There was something different with her being around. Everything felt so distinctively perfect, so temperate when she’d be close.The temperature had fallen,but the warmth of the air between us was sublime.There was music in silence, communication in muteness. I watched her as we ate.
Pulled to the right of her head was the bulk of her hair that curled and rested on her chest, the skin of one left shoulder left bare. She had brilliant skin, smooth as a cherry, with the sheen of silver. Her poised demeanour, the flawless posture of her body, the focus and calm with which she would ogle the pages of the book, and that vibe of innocence all about her – it made me dizzy with wonderment. How could anyone be as flowerlike as her?
‘What?’ She broke the silence and I returned from my transcendent state.
‘Nothing, I was looking at how neatly you’ve stacked your books on the shelf,’ I made a clean escape.
At that, she tilted her head slightly forward, placed her hands between her legs, and looked at me with the hint of a smile. It isn’t the best feeling to know you’re busted. I didn’t know how to react, but she did.
‘Suraj,’ she wailed.The smile on her face vanished and a petulant look crept over her face. ‘Don’t you think it’s enough for today?’
‘Geetika,’ I spoke with empathy, ‘there’s just another page to go’.
‘We’ll do it another time, please? Let’s call it a day,’ she begged.
‘Okay,’ I shrugged.
Suddenly that smile of hers was reinstated as if I’d promised her a panda on her birthday. ‘Would you like to see my earring collection?’
‘Earrings,’ I mused. ‘You don’t change them that often.’
‘I like to collect though.They’re not gold ones. Most of them are imitations, artificial ones. I have bangles too.Wait, I’ll show you.’
‘Umm, Geetika, how about we go for a short walk instead? Come on, I’ll treat you to an ice cream,’ I said. She looked a little disappointed in me.
‘Ice-cream? Now? I don’t think we have anybody selling ice-creams at a walking distance.’
‘There is one, just across the square.’
‘Umm, okay. I’ll get my sandals.’
She locked the house and we went a short distance before we found the softywala. We bought our individual favourites—she, butterscotch, for me, vanilla. I paid him off and we were walking again, licking our softies.
‘Umm, this is tasty. I bet it’s tastier than yours... let’s see?’ she said and grabbed my cone. She licked it nice and slow, even closed her eyes. ‘I knew mine’s better, see?’ And she licked it again.
‘Hey, then, give me back what’s mine!’ I said and pretended to snatch my cone away. But she ran to the other end of the road, laughing all the while.
‘Don’t be a cry baby?’The corner of her eyes twinkled, as she teased me, after having licked the ice-cream a few more times. I smiled. ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘What is?’ I asked.
‘This stillness... it doesn’t seem like we’re in a crowded city. May be, we should do this ice-cream walk more often. I’m starting to like it.’
In that ambiance, truly it didn’t seem like Bangalore. Though it wasn’t even 9:30 yet, the streets were deserted. We felt like the only souls there. Though in the midst of the city, it felt like the countryside – deserted, quiet, and aromatic.There were buildings on the right of us and a lake on the left.We were walking under the full moon lit night. The wind was only brisk enough to billow her open hair. The silence and the chill in the wind were silent spectators to the warmth in us.
I knew it was time!
Chapter 7.0
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, while I stood before her, blocking her way, making her stop. I didn’t reply, only smiled. ‘Oh my God,’ she said and covered her mouth with a palm, while I wrapped my arms around her middle and went down on my knees.
Our playful banter stopped. I attempted making eye contact with her, though I was quaking in my shoes. My nostrils involuntarily flared and my eyes squinted a little, as I wasn’t completely confident of what I was doing. Well, nobody has ever been. But I tried, anyway. ‘I love you,’ I said in a socially retarded manner and raised my left hand to the height of her neck, offering her a broken twig that was lying nearby, a poor substitute for the traditional rose.
‘Sooooraj, get up,’ she almost shrieked, though trying to suppress her voice, so no one would hear.
‘No, I won’t,’ I adamantly replied. ‘Not until you take this twig and say “yes” to my proposal.’
‘Someone will see us from their windows,’ her voice quavered.
‘I’m not stealing, I don’t mind.’
‘Soooooraj,’ she helplessly cried again.
‘What?’ I shrugged and smiled.
‘We’re in the middle of the road.You might get hit,’ she warned.
‘I don’t care,’ I said.
‘Soooooraj, please, na?’ She looked as though she would start crying the next second.
‘What “please”? Say yes and accept me up,or say no and walk away. Leave me alone if you don’t care. It’s as simple as that.’
‘This is wrong,’ she whined.
‘Fine, so be it. I promise, I won’t move an inch for another day, if you go.’
‘You’re blackmailing me,’ and she whimpered like a baby.
‘I know.Why do you care?’ I said.
‘Suraj, get up na.’
‘Come on, help me to my feet or leave it and go.’
For a minute, I remained in the same position. She frowned and I smiled, until she finally chose to come up with a response: ‘Okay.’
‘Okay what,’ I stared into her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said again, louder too.
