Anoop had a pair of very, very, dirty blue jeans. To beginwith, they had been just slightly darker than asky blue. It wouldn't suffi ce to say that they fit perfectly; I would have tosay they fit so perfectly, they took all of the shapes that he took: he ate andwalked and slept in them.When he cycled in his sleep, as he often did, theywere understanding. Other pairs of jeans would have wept and torn themselves apart,but these blue jeans seemed to think that if Anoop wanted to cycle while heslept, he should be able to.
You understand why, then, hewas so possessive of them. So possessive that he would be perturbed if hedidn't see them for more than a day or two. Usually, he would fling them over aheap of other clothes or shove them under his bed. Then he'd hunt for them inprecisely these two places and never find them until the fourth or fifth time,when he was almost ready to burst into tears, till he remembered that hissister could walk in. She would tell his mother and if his mother saw thosejeans, she would throw them out, after him, first, of course.
This was because they werethe filthiest pair of jeans in the whole world and by that, I don't just meanthat they had survived months of Anoop thinking and eating and sleeping andcycling in them.
The back pockets boreidentical round chalk patterns that would not go away. On the right knee was asplotch where a sunny side up yellow had fallen and hadn't been noticed untiltoo late to be cleaned and then, there was no point anyway. To Anoop, however,this looked like the heart of a daisy and he liked that idea. He would alwayspicture the petals that weren't there, though he didn’t bother to draw them. Hewas too lazy for that.
Slightly above the leftknee, there wasn ink stain. He had fallen asleep, writing something and let hisMonty fountain pen rest on his jeans. It looked somewhat like the trunk of anelephant. Anoop was thankful for all the times when he was wearing the jeansand studying. The trunk saved him from listening to conversations with his professorin college that went something like this:
"Do you think we are alljobless here? Do you think we have no better work? Do you think we like towaste our time?" The professor was a slow, angry man who asked his questionsand answered them, too.
