Downie's facebook

Today morning I get a call from Downie, who sounds very tensed and embarassed. He says "man, something bad happened" and explains.

Downie is a mega-star hailing from Hyderabad. We joined the grad school, last fall (2006). Those who walk by the Whitaker building corridor at 9:30 AM on tuesdays/thursdays would never have missed seeing him. For it is the time when myself and Downie are done with the sleepy lecture of the pathophsiology class and start chatting in the corridor about mundane things like the subject of that day's lecture, marks that we scored in the class assignments, the final project for the course that our two member team is supposed to do etc and much more important things like who was sleeping the class?, Why the guys from a certain lab had attitude problem?, how that particular ADCDC(hick) doesn't look like a desi?, Arguing about the last name of ABCDC(hick) 'R'?, about Who is attractive - ABCDC(hick) S or ABCDC(hick) R? etc etc. Downie is fresh out of undergrad and his androgens have not yet reached a steady state. He gets hyper active, every time he sees ABCDC(hick) S or ABCDC(hick) R. Shamelessly, he prods me to look at them everytime they pass the Whitaker's corridor, our favorite after-the-class-hang-out spot. He says "look at the mangoes and guavas... Ayyo! baabu!!!!". I say "Adangu macchi. cool chey ra!!" (cool down! dude).

This is how Downie's stray into the facebook fantasy started. Didn't I mention about the final project for the pathophysiology course? Almost near the end of the project deadline, I ask Downie, 'man, let me know if I need to do anything for the project?'. Downie replies 'Don't worry man. I will take care of everything. Just chill out. I will come to your home today and we can discuss it.' We assembled at my house, as promised. In the past three months, we have become wise and knew that promises made in whitaker corridor (read 'heaven') among the ABCDC(hicks) (read 'BME angels') should never be broken. Downie talks some gibberish about some revolution in 64 slice Computed Tomography and about some professor whom he met regarding the data collection for the project. He gives some paper to me and asks me to go through it. I, after reading all the page numbers in that thin-report, give it back to him, in the same way as how Salman Rushdie would hand back an autographed copy of "Midnight's Children" to a fan. It has been five minutes since our project meeting started. Both of us were happy with the way the meeting went and the progress of the project. FULL STOP.

Then we started discussing about more important topics. Downie is a die hard fan of "Nagaarjuna". He shows-off the latest hits of "Hydollywood" in youtube.. movies of some new hero who is supposed to be the next chirru.. hot "Hydollywood" actresses... talks about Nagachaitanya, Nagaarjuna's son. We talk about how Namitha has become more and more voluptuous after her entry into "Kollywood" and I show him a youtube of a Namitha starring "Arjuna! Arjuna! Ambu vide Arjuna!" (Arjun! Arjun! Shoot an arrow on me!) Hot song from a kollywood movie. This must have reminded Downie about ABCDC(hick) "R" for obvious reason! He was hyper ventillating! We spend some quality time discussing about the latest "Hydollywood" happenings. However, Too much "Gult" videos and Too less "Tamil" videos, makes Pon-P a dull man. Downie senses it and changes the topic to "facebook".

Facebook? what the hell is it?, you may ask. My answer (Assuming that you know about orkut), If orkut is a desi chick(???!!!), then facebook is a ABCDC(hick). If orkut is mickey mouse and flowers in the profile photos, facebook is swim suits and hug-and-kiss-a-boyfriend in the photos. Given the tapories we are, myself and Downie have registered to the facebook long time back. Downie claims that he visits ABCDC(hick) S's profile every now and then. But neither of us have visited our new heartthrob ABCDC(hick) R's profile. We started searching for ABCDC(hick) R's profile. Downie was the lead pilot of the mission control. Bloody bugger was never able to find R's profile. During the flight, we come across the profiles of ABCDC(hick) B, ABCDC(hick) HS, ABCDC(hick) SB etc etc. We enjoyed the journey for a long time, not caring to reach the destination. After some quality time spent enjoying the scenery of 'S'pura, 'B'pura, 'SB'pura, We started to feel the void in us, which only the 'mystic river' of 'R'pura can fill. Downie gets frantic. I suggest to him, as a good co-pilot that he should checkout ABCDC(hick) S's friend-list. I was pretty sure that the people of fine caliber like ABCDC(hick) 'S' and ABCDC(hick) 'R' would definitely be in the same friend's circle. Well, I knew that for sure. I once was sitting next to 'S' and 'R' in the undergraduate computer lab and was over hearing their conversation.
'R': blah blah
'S': (giggle)
'R': did you fill that form?
'S': I did...
'R': I am filling it now... name... 'R'... Department....'BME'... undergrad... country?....country??? (she was thinking for a while)
'S': ('S' comes to the rescue of 'R')... ofcourse US of America..
'R': yes, US of A-M-E-R-I-C-A
me thinks, bloody ABCDC(hicks)!!!!

haah! where did I stop? yes! hunt for the facebook profile of 'R'. Having strong faith in my over-hearing abilities, I was 100% sure that 'R' must be in the friend's list of 'S'. Downie follows the direction that I pointed and reaches our holy grail... the profile of 'R'. Tapori had added an extra 'a' in R's name while searching. That's why we never arrived at the destination sooner. But all is fair in love, war and profile hunting. Now, you guys should know that the 'facebook' is a popular US site that never puts a limit on the number of uploaded photos and we are talking about 'R' and 'S' who have some 800 even photos in their profiles. We had a herculean task. Common guys! 800 photos of 'R'! Lets say, we spend 10 secs in digesting each and evey group/party photo (40% of total), 20 secs for each of her close-up photos(40%) with her pot-bellied boy friend and 1 minute for each solo snap with the swim suits(20%)... you guys do the math!!! But Downie and I have a never-say-die attitude in such matters. The photos along with our whacky comments!! rolling on the floor and laughing at each other's mean comment about the pot bellied boy friend! Downie's comments about mangoes and guavas!! LIFE IS GOOD!

Now, Downie must have just stopped with that. Instead, he goes around and spreads the word to the entire "Gult" community here. This caused an increase in the bandwidth usage around the university. All this time, we thought that our profile-leching was anonymous. But sadly, today, Downie gets a mail from facebook saying that some dude has checked out his profile. Oh! my god! that means leching wasn't anonymous! SO WHAT?, you may say. Think about the 100 or so virile guys leching a profile in a single day and 'Downie' being the first one. Downie gets paranoid. He calls his accomplice immediately to discuss his concern. I had to sooth this kid, saying that "Director of BME has more important things to attend in life and will never mind his(Downie's) leching of a BME undergrad ABCDC(hick). Cool ra, Babu!!".