In order to keep the person’s identity hidden (not that it is required as he thoroughly enjoys being the centre of attention), I shall refer to him as ‘King K’.

Taking small steps cautiously, I walk into class on a bright Monday morning, hoping that he would be absent. Trust my luck to treat me well; there he is sitting on his seat right next to mine, like a king waiting for his royal subjects to arrive. He sees me enter the class and smiles contentedly. I sigh in disappointment and proceed for my place.

“So Ashka, did you have a good weekend?” he asks for formality. And before I can even reply, he starts off like a bullet train about how he fought eleven guys simultaneously and how the pretty (the adjective has been changed to a more decent one) girls standing nearby were impressed by his swift moves.

Listening to his million important tales early in the morning was something I couldn’t avoid no matter how hard I tried. I lose myself in my thoughts and he asks me “You listening Ashka?” I nod in reply to the dim question, my mind clearly not ready to listen to any more of his stories. I pretend to listen to him for a few moments, and soon his talks get ignored by my brain as background noise, while an intense and fierce war begins within me between my heart and my mind. My mind determined to ask him to shut the hell up, and my heart being the softy it is, trying to convince my mind to be a little sensitive. My heart wins like always and my focus diverts back to the blabbering creature seated beside me.

No one is spared from dealing with King K. No way. He has no mercy. But the thing is that each and every person manages to escape from his talks, and they all leave me to deal with him on my own. There he is, standing 5 feet and 11 inches tall, in front of me, a tiny girl of hardly 5 feet and an inch. His dominant figure and proud carriage provide a great contrast to my petite image.

“Do you see any change in me?” he asks hopefully.

I stare at him intently from top to bottom, hoping to notice something new in him. Nope. Same old annoying chap, nothing new.

“Did you start working out again?” I ask, trying my luck.

His eyebrows rise in pleasure as he goes on to show off his arm strength to me. I try looking at him all starry-eyed, when suddenly he says “Don’t fake it! This is the reaction I always expect from ‘her’, but I never get it” he says, referring to his heart’s secret desire.

I console and compliment him, as another smart friend of mine who is sitting on King K’s left, looks at me with questioning eyes and raises his eyebrows as if asking me for a convincing explanation for my sudden sweet behaviour. I look at his mocking smile and I can’t help but smile too.

“What? I have a heart!” I exclaim.

Both of us expect King K to give some sort of a reaction, but surprisingly, he remains quiet for a long time (two minutes being considered a long time in this case) and nobody utters a word as we all prefer the silent version of him.

Then suddenly he asks me “Do I look like a killer to you?”

“Yes. You kill my patience” I reply calmly.

I shouldn’t have said anything. I regret speaking, as there he starts off all over again. I doze off into my own little dream world when suddenly he shoots me with another question.

“Are you even listening to me?” he asks. I nod in reply immediately.

“Prove it. Tell me what I said just now” he demands.

I narrate to him the entire story that he had just bored me to death with. I know it because he had already told me the exact same story a million times, and it had drilled into me permanently, there was no chance I was forgetting this story of his and it was dangerous to do so too. A series of thoughts go through his mind and he blurts out everything to me.

“I’m a changed person” he says proudly. Let’s see how long that lasts, I think to myself as I smile politely.

“People say I’m annoying” he says.

“Oh! I wonder why!” I reply sarcastically.

“What would I do without you?” he asks in a surprisingly innocent voice.

“You’d find someone else to annoy. Loads of options in school you know?” I say.

During one of our recent conversations I asked him to come and meet us all in school.

“These school management people don’t let me come up. Next time I’ll just use the pipes to climb right up to your class, I’ll bang my fists hard on the windows, and then you can let me in” he says in an excited manner. I shake my head in disappointment. What was I expecting from him?

I remember desperately wishing for him to be absent each day, and the sense of disappointment that used to fill me when I saw him in class. But even if he was not in school for a single day, the class seemed incomplete and oddly silent to me. Most of my other classmates used to enjoy seeing me stuck with him, but frankly speaking, I never felt ‘stuck’. Dealing with his problems used to make me forget mine, and never has a day gone by when I didn’t learn something from him. His absence in school may be felt by very few, but those few people very well know how precious a gem he is as a friend. I’m pretty sure that he and I will be having a long sentimental talk regarding this piece that I wrote about him. He will find out about it via mutual friends, and he will try his level best to show his immense appreciation for what I wrote. And I, just like always, will graciously accept it all, as that is much easier to do than argue with him.