We continued walking around the park. The sun was partly out now and a rainbow was visible if you really strained your eyes. The grass was a very light green with a musky flavour to it. We had removed our shoes and the tiny wet blades ticked our feet as we walked. There were little squirrels running around trying to look for nuts and some leaves had fallen out of the trees due to the rain. The birds, though not singing, but were proudly roaming the sky now that the water had ceased.
I know you can see these things any day of the week. But all this seemed so beautiful and appropriate at that point. I could see myself falling for her. I could see the smile on my face widening with each step we took. I could see myself wanting her more every passing second. And I could see myself loving each moment of it.
Our conversation had now taken a personal tone. The personal tone when you have started working begins with your job and then gradually steers to your life. She pretty much knew about my job so I just filled in the basic details of how I got there. I started with my modest upbringing, then the college life where I discovered who I really was, and then job where I lived for weekends. And before we could get to her, it started raining again. The small droplets of water started falling on her face. She tried to brush them off initially but then we both made a dash towards the nearest tree. The tree somewhat protected us, but then, we just stopped caring. My eyes met hers and we just stared into each other. I could see that I had had the same affect on her. We got close, then closer.
Then she ran away. Without saying a word, leaving me alone under that tree. I did not know what had hit me. I tried calling her cell phone but she cancelled the call. I tried again and it was switched off. I didn’t understand what had just happened. Everything seemed to be going perfectly, but then she just took off. I waited for the rain to subside a little and then made the confused journey back home. I tried calling her for two days but she did not take my call. I would meet her in office on Monday though. My company had to hand over the project to them.
I reached office a little early on Monday. We had an early morning meeting with Pooja’s company and irrespective of what had transpired between us, I still had to finish my work. There were some last minute things remaining and the team and I finished them and we were ready. Surprisingly for the other members of my team and expectedly for me, Pooja did not come for the final meeting that day. She had called in sick and one of her colleagues, a more senior guy, had come and understood the processes and the project was over. There would be atleast no more official interaction with Pooja.
I wanted to know what had happened but got immersed in work. November was always a busy period in my company because most of our clients were US based and they never worked in December. So all December deadlines had to be met in November itself. The number of coffee cups on every table increased and the duration of the cigarette and lunch breaks reduced drastically during that period. No matter how laid back at home you may be, when a client needs a project on time, you have to sweat it out at office. I think that is one of the reasons that all major projects, IT atleast , are bagged by Indian companies. Even the people in the west know that if need be we will stay at office all night but will ensure that the work gets done.
It was now 8 pm and I was to have a long day at work. Some of my colleagues had left, while some were still there. I did not have much time so I decided to goto the parantha shop near the base of the building for dinner. My office was on the ninth floor and I took the elevator down. All alone, in a captive little place, you sometimes really do feel if you made the right choices in life. Was this what I really wanted to do? I let the thought pass as it was my job which was going to pay for my paranthas. I walked across the cigarette smoking spot, said hi to a couple of colleagues who were having their last puffs before they headed to a no smoking zone- home. I chatted for a couple of minutes. All of us bitched about how bad things became in November, how it was not our fault that the western world did not work in December and how lousy the salary increments were to be this year and how none of us were going to be promoted and how everyone in the company, barring us, had no work to do and how we had heard that the head of the company was leaving and how someone had seen Shiven and Sonalika in a kind of compromising position and how the quality of the food in the cafeteria had gone even worse and how we should all stop smoking as it is really injurious to healtheven the pack said so.
These were the discussions we had every day, and I bet these are the discussions that you can hear around every office every day. These discussions don’t really change anything, they just help you vent out the frustration, help you cleanse your system so that you are ready for another session of sitting in front of the computer. I asked the cigarette guy how much I owed him, he said 120 bucks, I said I did not have change and would pay him later. We said our goodbyes and I went out to the local dhaba which served the best aaloo parantha. I usually used to come here with friends and colleagues but today I was alone. It feels weird eating alone in the office. You feel alone, you feel lost, you feel unwanted.
We usually used to order the same paranthas every day but today I had a look at the menu. I was surprised to see the variety on offer. It was not a Punjabi dhaba, apparently they also served Chinese, Mughlai, Continental and Italian. I looked at the menu for a good 2 minutes and saw a spelling error in every dish that was not a parantha. So I ordered two aaloo paranthas with butter and pickle on the side and a two egg double fry with one cup of tea.
Yes, I was not too fat yet, or not too old yet, to think of cholesterol. I liked my food fried. I sat on the garden chair, put my head back and closed my eyes trying to relax and stayed that way for a couple of minutes. When I opened them, expecting to see the waiter with the tea, I saw Pooja, albeit with the tea.
“Hi. Surprised?”
She was still blurry. I needed sleep.
“Well yes, kind off. In fact, yes, very surprised.”
She offered me the tea. She had two cups, I took one. She spoke. “I am sorry for what I did. But I had a reason.”
