Gattu and the incident of the cat at night-time

Aditi Agrawal is a pretty normal girl, in the sense that her favourite colour is pink, and her wallet has little hearts on it. She likes to stack her pencil case with lots of cute-looking stationary, from coloured pens to fancy erasers. She looves to go shopping, has about 15 different cats at home whom she loves more that anything else in the world, and says things like 'ooohh how cuuuute!!" and "wow!!! thats soooooooo chweeeeet!" and yes, she is doing her..ahem.. Masters in Zoology from our college.
We don't call her 'Aditi', Aditi is too boring a name for someone as chubby and pink-fair as her and who has this perpetual innocent little look on her face. No, we call her Gattu.

Wednesday's pracs were a little too hectic for all of us. Our awesome prof had squeezed in 3 experiments in one session, and the 7 of us we running around in our lab, racing against time trying to co-ordinate all the incubation times and the waiting periods and boiling baths for 'n' number of test tubes. Not really an easy task if you have someone like me loosing my temper, and barking at anyone for doing anything. I let off some steam on our dear Gattu that day, said some words I shouldn't have said and the poor girl cowered under them, but said nothing. Later we found her sitting in a corner, buried in the lab-book writing some stuff down. We couldn't see her face, but could easily see the ink swimming in the tear-drops that were falling on the lab-book.
"Gattu is crying" said Shantanu, stating the obvious.
"What happened Gattu?", "what happened re"?, "aare got hurt kya?" , "what happened?"
Even as this shower of "what happeneds' fell on her I already knew why she was crying. I had been too hard on her, and I didn't have any right to. I felt angry at myself for making a dear friend actually break down. "Oh shit, what have I done? How could I have been so stupid? Why did I shout at her like that?"
"Hey I'm sooo sorry Gattu! Aare you shouldn't pay attention to what I say re! I go on shouting at anyone for anything. Abbe really sorry!"
Gattu shook her head. "No its not that".
"Then what is it?" asked Bajri.
"My cat lost her babies!!' she wailed.
We caught each others' eyes after hearing these words and tried our best to suppress our giggles and laughter. For me it was followed by an intense sense of relief, "Oh thank God! She isn't crying because of me!". But this relief was short-lived for what followed was down-right guilt at feeling relieved in such a situation; here was my friend, crying because something very dear to her had gone away from her, and here I was feeling relieved that i wasn't the cause for her tears. How self-centered could I get?
So first i was pissed as the expts were going hay-wire, and was firing at anyone near me, then I felt very guilty at making my friend cry, and was pissed with myself, after which i felt relieved for a nano-second, then I fet guilty again for feeling relieved!

People were trying to pacify her by saying things like maybe your cat didn't loose them, maybe they had gone off somehwere and all, and the mother knows where they are.
"But she was calling out to them! She was actually calling out to them! They must haev been eaten by a dog or something at night!" she said and we could hear the intense grief in Gattu's voice.
So I hugged her and tried saying funny things to cheer the poor girl up. "Isn't the mother a very young one?
"Yes, this was her first litter", she replied
"Hah! then why are you worried?" I asked. "She still has a long active life ahead of her, she'll be a mother every few months, that babe's gonna have some fun! Trust me." At this lousy joke everyone laughed, including Gattu. Seeing that my tactic was working, I went further ahead. "Aare you don't worry re! Next time the kittens will be even cuter, they'll have a studd of a father!" and after hearing this our pyaari Gattu felt much better and wiped her tears. The group relaxed and Gattu got to her feet.

"Stupid girl!' said Gargi to Gattu, "You totally tensed Yashada up!" she said, giving me a side-ways glance. It was then that I realised that Gargi had known all along what emotional roller coster ride I had been through in the past few minutes. "Why, what did i do?' asked ?Gattu, oblivious of what panic alrams she had set in me.
"Arre Yashada thought you were crying because she shouted at you!"
Although I knew this myself, the words poked me deep inside. And I dunno what came over me that now I actually started crying!! Seeing my tears Gattu started crying again!
"Aare no! you didn't make me cry yaar!" and now she hugged me.

Picture it, 2 grown up girls with labcoats and gloves in the middle of a lab, crying and hugging each other and trying to pacify each other. And a bunch of boys standing in the corner, complete astonishment etched on their faces, trying to comprehend how girls' brains work.

But I don't think the boys gave it much thought as the next moment they were cracking silly jokes amongst themselves and Bajri as usual had removed his camera and was clicking away at our tear-stained faces.
These boys, they still don't really know why I started crying; to tell the truth, neither do I!