When I signed off on Friday I had a message waiting for me. Needless to say, since I am mentioning it here it must have been from Suhasi. It was a reply that had come after a wait of 3 hours.
“Hi! You tell me, you have to pick me up so it’s your choice,” she replied when I asked about the venue. After all sorts of negotiations we settled on a popular (populous) mall, which I loathed. So it actually turned out to be solely her choice.
Our conversation didn’t stop until midnight, but everything was not hunky-dory.
The message read: “See Ashish, I know you are mature enough but still I don’t want any sort of complications. I really like you and would love to be your friend always, until you do anything stupid. So no gifts and no emotional stuff. Well, I know you are not sentimental kind of boy but still a word of caution :D”.
That day I came to know to what extent an emoticon can suppress the causticity of a message. I had no intentions to do all that she was alluding to.
“I have no intentions to do whatever you are talking about. Not at all” I messaged back.
“Am I this ugly? hahaha…” read her message, “well I am going to bed. See ya! Good Night”.
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It was the day I had waited for last 6 days. Albeit, Sunday had always been the day I would wait for whole week ever since my parents admitted me into pre-school without taking my consent, but this time there was an altogether different reason.
On second thoughts, I was confused about my own ebullience. I didn’t know why I was so excited because she was ‘not’ going to be my girl-friend and it was not the first time I was meeting a female-friend. It was hard to caption the thoughts in my mind.
5.00 pm. – that was the time I was supposed to pick her from college.
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“Kaisa lag rha hai?” I asked my sister for her comments on my shirt and jeans.
“Where are you going?” She asked, instead of replying.
“Movie, with school friends. Btaya to“.
“Nahi pehle kabhi itna puchha nahi tune about your dressing that’s why I was asking. By the way, mast lag raha hai,” my sister grinned.
It was 4.30 pm – I left for my meeting.
I did not realize that later in the evening, both Suhasi and I would discuss the same stupid thing we had spoken about last night.
to be continued…