Favourite Boy

Review of Chaudhvin ka Chand here.

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The Favourite Boy had his birthday some time back.

Every woman should have a Favourite Boy.  Favourite boy is not the husband or the bloke you are in a serious relationship with. Neither heaven forbid is he just a friend.  Instead Favourite Boy inhabits an enviable zone between the two i.e. a situation full of unconsummated romantic promise.

Favourite Boy is somewhat younger than me which famously discomfited him when we first met and wasn’t helped by my looking 25 for a very long time in my life thus confusing Favourite Boy.  Favourite Boy and I took to each other from our first meeting.  Favourite Boy and I would meet when we were in each other’s town and would write zany letters to each other when apart. If you wanted to go for a late night drive or stay up until 4 am talking rubbish or try strange alcoholic spirits or plunge into the sea fully clothed Favourite Boy was on hand. This has remained unchanged over the years.

Not every boy can be a Favourite Boy. For e.g. my Favourite Boy has a way with words, is good looking, quite the party man and can generally be expected to jolly one out of the moods. All these are attractive attributes in a Favourite Boy.  Another important thing is that Favourite Boy must have a new girl on his arm every now and then with whom he has a proper romantic relationship, this creates the proper framework for your own relationship with Favourite Boy.  Of course to be Favourite Girl, you have to ensure that you too have a Boy on the Go. Many a happy hour can thus be spent discussing these romances in a “we refuse to get there but what fun it is to discuss it our love lives with each other” way. It is entirely possible that Favourite Boy will marry one of these girls or be very intense about a few (or conversely you might) but with luck this won’t change the boy remaining Favourite Boy.

As you will guess a good degree of flirtation is the cornerstone of the relationship with Favourite Boy. You must at all times extravagantly praise the Favourite Boy’s looks, his attire, his house, his music and the like.   Yet you must also at all times verbally spar with the Favourite Boy on all this and run it down because frisson is also an important part of the relationship. Frisson and Flirtation. There in summation is Favourite Boy.

I have sat with Favourite Boy on ledges, benches, at the seaside, in a car, on a train, on swings and even on a tree.  A happy cloud of romance hangs over us always which we never dispel by way of an actual romance.  People waste their time agonising over what ifs or precipitate perfectly good Favourite Boy relationships into messy relationships.  Never must one do this.  For the pleasure of the Favourite Boy is in sitting side by side eternally, knees never touching.  So a toast to Favourite Boy!

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Still reading RK Narayan, is he amongst the best Indian writers ever?  It feels as if my pleasure in reading Narayan has quadrupled over the years. Here, for e.g. is the sly humour of the opening chapters of Mr. Sampath, The Printer of Malgudi in regard to the offices of The Banner:

…….the other three windows opened on the courtyards of tenement houses below.  The owners of the tenements had obtained a permanent legal injunction that the three windows should not be opened in order to that the dwellers below might have their privacy.  There was a reference to this in the very first issue of The Banner. The editor said, “We don’t think that the persons concerned need have gone to the trouble of going to court for it, since no one would open these windows and volunteer to behold the spectacle below.”

This stimulated a regular feature entitled “Open Window”, which stood for the abolition of slums and congestion.