Weedless.

Resuscitated by a raging roommate from the realms of deep reflection on the astuteness of life, I was forced to wake up and smell the coffee. Sleep had become an unobtainable luxury and only after binging 2 series: half each and enjoying quietly the guilty pleasure of sucking on my ‘scoot’: a contorted cigarette fresh off my jacket’s inner pocket at approximately 2 in the night could I finally get some shuteye.

“Scoot” - the jargon was a gift from the mallu gang. They either made it up or had picked it from the andamanis (they are usually the ones responsible for such creative lexicon). In any case it is fun to use. Scoot means a souvenir lifted unbeknownst to your comrades that, of course, was meant to be shared among you all, equally. A scoot can be anything that you have kept for yourself ranging from that one halwa from the buffet you hid to be relished later, the half bit chocolate wrapped back again and thrown into your vanity bag saved for the winter or if you are one of us, it’ll always most definitely be a ciggy.

Cigarettes, by the love of god are the best add-ons ever imagined for any sort of addiction. Be it drugs, pain or just living, you can always count on these little grips of death rolled in a neat slow-burning paper, even though short-lived; to definitely bring you the solace that lasts longer than itself. It is freedom between one's fingers, a choice, a death wish but you made it. It is not one of those things the world dictates you into compliance. Smoking is not something you do just because you have to feel like a contributing part of the society in order to keep going, for the illusion of mattering by playing the part. It is a cigarette, you smoke and then you die. Nothing more; nothing less.

I was awake laying down but lost somewhere, way before jaanemann, my roommate, woke me up. It is a routine he follows, waking me up with his discombobulated self and a slurring tone that warns me - “we’ll be late if we don’t get up”. The only reason I have succeeded in decoding his sluggish sleepy blabber that sounded as if an old man was gargling pebbles and trying to talk at the same time was because I had been hearing the same words uttered into my ears everyday for the past year. There is always something we’ll be late for: the college, a movie and this time it was the sesh. So, as usual trying to cash in on the borrowed time between my actual wake and the time jaan usually wakes me up, an attempt to sleep a little more was made and as usual it bore no fruit. Today is Sunday and I swear, the entire day shall solely be dedicated to sleep and nothing but sleep. But to make that possible, smoking up is imperative.

-

It is now 10:47 AM, almost 2 hours from when we reached here in hopes of getting stoned out of our brains and play pub-g mobile on the emulator. But the peddler is not picking up. 'The two' that have always been responsible for financing and acquiring the stuff for the gang are now demanding for more ‘contri’. They plan on buying weed from a guy that had arranged for us in the past from another guy he knew when all hope seemed lost. But he is known to skim off some for himself and charges double, so naturally there is some resistance from the concerned parties who are not ready to spend more over a scanty and “left asking for more” kind of bliss. After a short back-and-forth, ‘the two’ finally concede and turn to me, I turn to jaan and our telepathic conversation begins-

“ we have already given them the usual amount. If more is needed then we must all pitch in equally”

“ yes, I know... but it is how it is, don’t make a thing and just pay alright?.. I have done it too... haven’t I?”

Nodding my head I oblige, knowing very well that the money I am giving now making up for the freeloaders’ share will never be reimbursed in case we do not get the score today. The crushed notes collected from all the members have been stacked and placed in the room's epicenter, near which there is an unexploited bong and a lighter that has given up and surrounding it are us, the members of today’s session.

The room, my BFAM’s, is a small hall with a connected bathroom. It has transcended all forms of suffocation far even from the Führer’s best wet dreams, as it has accommodated 11 sweaty, stinky lads with the windows shut and a moribund ceiling fan that circulates more noise than it does air. Feet on each other’s crotches and hands on each other’s heads, we wait with bated breath pretending to use our phones all the while throwing a look at the bong in regular intervals and then at each other and back to the phones again.

The bong is resting on the floor, sensually spreading her legs. She is shouting at us, she wants to be used, she is calling each one of our names with the stench from uncleaned bong water, she is begging us to violate her orifice with all our lips one by one and ignite her loins with the most potent bud of THC the humankind has ever known. The members blow an exasperated sigh in unison and go back to pretending that life has any other purpose except the high.