‘Yes what?’ I almost screamed.
She took a second and purred like a cat, ‘I love you.’
‘I didn’t hear what you said,’ I brought my other hand to my ear, opening outwards, gesturing I was unable to hear well, and said, ‘Can you please be louder, miss?’
She closed her eyes. Her hands became tense as she raised them, palms facing the earth. She almost freaked out and gave a high-pitched shout, ‘I love you!’
‘What?’ I chose to tease her further. ‘Again, please?’
She filled her lungs with all the air she could and screamed louder this time, ‘I lo-o-o-v-e you!’
In fact, she screamed so loud this one time that the lights went on, one after another, in a few buildings near us.
‘Oh my God Suraj, please get up now, will you?’ she pleaded, seeing the bulbs glow.
‘Not until you accept the twig-rose,’ I said.
She immediately took the twig and offered me a hand to stand up. I stood the moment she offered me her hand and I looked intensely into her eyes. She had chin tucked down, but her eyes were looking up. But the next instant she was shy again; she tried to look away. It was the moment, something inside me said.
I cupped her cheeks with my palms, leaned forward and touched her lips with mine. I kissed her...
***
I looked at her. Her eyes were still closed and my arm was still around her waist.We had been there, just like that, for the last one minute. I could hear a few hands clapping, somewhere from above, but it seemed neither of us was willing to let go. She, who was so hesitant a minute earlier, stood there unflinchingly.
Then she pulled herself back a little and spoke earnestly, ‘Are we not supposed to move, Suraj?’
I felt a jitter as she said that. ‘You’re okay, right?’ I asked.
‘Yes, just that people are watching us.’
‘Of course, we must move,’ I said and commenced walking, as I didn’t want to embarrass her any further.
We walked together to the gates of her house without saying a word. I didn’t make a move, because I knew that for a girl like her, what had just happened a while ago was a strange, a very new experience. I wanted to give her the time to prepare herself before she s
poke.
In a few minutes’ walk, we were at the gate. We were both silent and had been standing like that for nearly five minutes now. Only then, it felt a bit weird, so I thought I should break the silence. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked tenderly. She was looking at the ground, with hands folded, speechless. “Is everything okay, Geetika?”
‘Yes, it’s just that...’ she said, and paused.
‘Just that...?’ I tried to get her to finish what she’d begun to say.
‘Just that I guess things like what happened between us today shouldn’t happen before marriage.’
‘So, are we supposed to apologize to each other now?’
‘Of course not,’ she said with the trace of a smile. ‘I said that because you asked and as it occurred to me.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
‘Maybe, we should both be going now. It’s past ten.You were getting late, weren’t you?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes, I am,’ I softly spoke. ‘I’ll leave now.’
Neither of us said goodbye. We simply waved at each other as I put on my helmet, sat on my bike and began accelerating gradually. In the rear-view mirror, I saw her moving in and closing the gates, after I’d gone a distance away.
As I drove, I thought: I’ve just kissed the girl I loved, and she’s just talked about marriage. Nothing in the world can make a man happier than the moment of knowledge that the girl of your dreams reciprocates your love, and that she’s looking forward to marrying you. The world seems more happening than heaven itself could be imagined to be. Truly, the feeling that reality is encapsulating fantasies cannot be supplanted by any other.The wish to be woken up by the girl of your dreams, the hope to be kissed by her as you make it back home.The concept of sharing the light of every morning, and the passions of night always with her, knowing her to the depths—the ecstasy of knowing it will all happen soon.
It was not as if I didn’t pay enough attention to the ‘shouldn’t be doing this’ part of her words. I knew she was a rather conservative girl, who wanted to save herself for marriage.And in a way, I liked that thing about her.
I had my share of happiness. I had won the love of my life...
***
God has His way of separating the wheat from the chaff. There was a reason why Malvika hadn’t happened. He has his way, yes.
Chapter 8.0
Life took its course. Now that we knew each other’s feelings, life travelled at its pace, without blood-tingling accelerations, without jerking brakes.
Unlike conventional first-year romances, we were not able to spend time together very often. I know she wanted to as much as I did, but we were in the fourth year of B.Tech. She had to take care of her studies and I too had a career to make.
But we contributed equally to this relationship. We would meet however and whenever we had the chance to, and texted as much as we could. We also managed to call one another occasionally at odd hours, when we had time. Not that we didn’t hang out together anymore. It was only that our expeditions were less frequent now. I would take her out for a movie once or twice a month and she’d ask me to go shopping with her at times.We even ate lunches together when we could.
Her focus on studies grew in magnitude and I too tried to be more responsible about my future. Her landlords soon returned. When circumstances allowed, I did help her out with her academic difficulties once or twice in the college canteen.With time, she was getting only better at it and she preferred to do things on her own. She was academically independent, I’d say, except only for the final-year project, when she asked me to help her out again. For the project, she was in a group of three girls.The remaining two were as dumb as bricks.We passed out of B.Tech together. I however, got a distinction. While I was more inclined towards commencing my professional life, she wanted to further her studies and have an MBA degree. She even left her PG and moved into a rented apartment, in the same locality, because she wanted to dedicate all her time to preparing for the CAT, the test that gave entry to the premium IIMs. I too left the hostel and moved to a PG.
