To which I replied, with one hand putting the speakerphone on mute, ‘I am running busy … You’ll have to wait for a while.’
The next minute, my client manager grabbed me for a different meeting in another conference room. That day I kept rushing from one meeting to another. Some days are like that and this was that kind of day. At noon, I entered the cafeteria along with my clients for lunch and it was then that I remembered—she was waiting for me.
Damn!
I rushed back to my room and to my laptop where I checked the numerous messages she had left. The last one read, ‘Kab aaoge Shona … I have to show you something.’
I checked its timestamp. She wrote that an hour back. I felt bad for making her wait for me, for so many hours. Working in the afternoon shift, getting back at 11 in the night and then waiting for me for the last three hours … She must have been so tired, so sleepy. What did she want to show me? Had she gone? Was she asleep? Her status on the messenger appeared dormant.
I quickly fished my calling card from my wallet and dialed her number. After a few rings it got disconnected. I was trying once more when, suddenly, her message flashed on my laptop’s screen, ‘Was it you? R u online?’
I quickly got on the keyboard. ‘Yes dear,’ I wrote.
‘Where were you …?’
‘M so so so … sorry dear. I am bad. I made you wait for so long … Actually, since morning, I am running so busy here, I completely forgot that you were online waiting for me. At least I should have told you that I might not be able to turn up … :-(’
‘This happens sometimes. I can understand.’ She didn’t shout at me.
‘Still u know … Bu they … I cannot wait for that thing you wanted to show me. Tell me what that was.’
‘Can you show that to me now?’ I asked her again.
And she replied, ‘Yes … here comes the first one. Check your email.’
I refreshed my mailbox and a fresh mail from her arrived in it with a subject line that read: 1. And then came another: 2. And then, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Nine b-e-e-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l photographs of her.
Amazed and spellbound by her beauty, I kept staring at those pictures. Without any doubt, those were her best pictures. They had a magical effect on me. In that moment, I struggled with two things: first, my unwillingness to take my eyes off any one picture and, second, the eagerness to see the others at the same time.
What a sweet surprise she had given me. My heart was on cloud nine knowing that this beauty was mine, and when beauty overrides your brain, you don’t know what to say, you go numb with pleasure. Then, realizing that her innocent heart had sacrificed a night’s sleep waiting for me, I finally typed, ‘Hey Angel … because that’s what you look like in those pictures. Thank you so much dear, for such a sweet surprise.’
Simultaneously, her message flashed on my screen, ‘Achchi lag rahi hu na main? You want to say something?’
‘Bahut! :-* I won’t be able to find better words than what I am feeling. Or maybe I will …’
And before I could complete my line, I heard the door of my room opening followed by footsteps. I turned back. It was my manager who was on the phone with someone and was calling me for another quick meeting. I begged his pardon for two minutes, in which I managed to say goodbye to her.
‘I am still in a beautiful shock,’ was my last message.
I didn’t eat lunch that afternoon. The feast for my eyes satisfied my hunger.
That day onwards, one of her pictures—the only one with a close-up of hers—became my desktop’s wallpaper.
Day Forty-Five
I boarded my plane back to India.
Return
It was almost midnight when I got off at Delhi airport. As soon as I was out of the immigration channel, I switched on my Indian cellphone. And I called my mom before anybody else, like she wanted, to let her know that her son was back and was absolutely fine. She too was expecting my call, and that’s why she couldn’t sleep (mom’s are like that). I spoke to her for a few minutes and bade her goodnight. Then I moved to the conveyor belt to pick my luggage.
At the exit gate, I booked a cab to Faridabad.
No, I wasn’t heading towards her but to a hotel she had booked for me. We learnt from our past mistakes that commuting between Faridabad and Delhi could be more than a little problematic. So why not book a hotel in Faridabad itself?
I was in the cab when a few SMSs made a sharp entry in my message box. All of them were from Khushi. The topmost one read:
Ur hotel is booked. Gimme
a call wen you land.
I was very eager to talk to her now that I was, once again, in her country … I mean our country. It’s such a different feeling, returning to your beloved after a long time. Everything around you appears so lovely. Every beautiful thing brings a smile to your face. Every hour, the level of your anxiety increases as the time before you’ll see each other decreases.
I called her up. Later, she told me what she did: Seeing her favorite name on the display of her phone after so long, she held her hand to her heart, smiled, closed her eyes, thanked God, took a deep breath, opened her eyes and picked up the phone.
‘H-i-i-iiiiiiiiiiiii!’ She jumped loudly on the ground.
‘Haha … Helloooooooo!’ I was happy to hear her crazy’hi’, just like a kid.
‘I am so so so happy you’re back.’
‘So am I.’
And we went crazy. Shouting. Laughing. Singing … That was how happy we were.
I heard her, going merrily around her house, letting everybody know that I was back. In a round-robin fashion, each and every lady in the house talked to me.
‘Mujhe bhi do … maine bhi baat karni hai.’
‘Dad is sleeping, so maybe you will be talking to him tomorrow,’ she said.
Well, we kept talking till I reached my hotel. Of course, there was no reason why we shouldn’t be doing that. Getting the directions from her, I explained them to the driver of my cab.
