it."

It was Navin and Tanu's bad luck that on this day, something important actually did happen… because while Raj hadn't had anything planned, Naina certainly did.

**

They were all sitting in the mess having their breakfast and morning chai, when an orderly came to fetch Raj.

"Cadet Shekawat, you have a phone call." He told him.

"Who from?" Raj asked, if it was his parents then he was hoping he could somehow bribe the orderly to convince them he was busy…

"From your girlfriend." The orderly replied, loud enough for almost every person in the mess to hear.

Raj sat there for a minute, stunned. Finally he put his chai mug down on the table, straightened his uniform and with as much dignity as possible stood up, pretending that he didn't notice that every single person in the room was now staring at him.

"I'll just, uh, go to the phone." He told Navin and Tanu, both of whose mouths had dropped open. Then he walked as quickly out of the room as possible, trying to ignore the stares he was getting, although he thought he spotted Alekh smirking out of the corner of his eye.

As soon as Raj had left the room, both Navin and Tanu scrambled out of their chairs to get to Alekh. Navin was in such a hurry that he actually tipped his over. The rest of the room also erupted in gossip, nobody could believe that the very serious and studious Rajveer Singh Shekawat actually had a girlfriend.

"Alekh, you've got to…" Navin began saying.

"No," Alekh replied simply and kept drinking his chai, "Today I'm on holiday. Wait for tomorrow."

"Not even for Naina's sake??" Navin asked, trying to use an emotional approach to get him to do it. "What if it's some other girl, do you want her to get her heart broken?"

Alekh gave Navin a look that said that emotional blackmail was not going to work on him.

"Not even for the sake of Daru???" Tanu asked him, "We'll buy you a bottle! In fact we'll buy you two! Or even three!"

Navin just nodded, agreeing with Tanu.

For a moment, Alekh was tempted, for three bottles of Daru… But no, he had made a decision that he was on holiday. And he was thinking that it would be far more fun to see how they handled it without him.

"Sorry," he told them, "But no. Either find out yourself or find somebody else who will."

**

Meanwhile Raj had rushed down the hallway towards the phone, wanting to get there before anybody decided to follow him.

"Naina?" he asked, not able to think of anybody else who might be calling as his girlfriend.

"Hi darling! How did you like my surprise?" Naina asked him, mischief in her voice.

"What are you doing, Naina? We hadn't planned this!" Raj tells her, still slightly embarrassed by the way everybody had stared at him in the mess earlier.

"I know," Naina replies, "But I was bored, and we haven't planned anything big for over a week now. You haven't even called me for three days!"

Raj sighed, it was really impossible to be angry with her. "Naina, you do know that I'm here for army training, right? As much as I want to call you every day, I just don't have time and the whole point of our plan is that big things aren't meant to happen all the time."

"I haven't ruined anything have I?" Naina asked worriedly, "But honestly, it would've been worth it to see the looks on Navin Bhaiyya and Tanu's Bhabi's faces!"

Raj started laughing, he had to admit that it had been worth it. "They looked like a couple of fish that had been taken out of the water." He told Naina. "Their mouths just kept opening and closing."

Naina started giggling as well, imagining the scene.

"And you know what the best bit is?" Raj asks her, "Alekh has decided to take the day off from all schemes today, so they're going to try and figure out who called me on their own!"

"Awesome!" Naina replied, "I just wish I was there to see it, there's still a month to go until I come for Republic Day, we're going to have to start planning it soon."

"Definitely," Raj agreed, "It should be absolutely perfect. But for now, tell me how are you doing? How are your studies going?"

"Well, it's all rather easy at the moment." Naina told him, "I've already finished the assignment that's due on Friday, which is probably why I was so tempted to make some masti."

"And that guy hasn't bothered you again has he?" Raj asked her, not able to believe that he hadn't thought to ask her before now.

"No, I think he's decided to keep away from me now that he knows I'm taken." Naina told him, "Or it could be that I run away whenever I see him."