“I am sure you had one. Maybe you found me too boring and just wanted to get the hell out.”
I tried to be funny and she did smile. Maybe because she had run off earlier and had to do something to make me feel better. “You know it was not that.”
“Then what was it. In fact, never mind. Such things happen. So tell me, how come you are here.”
She gave me a look as if I was the dumbest person on earth. “I am here to see you.”
“Really? That’s nice.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I really needed sleep. And I needed the aaloo paranthas before the sleep. She spoke. “Let me put it out straight away. I really. I am. I really am...”
Just then the waiter came with the two paranthas with the butter melting on them and then mixing with the mango pickle. All my attention shifted from her to the food. I was kind of lusting for it.
“Looks nice” she said. “You want some?”
Then I shouted to the waiter “Hero, get one more for madam, aaloo. Then to her “You have to try their aaloo paratha, it is heavenly.” The parantha completely controlled me. She was a little bemused. “I was trying to tell you something.”
“Oh yes, please.”
“Are you sure you can fathom what I am going to tell you over your loving paranthas.”
Her voice had an irritated tone to it. I had dipped a small piece in butter and was mixing it with the pickle but I stopped and unwittingly I kept it down.
“No problem at all. Tell me.”
“What I was telling you was that I...”
Just then the waiter came with her parantha. Talk about quick service when you don’t need it. She gave the waiter such a dreadful look that he went back mumbling something.
“I really like you.”
Wow. I did not know how to react. I knew that she liked me on some level but to actually hear it took me a little back.
“I started liking you soon after we started working togeth
er. At first I thought that it was a harmless crush and would pass but as the days kept passing by, it became something more than a crush. And that day, in the park, it got a little too out of control.”
I really didn’t know what to say, so I spoke “I really don’t know what to say.”
“But I cannot like you. I mean I should not like you. I am engaged, and that too to my boyfriend of many years. There is a date to the wedding, the cards are printed, invitations are going out. In fact, right now, I should be distributing these cards to some of my relatives.”
She took out the marriage invitation from her purse and threw it towards me. It landed close to my food. The cards looked nice, but they would have spoiled my paranthas.
“Then why are you here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
She started crying a little, then started sobbing.
“I don’t know.” She sat down next to me. I did not know what to do. I was right in front of my office and a girl was sitting next to me and was crying. And that was not the major problem. She was getting married to her boyfriend, was supposedly out delivering invitations, but here she was sitting next to me and crying.
I really did not know what to do or what to say. “Why don’t you eat something. The food is getting cold.”
I know, not the right thing to say. She looked at me, gave a disgusted look, and cried some more.
“I am getting married soon and am getting confused because of you! You who can’t bloody get over a aaloo parantha.” And she sobbed some more. I was really confused now. I was hungry, had a ton of work to finish, was dead sleepy, but the biggest problem was that I had an engaged woman sitting next to me telling me that she liked me. I seriously did not know what to do. I liked Pooja but I did not want to get into this mess. I did not like her that much and I was pretty comfortable out of the troubled situation she was trying to get me into. Had she been married, a fling would have been fine, I had always fantasised that. But this was dangerous, she was engaged and confused as to whether she should marry that guy or not. So I just sat there, looking at my food which would not taste half as good now, and hearing her cry.
She stopped after around five minutes and got up. “Let’s go.” I knew I had lost all control as soon as she had started crying. I paid the waiter and got up not knowing how my work would finish, how my stomach would get filled and when finally would I get home and lay my back on the bed. Everything was under her control now. We went to her car and Pooja started with her story.
Pooja had what you would call the ideal relationship, until I came into the scene that is. She had known Rannvijay, her boyfriend and then her fiancé for 13 years and they had been dating for the last four. He was what every girl would want in a guy, well educated, earning well etc etc. Everything was perfect, until he proposed.
Pooja said that she had this feeling of being trapped since the time she had gotten engaged. Rannvijay, who until then used to trust her, had started questioning her whereabouts. He wanted to know where she was going, with whom she was going, why was she going and all other related questions a possessive boyfriend asks. Then one day, he told her to leave her job after getting married.
This was the early 2000s, this was not the time you tell a girl what to do or what not to do. Pooja could not believe that it was the same guy who had loved her for the last four years and how all of a sudden, getting engaged to him had changed everything. She could not understand how all of a sudden her independence was being taken away from her. She tried to talk to her mother, then his mother, but no one seemed to understand what she was going through. They just said that there are certain compromises that need to be made to make a marriage successful and her leaving her job was one of them. He anyways made enough money for the both of them and she could sit at home and take care of other things.
That is when she met me. She told me that it wasn’t love at first, mainly because I was not that good looking to fall in love at first sight.
She said this in such a matter of fact tone that it really did hurt but I let it pass.