Magpie Hotel on Mathura Road was my destination for the night. It was not that good a hotel, but she had booked it because most of the good hotels in the city were full as it was the marriage season (October) and, more importantly, it was the nearest to her place.
On my way to Magpie, we were passing through the outskirts of the city and my cell was frequently losing its network coverage, and I dialed her number again and again. Before giving out completely, the network played hide and seek on my mobile’s screen for a while. I somehow managed to send her an SMS:
Wll cal u once I
rch hotel.
To which she replied:
NO. CAL ME D MOMENT
U R GNG 2 OPEN UR ROOM.
DN’T FORGET
Well, I did what she wanted. Half an hour later, as I was unlocking the door of my room in the hotel, I called her. We were back on the phone when I moved into the dark room.
‘Ok, now on your right hand, there is a switchboard. The first one is the light,’ she said. And I wondered why she was instructing me.
The room was cold. The AC was on and there was a beautiful fragrance in the room.
In the light of my cellphone’s screen, I switched on the lights of the room and what came next was a sweet surprise.
‘OH MY GOD!’
In front of me was a giant bed with two bouquets of roses, along with a note on each one of them. And they read—‘Welcome back’ and ‘I missed you so much.’
Apart from this, there was a tissue paper peeking out from under the cushions. From a distance I could not read it, but I noticed the maroon impression of her lips on it—a lovely advance gift of love which she left for me.
I read the note.
While you were gone, I realized how badly I need you for myself.
I love you so much.
‘I love you so much dear,’ was the sweet reaction of my melting heart. I inhaled the scent of her kiss on that tissue and kissed it. She heard me doing that. I wanted her to hear.
The next moment, someone knocked at my door.
‘Who is it?’ I asked.
‘Bellboy,’ came the reply.
‘Two minutes dear, there is some one at the door,’ I told Khushi and opened the door.
‘Sir, I have got water for you.’
‘OK.’
He came in with a bottle of Bisleri and an upside-down glass. He kept it beside my bed and, from the corner of his eyes, he noticed all that was lying on it. Those flowers, that note. Maybe he saw the kiss too. He smiled to himself for a fraction of a second and then returned to his formal demeanor. While going back, he noticed a half-filled glass covered with a lid, along with another bottle of water.
‘Oh you have already got water.’
‘That’s not mine. You can take it away,’ I said.
As I said that, I heard her voice from the cellphone. She was shouting ‘Shona! STOP HIM … Don’t let him touch the glass ….’
‘RUKO!’ I shouted at the boy.
And hearing the intensity of that ‘RUKO,’ he froze, just like a statue. As if, the next moment, he was about to trip a mine and I saved him. He looked at me curiously. Even I wasn’t sure why she had asked me to do that.
I told him, ‘I’m all good. You can leave.’
Confused, he left the room.
Closing the door from inside, I asked her why she reacted that way.
‘I want you to discover that yourself,’ she said. She was calm again.
While I was wondering what she meant, she asked me, ‘Aren’t you thirsty?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, removing the lid covering the glass and lifting it.
Then I heard her saying, ‘You can have the water which I left in your room.’
I was about to take a sip when I realized that her sweet surprises were still coming. My heart was smiling with the delights it was receiving. There were patches of her lipstick on the circumference of that glass. Having sipped some of this water, she had left the rest for me. What a sweetheart!
‘You are such a darling,’ I slowly sang, enjoying the water, drinking it exactly from the spot where she had pressed her lips.
Our conversation turned romantic and we kept talking of beautiful things for quite a long time.
I think it was around 2 a.m. when we finally separated. I made her sleep, after which I went and showered. The last shower I had taken was thirty hours back, in the US.
Later that night, on my bed, surrounded by those beautiful roses, I wrote her a message:
Smhow those 45 days hv passed
bt this hiatus of few hrs to see u again
is killing me. Good nite Angel.
Unfortunately, the next morning wasn’t a pleasant one.
Jet lag, change of weather, the weariness after a long journey and my night shower—all brought me down with a cold. I was sneezing, had a bad headache and an aching throat. In other words, I was completely screwed up.
In that unpleasant condition, I was turning left and right, squeezing the bouquets which I had been embracing in my sleep. It took me a long while to, finally, open my eyes completely.
Then I noticed her SMS—Will be dere at 11.
It was quarter to ten in my watch.
Damn! I wanted to reply asking her to come a little later. But I didn’t. Rather, gathering all my energy, I got ready. I took a warm shower this time. I was slow in everything I was doing. And all that was running in my mind was: Will I get better by the time she comes here?
By eleven, I was through with my breakfast and she called me up to say that she was going to be late. She would be at my place in the next half an hour.
‘OK,’ I said. I kept the call short because I didn’t want her to notice my condition. I was still sneezing and coughing. And someone seemed to be beating a giant drum inside my skull. The headache was killing me. I rarely get headaches, but that was one rare day. Just my luck!
For the next half an hour, weird things were running through my brain.