"Good," Raj replied, "Well your call this morning is certainly going to make things more interesting. I can't wait to see how Navin and Tanu deal with it."

"Well make sure that you keep me updated," Naina told him, "I'll be waiting to hear from you."

"Of course I will," Raj told her, "I'll try to call you tomorrow with the news."

"Excellent!" Naina told him, "I'll talk to you then!"

And then she hung up with a huge smile on her face, very pleased with herself.

**

Meanwhile, Navin and Tanisha were having serious problems finding somebody to help them out. They had wanted to ask Abhimanyu, but he and Nandini had left quickly after breakfast, wanting to spend some time alone in their free period. Next they had tried Ali.

"No," Ali had told them very firmly, "It is Rajveerbhai's personal business who his girlfriend is, and it's against my principles to interfere in other people's personal affairs."

Tanu was tempted to roll her eyes at this, why did he have to be so damn principled all the time?

Next they tried Pooja, but she wasn't bothered at all. "Why are you worried about other people's connections when you've already made your own?" she asked them, "Let him have his personal talk time!"

Navin suspected that she might have decided to say this at least partly to impress Ali.

It was then that they were left with their last option… Yudi. But he wasn't such a bad option after all.

"Yudi, how would you like to do something for us?" Navin asked him.

"Well Chief, first that would depend on what that something was, and secondly, what I would gain from it." Yudi told them, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed.

"Find out from Raj who his girlfriend is, and we'll do whatever you want." Tanu told him, before realising that she sounded slightly desperate.

"Why are you so interested and why don't you just ask him yourself?" Yudi asked, finding all of this highly suspicious.

"Because he's not going to tell us!" Navin said, "Especially not if it is who we think it is."

"Alright, so if I did this for you, then what would you do for me?" Yudi asks, "I've got to get something if I'm going to risk Raj's anger."

"I solemnly promise you, Yudi, that if you do this for us, I will teach you everything you know to be able to get a girlfriend." Navin told him, holding his hand against his heart.

"Even I'll help!" Tanu chimed in, "Shalini is my good friend, I'm sure I could get you some useful information."

"You know, that's a very useful offer," Yudi told them, "I'll do my best."

"Excellent!" Navin exclaimed, "You won't regret this, Yudi!"

And so thirty minutes later, Yudi was approaching Raj. He tried to remember all of the advice that Navin and Tanisha had given him on how to approach this, but there had honestly been way too much of it, so Yudi just decided that he was going to give it his best shot.

"Hey Raj," he said as casually as possible, "What's up?"

"Nothing much, just doing some study." Raj told him, and then looked at Yudi expectantly as if knowing that he had come to say something else.

"So I heard you got a call from your girlfriend this morning," Yudi continued, "I didn't even know you had a girlfriend."

"I knew it was going to be about this!" Raj told him, "Do you know that you're the fifth person to ask me about this today? And just like the rest of them I'm going to tell you that I've got absolutely nothing to say about it." And then Raj grinned in amused way as if he was having the time of his life refusing Yudi.

"So that means it was your girlfriend that called?" Yudi asked him.

"Well… it was a girl… and she is my friend, so you can think whatever you want about that." Raj told him.

"So what's her name?" Yudi asked, not quite ready to give up yet. After all, the advice that Navin and Tanu had promised to give him could be very valuable.

Suddenly Raj's eyes narrowed as he seemed to have realised something. "Spill it, Yudi." He told his friend, "Who sent you? I know that somebody has told you to ask this."

"Are you joking??" Yudi stuttered, unable to believe that Raj had figured it out. "Nobody sent me! Aren't I allowed to be curious about who my friend's girlfriend is? And besides, our parents are good friends so I was wondering if I knew her."

"Hmmmm" Raj replied, not looking as if he was fully convinced. "Well you won't have to wait long to meet her, she might be coming to the Republic Day celebrations."

"Really?" Yudi asked, excited. Surely that piece of information would make both Navin and Tanu happy.

"Yes, really." Raj told him, "And you're not getting anything out of me other than that."

