As he finally got into bed and looked up at the ceiling, Ravi reflected on
all that had happened. He had got a huge promotion a month ago. He still felt a thrill in his tummy when he remembered his GM telling him that he had got the job and had to move to Delhi from Chennai. His parents had been very concerned. How would he manage a house?

Anyway, despite their misgivings, here he was. The difficult part had been finding a flat that suited him. It had been a tiring day, setting it all up but he could finally relax and sleep. He smiled and stretched.

Suddenly the alarm shrilled, scaring the life out of him. He reached out to switch it off. It wasn’t there. He sat up and looked at his bedside table, or rather, the cardboard box that he was using as a bedside table. No clock. He was sure the neighbours could hear it. And an alarm clock ringing loudly at midnight would definitely not endear him to any of them.

He leapt out of bed and looked around the box in case it had fallen down. He looked under the bed; he looked across at the other cardboard box. Still no clock. He opened one of the cartons and looked inside. He emptied everything from the carton onto his bed. No clock. He jumped to the other side and did the same thing with the other carton. He ran to the drawing room where there were six more cartons and carried them one by one to the bedroom and emptied them. Of course, the clock was in the last one. And he now had eight empty cartons and an unusable bed.

As he stood there trying to decide what to do, the doorbell rang. He
jumped. That must be one of the neighbours to complain. What was he going to say? He would just have to apologise and hope for the best. After all, it hadn’t been intentional. The doorbell rang again, twice. Whoever was on the other side was very impatient, or very angry.

He opened the door to find a stunningly beautiful girl, wearing a little
black dress and very high heels. As he blinked in astonishment, the girl
swayed forward and said, “Hi, have you…” hiccupped, and passed out against him. As he stood there in shock, an elderly couple came out of the lift and saw him holding the girl. He smiled weakly. They looked at him in disgust and walked towards their flat, the lady muttering,
“Youngsters of today have no shame.”

The suddenness of the event had caused his brain to shut down. Moving
slowly, he pulled the woman into the flat and kicked the door shut with his foot. Then he faced the problem of what to do with her. His furniture, such as it was, had not yet been unpacked. It was all wrapped in bubble wrap and lying around the room. His bed was still unusable. So he carefully maneuvered her inert body towards what he thought was a chair and draped her over it, mentally apologizing to her.

Who on earth was she? And where had she come from? She was obviously drunk and unlikely to wake up a hurry. No handbag so no way of identifying her. What on earth was he going to do? Should he just let her sleep it off? Or should he try and bring her around so that she could go back where she had come from?

As he tried to work out what would be the least dangerous thing to do, the doorbell rang again. He couldn’t believe it. It was midnight. Didn’t
people sleep around here? He turned to go to the door and then stopped. What should he do with the girl? If it were one of the neighbours, they would get the wrong idea like that old couple. He looked around desperately. The bedroom with the bed couldn’t be used. The other bedroom was full of his luggage. The living room was visible from the doorway. The only place to put her was the kitchen. But there was no furniture in the kitchen and he couldn’t put her on the floor. So he dragged the chair she was lying on towards the kitchen.

The doorbell rang again. He continued to drag the chair and the person at the door continued to ring the bell. He got the chair into the doorway of the kitchen and then it got stuck. With him in the kitchen. The only way out was for him to climb over the still sleeping girl and the chair. Equally, the only way for him to land was on his face.

He reached the door and yanked it open to find an extremely irate senior
citizen standing outside.

“Why don’t you open your door, young man?” asked the man irritably.
“I, er, sorry, Sir,” said Ravi, taken aback by the ferocity of the
accusation, “I was doing something.”

“Humph. No sense of responsibility in you young men these days.” And he tried to come into the flat. Ravi stood square in the doorway and didn’t move. About the last thing he wanted was another stranger in his house.

“How can I help you, Sir?” asked Ravi, moving first to the left and then to the right as the gentleman tried to get in and he blocked the way.

“I want to talk to you,” said the gent, finally realizing that Ravi wasn’t
going to let him in and standing still.

“What about?” Asked Ravi, surprised.

“I am the Chairman of the society here. And I always talk to everyone who comes here new. We have some rules in our society and everyone must follow them.” He started looking ferocious again and Ravi spoke quickly. “I would love to talk to you, Sir, but it is very late and I would like to go to sleep. I am sure we can talk in the morning.”

“I want to talk now,” said the old boy, stubbornly, standing his ground.

“I am sorry, Sir, but I cannot talk now,” said Ravi firmly. “Goodnight,
Sir, and thank you. I shall see you tomorrow,” and he moved to shut the door.

“Alright,” said the gent, reluctantly. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.
After my walk at 5.30,” was his parting shot as Ravi shut the door and
leaned against it weakly.

As he was trying to gather his wits, the doorbell rang yet again. “I give up,” sighed Ravi.

He found a nattily dressed dude in black leather pants and black leather
jacket with silver studs and some kind of an open shirt. He shook his head and blinked. He was now getting the feeling that he was in a nightmare. “Yo, man,” said the dude. “Did Nina come here? We sent her for some ice, man. And she’s really been gone, like, a really long time.”

Ravi’s face lit up. He almost hugged the dude. Here was the solution to
his biggest problem. “Is she wearing a black dress and high heels?” He asked eagerly.

“Yeah, she usually wears black but I didn’t check what she was wearing
today. Could be.” “Come in, come in,” said Ravi, overjoyed. “I didn’t know who she was or where she’d come from or I’d have escorted her back.”

“Oh man, don’t say she’s passed out again,” said the dude sounding
disgusted. “That chick just can’t hold it. She gets pissed every day.”

“There’s just one problem,” said Ravi. “She’s stuck in the doorway. But
I’m sure we can fix it.”

He climbed over the chair, once again, and landed on his face, once again. And started to push the chair backwards trying to get it back into the living room. After a couple of minutes he realized that the dude was just standing there doing nothing. “If you pull the chair, it might help,” said Ravi sarcastically.

“No man, I just got a manicure today. Can’t risk it,” said the dude. He
was obviously a stranger to both effort and sarcasm. In his anger and frustration, Ravi was ready to break the chair if necessary to get it back into the other room so that he could get rid of both of them. Fortunately, the chair suddenly unstuck itself and shot into the other room right on top of the dude. By the time he had disentangled himself, Ravi had had enough.

“I don’t care,” said Ravi as the dude moaned about his hairstyle having got messed up. “Just take her and get out.”

As he shut the door behind them, Ravi really felt the need for a drink. He opened his new fridge and took out the only thing that was inside it – a bottle of chilled beer. He sat down on the floor in the living room and
drank deeply from the bottle.

This was just the first night.