Not At First Sight..!!

-Not A Love Story :) :)

Episode 1

It didn’t occur to me until she left. Yes, I was missing her.  I looked at my cellphone and read her message. “L L J” read the message. At once in the middle of the airport crowd, I felt all alone. It seemed as if it would rain. And it did, after a few minutes.

“You should write a story about us”, she had said moments before leaving.

A taxi stopped by and I boarded it. “Williamson Road” said I. As the car moved, moments that I had spent with her in the last thirteen months slowly began to pour in and so did the rain.

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“You have hacked my account, I am not able to access my mails” she shouted at the top of her voice.  For the seventh time in my life, a girl was making such an allegation against me. The whole room fell silent and forty five trainees who were in the room started staring at me. I froze completely. Needless to say, I was embarrassed.

“Was that loud?” she asked, innocently.  I could only nod my head. “Disgusting guy”, I heard a couple of girls murmuring. I could even notice a few girls throwing smirks.

 “Can we have a word outside?” I asked in a low voice. I was trying hard to suppress the anger within me. And I got up from my seat and walked towards the door. My assumption that she was following me was proved wrong when I turned back to find her still warming her seat.

“I am not coming anywhere till you fix my laptop!” she shouted again, this time her voice breaching all decibel barriers. The only person, who could possibly believe my innocence, was only me.

It was our fifth day at the Orellow Software Technologies. We were a batch of forty-five new hires, undergoing training. All my hopes of carving a niche for myself and, thereby, somehow impressing a girl were dashed by this annoying female. She was successful in assassinating my character.

She was not able to login to her mail, I could possibly understand that. But the fact that she was pointing fingers at me was highly unacceptable. “Don’t point fingers at me. And if you do, I know which finger I should point at you”, I wanted to shout.

With all the forty-five pairs of eyes still staring me, I walked to her with my head bent down. I seriously had no clue why she was not able to access her emails. “Okay..!! Let me fix it.” said I, having no other choice. “You better.” said she and handed over her laptop to me.

“Tell me your password.” I asked. Before I could even regret having asked such a question she responded, “As if you don’t know.” The crowd in the room was thoroughly enjoying the show. And for the first time in the history of mankind, a person was being assassinated brutally; not once but as many times as possible. She was on an assassination spree.

“Okay fine..!! Let me key in the password.” said she and started typing the password. And I turned my back to her. I was a consistent critic of this ritual, where a person turns his back when the other person enters his or her password. The intention is not to resist ourselves from looking at the password, but the intention is to convey a message that we are no way interested in knowing their password. But somehow, I ended up doing the same ritual. Disgusting, I felt.

Suppressing my disgust, I asked her to wait for a second before she pressed the login button. She passed me her laptop. Since I was clueless as to why she wasn’t able to login, I scratched my head and thought for a while. And then like a sorcerer, I snapped my fingers in front of the monitor screen. At once the whole room grew intense, and all the trainees started staring at the monitor waiting for a miracle to happen.

I winked at her, pressed the submit button and closed my eyes. I snapped my fingers again. This was one such moment where I knew my finger snap would work no wonders, but I strongly believed and hoped that it would. I held my breath and so did the others in the room, for the next three seconds.

 Joyous claps and deafening exclamations made me open my eyes. The login was successful and I stared at the monitor with strong disbelief. Sometimes you have to enjoy the outcome rather than breaking your head on how it had happened.  I looked at the girl. She was lost in her own world, and was already busy reading the mails.

“Disha”, I called to her and she looked at me. I said, “You are welcome” and without waiting for her reply, I got up and walked out of the room.

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Chat messenger in my laptop beeped. Message from Disha, it said. We were in a training session. We were sitting in the last two rows and she was sitting right in front of me.

I opened my chat.

Disha: Sorry for yesterday’s thing. Actually it was my own mistake. I realized later that my caps lock was on when I was trying to type my password. Hope you are fine with it.

The first part of the message, where she said SORRY was absolutely fine.  Even the second part, where she explained her mistake was delightful. But what was pissing off was the last part, where she assumed that I was fine with it.

It sounded as if I had a criminal history, and I was used to such horrible treatments. I took a while before replying.

Me: No. I can understand. I am absolutely fine. J

That was a sweet lie. But you can’t afford to vent your anger on a female, especially on the ones who look beautiful.

Disha: Oh.. How sweet..!!

I thought of asking what she was referring to, ME or MY LIE. Of course it was about me, I felt.

Me: Huh..!! Silly fans..!!(Throws an attitude smile, like a superstar)

Disha: (Reaches out for autograph like a diehard fan, in mad joy)

Me: (Shrugs off, and climbs the Black limousine).