As Yudi left with a huge smile on his face, thinking that he had been successful in finding something important out, he missed the mischievous grin on Raj's face.

So Navin and Tanu had decided to involve somebody else in this game too.

Raj could deal with that.

**

After hearing Yudi's news, Navin and Tanisha stared at each other. "So what does that mean?" Tanu asked him, "He actually does have some other girlfriend?"

"Not necessarily," Navin replied, "Naina has promised to come to Republic Day, remember?"

Caught up in the puzzle, they had completely forgotten that Yudi was still sitting there.

"Hang up, Chief." Yudi suddenly interrupted, "Naina? You mean your sister? You think that she's Raj's girlfriend?"

Navin suddenly realised that they'd just exposed themselves in front of Yudi, and would have to deal with it somehow. He quickly decided that honesty was the best policy.

"Well not really," he replied, "We were trying to set them up together. We thought it would be a good idea if they got married."

"I can't believe this!" Yudi exclaimed, "You're actually setting your sister up with somebody? I try to keep my sister as far away as possible from all of you, thank god she was away on some camp when Alekh came home from Diwali."

"It's not like I have bad intentions!" Navin defended himself, "Naina is too stubborn to accept any boy I choose for her, so we just had to do it a bit… sneakily."

"And why is it so important for Naina to end up with Raj in the first place?"

"Well, uh… she has to get married some day and you know…"

Yudi suddenly got it, he knew exactly why Navin and Tanu had planned this. "And you need her to get married before you can, right? Guys, that is really wrong!"

"Wrong or not," Tanu interrupted, "If you don't tell anyone and help us out when we need it, then we'll help you too."

Yudi thought about it for a moment. "Fine," he told them, "But if it turns out that Raj really does have another girlfriend then you're on your own."

**

The next day in the afternoon, Raj had sneaked away in the afternoon to make a phone call to Naina.

"I don't think I've ever looked forward to the 26th January so much in my entire life." He told her when she picked up the phone. "This is truly going to be excellent now."

"Why?" she asked him, "Did my prank yesterday work better than expected?"

"It certainly did! They've now involved our friend Yudi, due to Alekh's chutti, and sent him to ask me who my girlfriend was. I told him she would be coming to Independence Day so now they're panicking about whether it's you or some other girl will turn up."

"Brilliant!" Naina said, "Do you think we should get some other girl to actually turn up just to keep them guessing?"

"That might be a bit too much," Raj told her, "And besides I don't know any other girls I would trust enough to get them to do that."

"So how has everything been going?" Naina asked him, "You know, in general?"

"All of this scheming is damn hard." Raj tells her, "I'm pretending that I'm in love with you while pretending that I'm not in love with you, meanwhile I'm also pretending that I don't know that Navin and Tanu are pretending not to know that we're apparently in love, and pretending that I don't know both Alekh and Yudi are a part of Navin's plan."

"Wow," Naina finally said when he finished, "Maybe we should've called in 'Operation Pretence' instead."

"No, I think you named it just perfectly when you called it 'Operation Confusion'." Raj told her, "I've never been more confused in my entire life, it's getting to the point where I sometimes can't remember what I'm pretending to who and what's actually real."

"Don't worry, I'll be there with you in less than a month!" Naina reassured him, "Until then just try and keep it together."

"Well I'll look forward to seeing you then," Raj told her, "Make sure to think up some good ideas and let me know what they are!"

Just then Abhimanyu and Nandini walked past the phone hand in hand, and Raj began one of his coughing fits, hoping that they hadn't heard anything.

"You know I think we're really going to have to get Suriji to clean that phone." Abhimanyu remarked, "Either there's too much dust in it or there's something else that Raj has an allergy to. Have you seen how much he coughs whenever he gets a call?"

Raj tried very hard to control his laughter until they were out of hearing, but on the other end of the phone he could hear that Naina hadn't succeeded. She was laughing so hard that he was surprised she hadn't dropped the phone yet.

It was music to his ears.