The Mirza Chronicles - Chapter 2: Mirza and Praveer's MMS Scandal

Mirza joined college in the summer of '08. As is usual for freshers, he soon found friends, other misfits and rebels like him. Praveer was one of those friends. Tall, lanky and sometimes awkward, Praveer was a talkative and charismatic young man. And he got along well with Mirza. Praveer and Mirza later ended up as roommates at Indira Niwas, but this story was from a time before that.

Male bonding can be interesting to encounter, especially because guys are usually so uniquely messed up in the heads and mingle in such funny patterns. The first year of college was all about finding their footing for Praveer & Mirza. It was a time for their individual personalities to clash and gel with those of their classmates and their seniors, who by the way were no less interesting than our protagonists.

Meet Himanshu, Vivek Pratap, Arshad & Deepak, the seniors inhabiting 4 adjacent rooms in the boy's hostel. They were sassy and intimidating, and eventually became role models for their newcomer roomies, Mirza, Praveer, Ashu and other guys. Partly because they were essentially the same guys as Praveer and Mirza, just a few year older.

Now usually, the first-years shared a better relationship with their final year college mates than they did with their immediate seniors, maybe because the second-years had industrial training for 6 months and half of the batch was absent during the first six months of the new session of the newcomers. In those first 6 months, a lot of fun things happened at the boys hostel.

Many of these fun things happened during the traditional ragging of the first-year students. Both Mirza and Praveer were "soft-spoken giants", as in they were taller than their seniors, and ragging them was different than ragging the other scrawny little kids who'd joined along with them. For one, the seniors knew that these boys could easily retaliate if pushed too hard, so their ragging ended up as more hazing-cum-joking than bullying/intimidation.

Back in '08, touch phones were yet to infliltrate the worlds of these youngsters and most of them had camera phones with 2 to 5 megapixel cameras that could be used to shoot grainy pictures and videos. So naturally, the ragging sessions were usually recordered to be shown to other seniors for laughs. Ragging included asking these young boys which senior girls they liked. Little did they know that their confessions were ending up as MMS clips which then ended up being shared with their 'crushes'.

Praveer liked Shrijaa Chandra and Mirza thought Janvi Ashar was foxy. These two were perfect examples of attention seeking youngsters. They were thriving in their so-called ragging, enjoying every bit of it. So when Vivek Pratap asked Mirza to chose one of his batchmates to profess his "love" to, Mirza quickly ended up reciting love poems for Saylee Bhanot. The video of him saying "I love you Saylee, be mine." must have been circulated because Saylee never spoke to Mirza after that, not that she spoke to him before, so it didn't matter.

The seniors were thoroughly enjoying these guys' antics. One evening after dinner at the hostel mess, Himanshu and Vivek Pratap decided to have some fun with Praveer and Mirza. The two were dared to make out. This was new, even for them. Though they hesitated, Praveer and Mirza never backed down from a challenge. So they simulated romance, kissing, petting and the whole shabang. They were so eager to fit in and such attention seekers that they made a performance out of what would have otherwise been an awkward moment. Needless to say, they were filmed and the "scandal MMS" soon reached every student of the college.

Mirza and Praveer became overnight sensations. They were being teased. They were being laughed at. They were being mocked. But they didn't mind because they were being noticed. They knew that being noticed, even for such an embarrassing thing was better than being invisible. And they were right.

What later came to be known as Mirza and Praveer's MMS helped the two guys break the ice with everyone in a big way. Everyone knew them now. They were "the lover boys" from that MMS. And neither of them was really embarrassed of it. They actually cashed in on the so-called scandal. They found their place in the world.

Months later, Mirza started going steady with Geetika. She was an introvert and the MMS had died out before reaching her, but she'd heard about it. So she asked Mirza to show it to her. Now Mirza didn't have the clip. He tried to convince her that it wasn't as "scandalous" as it was being made out to be, but she wouldn't budge.

So Praveer and Mirza thought they'd do one better for Geetika and they re-enacted the whole thing out for her in front of her friends. Her expression was worth looking at. She blushed for a few minutes and then burst into a laughing fit. They all did. Seeing the two obviously straight guys awkwardly make out, as it turns out, was more hilarious than scandalous.