A comdey of errors

I have sometimes been a victim of practical jokes, sometimes been the initiator , but I have thoroughly enjoyed my role in every one of these. I also have a fair share of goof ups that I initiate and hence am a victim!..

1996, BITS Pilani, just before april1
-------------------------------------

A group of 6 , 4 girls and 2 guys decided we need to have more fun and the fool's day just gave us that opportunity. Usually we have a group secretary for the discipline( field of study) who organizes event dinners, once a semester. This person has a letterhead with his/her name printed on it and this is the notice that hangs outside our mess board , when any such event occurs.

We decided that this time, we would give out a fake invite and make people actually arrive at the venue and then we would gather and clap around them. To make it look authentic, we needed the letterhead!. So we took an old invite notice ( thanks to someone who had it with them), pasted a blank paper to cover the old details , leaving the top of the letterhead, then photocopied this notice and wrote out the new fake invite.

The amount of planning and the excited late night meetings that went into this simple thing was probably some of our precious moments:) The invite did go on the boards as scheduled and that dinner was that evening. Oh boy, were we scared to death or what!.. we had the nerve to do all this, but we were certainly not going to show up at the venue and get thrashed! So we all sat inside our respective rooms, dying to know what the reaction was in the boy's hostel.

I don't remember if the boys believed it or not, but we tasted our success when one girl came to our rooms around dinnertime, all decked up , and wanted to know if we wanted to come with her! Even as we were letting the cat out of the bag, our dear friend P wanted to carry the joke further!

We laughed our hearts out that day, but can't forget the look on her face!:)


1997, BITS Pilani
--------------------

We were like cavemen when it came to new technology at BITS. So when we discovered the Internet and the various tricks it could go, we knew the Gods were crazy, but we were crazier:)

Someone discovered that we could send emails to a person from our account by masking our original name , but using an alias ( Till date I have no clue what they did then!). So we decided that our friend P was going to be our target. So, with the help of experts, we sent her an email under the name of H M sakshi( manasakshi stands for conscience and H M stands for Hotmail ). I think the first email was something like this:

" Hello P

You probably know me very well. but I wanted to tell you that I exist, you cant ignore me and that I know exactly what you are doing.

yours
HM sakshi "

P came running to us that evening and started confronting a bunch of us. She was positive it was one of us who was playing a trick, but she dint know who. Then we tried to get her to think about our fabulous knowledge of computer technology and if she really thought any of us would be able to do this. She was partly convinced and we were confident she would never find out the Hows of this trick!

She then went to the guys and declared she knew what they were doing. The guys feigned ignorance and played their part so well that she completely believed them!

The emails started on a daily basis and they would be full of information on all the events in her life. The emails would question her actions and conscience. She was sure it was one of us clearly, but she just dint know who. So when she told us this : I will guess who this person is, but if I am right, I need a grand feast from that person, with desserts( Going out to eat at Pilani was really a big thing those days), If I am wrong, I will treat the entire crowd to Gulab Jamuns, we readily took it for we were sure of our gulab jamuns!. She had 3 guesses and even if she came up with the right name, someone else was readied to take the blame. We did have a great time enjoying our gulab jamun, while P was still throwing invective at us:)


1999 BITS Pilani, Girl's hostel
-------------------------------
This was our final year at BITS and some of our friends already had good proposals for marriage, one was engaged, one was flirting with her to-be-fiancee on the phone and certainly all our parents were atleast thinking about it.

So when my mom called to tell me about a proposal she received, I brushed her off saying I was not interested. She still went ahead and mentioned that he lived in California and his name was V. I dint want to hear more, so I slammed the phone down and came back to P's room and made the mistake of telling her about the phone call. She nodded with what seemed like a lot of empathy, but now I know her evil mind was making little plans that would unfold into a huge practical joke, where I was to play the lead role.

When I called my mom a few days later, she casually told me that she has given my number to V and that he might call. I was mad at her, but she said he insisted on just a casual talk and that I could tell him myself what i thought. I did what I always do... go and confide in my friends. The phone call did come and I was quite shocked. This is how the conversation went:

After the initial hellos ...

He : So what is your course at BITS? I dint catch what your mom said.
Me : Its a kind of engineering management, with basics of engineering the first couple of years, followed by management courses the last couple of years
He : So is it like an MBA?
Me: Not really, but you could say long those lines.
He : hmm.. I guess not my cup of tea. ( laugh)
Me ( thinking) : whatever!
Me : So what do you do?
He : Oh I study at Purdue
Me: But my mom told me you live in california
He : really? Maybe she is mistaken... So what are your plans after graduation?
Me : Well, not marriage for one. But I plan to work for sometime to begin with.
He : Yes I do get your hint... but I am not ready for anything right now as well. Why don't we start out to be friends and then take it from there? No pressure of any kind
Me : Well.. ok, but I am quite positive about what I said.
He : Yes, I can guess that.. my email id is .... what is urs?

As soon as the conversation ended, I came back to my room to find the entire crowd waiting in anticipation, like we always do when there is gossip!, So I narrated the word by word exchange and saw the excited look on their faces! " he seems nice"." hey V is a nice name".." Purdue , wow.."

The next day, I do get an email from his id, saying that he was looking forward to being friends with me or something like that. As I looked at the tail of the email, I saw that this was an internal email sent from within campus !!. To say I was confused would be an understatement. When my friends started unfolding their trick, I was gobsmacked. Here is how it went:

They called my mom and told her about the trick and she decided to go along with it.. hence the phone call. ( In my defense, this is what prompted me to believe the whole act). The person who called me was my very good friend G, who has gone with P to a phone booth outside campus. They had requested others there to leave for a few minutes, so that there would be no Hindi conversation heard in the background. G then used a cloth to cover the phone and spoke to me. In fact G belonged to the same field of study as mine , but he played the part of trying not to understand what I said about Engineering management, to perfection! They realised the goof up about Purdue and California after the call, but decided my geography was as bad as theirs, so I would not find out.

I ended up taking everyone out for a dessert treat, while playing the part of the " fooled" hostess very well!