-

Take away addiction from an addict and the trivialities of life become buoyant. Food, water, pending assignments, nagging girlfriends- life and its burdens were slowly getting to us. Some fell victim and started scribbling on a piece of paper; their supposed assignments, some turned to dehydration and ingestion in an attempt to quench their thirst for weed and remedy their anxiety and I to the cigarette pack that I had my eyes on for a while now which was draining faster than our hopes. A brave soul even crushed the ‘tob’( tobacco used to cut the weed with) and smoked it out of the bong, out of sheer boredom everybody got in. After 2 rounds of tob-bongs, thundering coughs and tears the chances of us being able to be soothed by the most pristine boon the earth has ever bestowed upon us were becoming bleaker.

Members had started scratching into each other's wounds only to provoke one another and pull legs to start a fight. The perils of socializing without weed is barbaric and sad but thoroughly entertaining until it's you on its receiving end. The two had finally convinced the grievers that we go with the guy who charged double. But it seemed that the devil was at play or maybe God because that fellow too had been in constant search of a score from the past two days and had found not one single strand anywhere in the area, he even went on suggesting that we stop the search, get back to our homes and give up on our dreams. But giving up should never be considered as a choice especially when the world leaves you with no other option.

The Sun is slowly getting comfortably high in the sky and with scorching heat, increasing humidity and extreme joblessness comes extreme irritability. Humans lived in this room no more, we were now all growling strays, just one squabble away from mauling each other away and hence a distraction was necessary. We paused the YouTube video of a comic that none of us or the audience were really listening to and went with wiz khalifa’s ‘hopeless romantic’ for now and let YouTube’s auto play deal with further video selections for the day and went on with today’s Battle Royale weedlessly.

-

An outlook of a typical group of stoners or any group that exceeds 3, though might seem as an inseparable lot of friends, is actually divided into tiny chunks of their own. Meaning, it’s not really a group of ten per se, it’s just a collection of duo and trio put together depending on how deep their original roots go. Here in the room the gang was segregated into (‘the two’), (me, jaan and BFAM), (an appendix trio of the locals) and ( 3 mallus that kept changing according to their availability). Which meant that these inner circles had already started communicating with each other for their own arrangements of the maal and were working on devising a plan to retrieve their shares back from the stack.

The volume of heat was gradually turning down. Though time had become still for us, the sun had decided to descend, noon was slowly inching towards eve and we hadn’t been rewarded with a single sniff of weed yet. But jaan, being the slick cunt he always was, had somehow managed to convince this guy he knew to save atleast 2 bong shots worth of stuff, "even scraps" he had begged so that we wouldn’t have to go to sleep sober. He is a true miracle worker when it serves his needs. But the guy had agreed to salvage some for us only if we hurry and make it there in an hour’s time, as there were too many hungry stoners in his room and would turn into zombies if the supply were to be deferred. Jaan texted me all this and before I could read and even construct a reply, he had already begun the search for bike keys. I signalled him of our share in the contri. But BFAM could be trusted with the safekeeping of our money and also to call us if the score happened.

-

It took us two and a half hours to reach the guy’s place as he had moved somewhere else. We had to track his new place down and because of this impromptu reroute our bike ran out of petrol. It was getting dark and the new area this guy had chosen was deserted, there seemed no life existing anywhere near, no streetlights, hence we had to push our ride all the way to his room. The energy out of our smoke soaked, malnourished bodies had drained. We were on autopilot and the only thing that kept us going was the yearning to get one, just one shot or puff or however the fuck way we could get weed into our systems. Consumed by hyperventilation, a throbbing headache and profuse precipitation we make it to the 5th floor of the building.

Slashing through the air we jump into the guy’s room only to find the mother fucker burning the final shot in front of our eyes like a ravening animal. We looked around for something holding our lives in our hands but he had scraped the stash to its bone, filled full and smoked completely. He poses an awkward smile of pity and ridicule, pointing towards the empty zip-lock bag and looking at the poor plight of us neanderthals maniacally moving around his room.