The trainer was busy giving hands on training on a few software tools, and we were enjoying our chat on our laptops.  

Disha: (Follows you and gets into the limousine, by tricking the security)

Me: (Jumps out of the car and starts running).

Disha: (Jumps too and runs behind you)

Me: (Starts flying like a superhero)

Disha: (Waits for the superhero to return)

Me: But in movies, a superhero never gets his lady.

Disha: (Movie reaches an interesting twist. Movie screen reads INTERVAL)

Me: Coffee. ??

 I don’t know what was wrong with this lady, Disha. All of a sudden she turned back and said loudly, “Yep. Let’s go, right now.” I didn’t know how to react. She was bestowing embarrassing moments, one after the other. The whole class started staring at me with a hint of wicked smile. I was a celebrity now, for all the wrong reasons.

The trainer came up to me and said, “I was observing you. You seem to be having a lot of fun, laughing at something. Share the joke, even we will laugh”.

People have this tendency of using tried and tested dialogues, and getting us bored. I have heard these lines at least nine hundred times, I swear. “No Surya. I remembered something. Hence was laughing. Sorry!” I said. The trainer’s name was Surya.

“It’s okay. Share it. I am interested; the whole class is interested” said Surya, the trainer. He looked completely furious.

“Sorry”, I repeated. And so did he, by saying “Share it!” with authority and fury. I wasn’t able to figure out why on earth I was the only one being targeted, and Disha was kept completely out of the Radar. She was trying hard to control her laughter.

I thought of apologizing once again, but then I felt that I should share any random joke and put an end to this conversation.

“Well, Hmm.. once a friend of mine wanted to do something special and unique for his girlfriend’s birthday. I asked him not to wish her at 12’ o clock but to wait for the next night until it was the last minute of her birthday. I asked him to wish her then, by telling her that he had suppressed the urge to wish her for 24 hours. And that it was very hard for him to do that”, said I in one breath.

The whole class was listening attentively. The trainer showed no emotions.

“What happened after that?” asked Disha, curiously.

“She broke up with him, that very night”, I replied. The whole class broke into laughter, but I didn’t.  I looked at the trainer to check if he was satisfied with this. Else I was planning to come up with a couple more of such jokes.

Instead of acknowledging the joke, he shouted “Get out!  Both of you!”  And both of us went straight away to the pantry to have coffee.

While she looked happy, I was completely furious and embarrassed, as always.

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My name is Adinath. Friends call me Adinath and even my parents call me Adinath. And sadly whomever I meet, they all call me Adinath as well. I’ve always wanted people to call me Adi, the shorter and sweeter version of my name.

After completing my engineering I joined Orellow Software Technologies, a leading software giant. We were a batch of forty-five new hires, put into a month of training. It was here that I met this annoying lady called Disha.

She was from Punjab and like any other Punjabi girl, she was beautiful. In a matter of weeks we became thick friends, or that was what she thought. But I was thoroughly tired by her never ending antics that landed me in embarrassing situations. In short, I was bugged.

Her Dad was a Mathematics Professor in some difficult to pronounce University. He, she claims is in the Who’s Who list of a few reputed publications in France. A fact that even Google doesn’t know.

All her bags were Orange colored and the glasses which she wore had a green colored frame. She always wore white accessories with black dress and black ones with white.  She always carried dry fruits in her wallet. She liked eating them. Sometimes she used to share them with me, but only on the condition that I get her a new packet the next day.

She liked walking in patterns on a tiled floor. She liked listening to AR Rahman songs. She used to watch any English movie twice, once without subtitles and once with. I had once curiously asked her why she did that. Her answer was simple. Without the subtitles, she would try to understand the movie. And later when watched with subtitles she would know if she had understood the movie correctly. Most of the times, it would never match. And when it did, she would be one of the happiest people in the world.

One important thing, that I forgot to mention, is that she never used to eat tomato in the month of February. Neither did her family, she claimed.

There is an interesting yet deeply moving story behind this no-tomato diet. Her grandfather, who has 36 letters in his mile-long name, had once slipped in the market after stepping on a tomato. He died the very moment breaking his neck. The mishap took place in the month of February. Hence in his fond remembrance, the family never ate tomato in the month of February. Yes, a deeply moving story indeed.

One of the few normal things about her is her mother. Like most of the mothers, she was a housewife who liked watching Television soaps.

One thing I was not able to understand was, in spite of hating her and trying to avoid her so much I had learnt so many things about her. In short, in spite of avoiding her; I was observing her!! 

To be Continued................

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