‘Damn! Did I have to come down with a cold today, of all days?’ With my running nose and a heavy, choked voice, my desire to kiss her again after forty-five days got crushed. I had been waiting for such a long time and the next day I was to fly back to Bhubaneswar. Moreover, I was not sure when I would see her next.
‘What if I still kiss her?’ I was still talking to myself. That one wish was debating with the germs of cold in me. But then, in the evening, I had to be at her place. What if her family noticed her sneezing and coughing, just like me? Would they figure out how I transferred my virus to their daughter? (Yes, I know, at times I think too much.)
But she reached the hotel and gave me a missed call, interrupting my weird thoughts. I rushed out of my room to receive her. And, at last, after these long one and a half months of being apart, we were standing in front of each other.
She was wearing a nice white top, blue denim (a perfect fit), a light shade of glossy lipstick and small earrings. Her hair was untied, the breeze scattering it across her face.
My beautiful was in front of me—her sneezing handsome.
Her blushes and smiles revealed how delighted she was to see me. She smiled and her eyes revealed her satisfaction of being with me again. And within me I was all happy, excited and nervous.
‘Hi,’ I said, giving her a small (or maybe the smallest) hug. I did that with the fear of others noticing, though there was no one outside. There was a little hesitation in the initial moments. It happens, you know … And with that’Hi,’ she realized my condition immediately.
‘Cold hua hai tumhe?’ she asked, raising her eyebrows.
‘Nah … It’s just a little thing,’ I answered as if I was fine.
‘But …’ And she kept looking at me, trying to help me. ‘You want to take some medicine?’
‘No … no. It’s okay, dear. I will be all right … Just because of the climate change. But I will be fine soon. Now shall we move in or are we going to stand here for the rest of the day?’ I said.
The worry on her face turned into a little smile. (A fake one—she was still worried.)
We went to my room. She said I should have some tea in order to help my cold, so I ordered a cup of it for myself and a soft drink for her. (Nobody in her family drinks tea, remember? Strange family.)
Her physical presence in front of me after such a long time was making me conscious. I don’t know why, at times, I get into that mode. And in these blank conditions I always need some time to get into a comfort zone. But the feeling inside me was good. To see her, to sit beside her, touch her again …. But, all this without inhaling her fragrance. (Blocked noses can’t smell.) But that short tea-time (my teatime and her soft-drink time) helped me feel better, physically, allowing me time to become comfortable in her company.
A few minutes later, I was telling her the stories of my onsite trip, discussing official things, laughing at stupid ones, watching the pictures I had taken in the US, on my laptop. In no time, on that giant bed, we were lying on our stomachs, next to each other, our feet paddling in the air above us, our hands underneath our chins and our eyes on the screen of the laptop. We were watching those short movies I had shot on my trip. And beside us, were those flowers with which I slept the night before, her notes and the tissue carrying her kiss’s imprint which was now making her shy. She was acting as if she never noticed that on my bed.
With my cold, I didn’t feel like roaming around the malls of Faridabad, so we had to cancel her plan. Rather, we stayed back in our room. We discussed some important things. Like, when should our parents meet? What time will it be good for us to get married? Where should we settle down after marriage, taking our careers into consideration?
And I remember well, on that last question she quickly responded, ‘It should be Delhi.’
‘But why not Bhubaneswar?’ I calmly revolted back.
And like a five-year-old kid, she answered, full of innocence, ‘It will be hard for me to live far away from my Mumma.’
Stroking her
forehead and hair, I said, ‘We will bring your mom for you, in dowry.’
And we laughed.
During our conversation that day, we took a U-turn to discuss our respective pasts. Our college life, our school friends and our family. The sweet memories and the hard times. And on one occasion, she burst into tears. She happened to recall some things in her life which she could never share with anyone else but me. Taking her in my arms, I wiped her tears. She said she felt relieved after sharing that with me, and she made me promise that I would never tell it to anyone. And promises … Promises are meant to be kept.
I held her head on my shoulder, rubbing her back gently, drying her moist eyes. She felt good and rested in my arms for quite some time.
In order to change her mood I started telling her some jokes, just to comfort her. And when I saw that smile returning to her face I said, ‘Hmm … So let us see what I have got from the US for my dearest …’
‘Sachhi?’
‘Muchhi,’ I said and jumped out of my bed to unlock my bag. She also followed me and, while I was opening it, she stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. I quickly recalled something and turned back to say, ‘Girls are not allowed to stare in guys’ bags.’
She laughed, but fought back to stand there and check my bag along with me. Seeing the big polythene bag I took out, her smile widened. But when she reached for it, I grabbed it back.
‘A … a … aa! Not like this. Let me open it and show you.’
‘Ok.’
And I pulled out a purple top with short sleeves, along with a matching pastel-coloured skirt.
‘Wow!’ she stared at the dress open-mouthed. ‘This is awesome!’ (Girls love surprises. No?)
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘For it to be really awesome, it needs to be on you. Wear it and show me.’ I pointed to the washroom, where she could go and change. Carrying a smile and that dress she walked away.
Back in that room, I crossed my fingers. I had never bought anything of that sort, ever, for any girl. I didn’t have a sister, nor did I have any prior girlfriend with whom I could have learnt something about buying clothes for girls.