She told me that she started liking me when we got talking. She liked my carefree attitude in life, but she loved the way I could transform myself and give a 100% while at work. That was the first time she used the word love. She said she loved that I could adapt myself according to the situation and behave in the manner required. That is what she had apparently wanted from her guy and had thought that she had found it in Rannvijay but then she started sobbing about how wrong she had been. I had to comfort her but I did not know how. Then, she started sobbing on my shoulder.
We by the way, in the middle of this conversation had walked away from the dhaba and were sitting in her car. A Maruti Alto, in the parking of the building where I worked. It was now 11 pm and a guard walked upto the car and looked inside. He recognised me, faked a salute, put on a mischievous smile and left. I knew what people would be discussing over cigarettes tomorrow. I got my mind back to the problem on hand, on shoulder in fact.
I liked Pooja. She was pretty, she was smart, and she was pretty much better than the best girl I could have managed for myself. But as she had mentioned, for all matters not related to work, I was a pretty chilled out carefree guy and I did not want to get into this mess.
It was a horrible mess. Sure, she gave me the jibbers the other day, and made me appreciate rain, and birds, and grass, but that was when I thought we would go out on a couple of dates and see where it would head from there. Now was very different. Now I was the ‘other man’ in the relationship. I was not really sure whether I wanted to be the ‘other man’. In fact, I was pretty sure that I did not want to be the other man. Just then she left my shoulder, a wet patch on it due to the tears smeared with some of her black kajal. What is it with girls and kajal? She actually was crying.
“So what do we do now?”
So there it was, I was now officially the ‘other man’. The ‘What do we do now?” had sealed it. Instead of “What do I do now?” it was “What do we do now?” The dreaded word “we”.
And then to seal it, she kissed me, right there and then. And I did not resist. It is really difficult to resist when a pretty girl is kissing you. In that Maruti Alto that day, I kissed my carefree life good bye.
I spent the night talking to Pooja saying the usual things a guy says to a girl in order to make her smile. I cracked stupid jokes so that she could smile while she was still sobbing, I made faces, called her names and did all that stuff until finally it was time for her to go home. She lived alone by the way but dropped me first at my place and then went to hers. I did not know whether it was too early to invite her to my apartment. I thought that I was already in the mess so might as well enjoy it. But sense prevailed and she left. Getting out of a kiss was easy, getting out of a night together would have been much more difficult.
As I was walking up the stairs to my one bedroom apartment, I thought about Pooja. She was nice. Had it not been for the engagement angle, I would have been floored if she had fallen for me. But now things were different. The other guy did not even know I existed and here I was, kissing his fiancé. I felt bad for him, and I did not know what I felt for myself. But I really did like her. I had enjoyed the time we had spent together (leaving out today) and whenever I was with her, I wanted time to just stand still.
I unlocked my door, lay on my bed and went to sleep, leaving the decision to another day. Just then my mobile phone beeped. An SMS. “Gud nite. Thank you. We will make this work J”
The decision had been made, by her. I just had to be a part of the game now. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and did manage to in the next 30 seconds. The next morning also started with an SMS. But this time it was my boss.
“Hope you finished the pending work yesterday. Have a presentation in 3 hours. See you in the office.”
Oh shit, I had completely forgotten about work. Then the phone beeped again. This time it was her. “Gud mrng sweetie. Getup now. Time to goto work J”
I actually smiled. Her SMS did make me feel better. I forgot about what was going to happen at work and happily went into the toilet to get ready. Life was good. I had a brand new girlfriend.
The work problem was somehow averted and I met Pooja in the evening at the same cafe where we had met a few days ago when I thought she was not engaged and had tried to win her over. Things were a little different now. I reached early again and ordered the 60 bucks coffee and sat down reading the newspaper. And then I saw her come in again and my heart skipped a beat just like the last time. She was beautiful. I had to make this work.
I saw a gamut of emotions from her over the next few days. At times she would be thrilled to be with me while at others she would be so guilty. Her marriage was in two months and then she would start planning with me on how to end it with her fiancé. It really used to get weird when he used to call her when Pooja and I were on a date. She would receive the call and talk to him all lovey dovey while holding my hand and would expect me to understand.
But I did not. I really did not know where this was headed. If she did break up with Rannvijay, or whatever that guy’s name was, I assumed she would expect me to marry her pretty soon as she was apparently ready to get married. I was in no sense ready. Plus I did not know how my parents would react to her. Since the time I had started earning, I had told them infinite times to come to Delhi and live with me. I made enough to run the house now. I know it would have curbed my freedom, but they were my parents and I wanted to take care of them. But they had always rejected the idea saying that they were very well settled in the small little town where they had lived their entire life and did not wish to shift to the madness of Delhi.
I did not know how they would react to me marrying a girl who had recently broken off her engagement. And their opinion really mattered to me. The constant tussle in my life, more so in hers, continued until one day when she called me in office. She said that she was ready. Was ready to tell her parents, his parents, and him, that she was breaking the engagement.
It Wasn't Love at First Shalini and I Page 7