While she said she had a dream to work in an MNC, I wanted to get into a government agency/organization and lead a secure life.At the advice of my father and grandfather and my own counsel, I agreed with the idea that when you work for the government, things like recession don’t bother you and plus, if the quality of your work is good, you need not necessarily blarney your boss and lick his boots. So after a lot of thinking, I decided I wanted to work for the railways, but kept that to myself.
***
It’d been about seven months since we’d both been preparing for the exams that interested us. No doubt, our lives had become busier, but they had just enough space for our relationship.
***
I was doing some reading that day, when for no reason in particular I thought I’d call her up.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Nothing new, was watching a movie on my laptop, after brainstorming with a stupid analytical reasoning question.’
‘Oh, so did I disturb you?’
‘No... no, I don’t like the movie too much anyway.What are you doing?’
‘I was wondering if we should meet over coffee this evening.’
‘Where?’ she asked.
‘The same place we go?’ I said.
‘Actually, I wanted to first finish off with the part I’m currently studying and I don’t think I will complete it before midnight or something.’
‘Well, in that case, I’ll come pick you from your apartment and we can go somewhere nearby.’
‘Umm, Suraj, I really want to get this thing over with first. How about we do it this Friday or may be day after tomorrow?’
‘Uh, okay,’ I said.
She knew I was a bit disappointed.To make up, she said, ‘How about we spend some time together on the phone? You’re not too busy, right?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Okay, then talk to me,’ she tried to cheer me up. ‘What have you decided?’
‘About what?’
‘What exams are you planning to take? Are you preparing for civil services or something?’
At that, I couldn’t help my giggling, ‘No, no, no... civil services? It’s not my cup of tea.’
‘Come on, I know you can do it. Anyway, what is it, if not civil services?’
‘Umm, I’m thinking about railway engineering.’
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘Railways, umm, okay.’
‘What?’ I asked as it wasn’t the most motivating reply, ‘Such a lukewarm response, eh?’
‘No, not a lukewarm response. I was just thinking...Are you sure about it?’ she asked.
‘Why, yes certainly,’ I said assertively.
‘No, I mean if you’ve made up your mind, you should do it.’
‘Yeah, I think I’m interested.’
‘Hmm, good.’
‘After all, the girl working in a private firm and the boy in a government job is not a bad combination. I think the couple is best secured that way,’ I impishly said. She shyly chuckled.We talked about everyday stuff, before I laid a kiss on the phone. She replied with a kiss too. I said bye and we ended the conversation.
***
I filled up the form for the Indian Railway Engineering Services Exam a few days later.A month later, I appeared for it.With little hard work and huge luck, I cleared the exam.
Undoubtedly, I was happy as hell. I’d been preparing for that test for months and I’d finally cracked the nut with an All-India Rank of 581. I would be deployed in the Signal and Communications Department of Railways.
I called up Daadu. He said he’d offer laddoos to Ganeshji for bringing them such good fortune. Dad too, after a long time, expressed his pride in me, and even said, ‘Well done.’ I called up a few friends and it should come as no surprise that I received similar responses. But I didn’t want to do the same with Geetika. I wanted to see her face when I told her.
<
br /> At first, I thought I’d directly show up at her house with the appointment letter, but that could take months, and I didn’t have patience of that kind. I was pretty excited, so I thought a printout of the webpage that displayed my result should be enough to make her jump off her couch, for it did have ‘PASS’ written on it.
***
The next afternoon, I hired an auto to Geetika’s house. I reached the building in an hour and took the elevator to Geetika’s apartment on the sixth floor. There was no one in the corridor. Geetika’s flat was the third one on the left.
Just before I was about to knock three times on the door, my eyes went to a pair of men’s sports shoes, and I stopped. I wondered whom they belonged to. I started walking towards the lift again, thinking it could be her father’s. But in the next blink, I paused again because I remembered she’d told me her father was hospitalized as he was undergoing a hernia operation. Her entire family, which included her elder brother, was supposed to be there with him. So who could the shoes outside her flat belong to, I wondered.
What if a cousin of hers had just dropped by? Since I’d come so far, I thought I should at least satisfy my curiosity. So I started walking back towards the apartment again.Adjacent to the main door of the flat was a window. I went there and found myself lucky, as she hadn’t drawn the curtains yet. I looked right and left to make sure I was the only soul in the corridor, and then I leaned forward, bending only enough so I could have a clean peek without being caught.
But what I saw left me dumbfounded, mouth agape with incredulity. I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes. I actually rubbed them and pinched my wrist to check if it was only a nasty dream. But to my horror, it wasn’t!
She was sitting in the intimate company of a stranger, in a room adjacent to the entry hall and had carelessly left the door open. I could see her in a creamy yellow pair of kurti and churidaar.
While I stood transfixed, watching, the man drew closer to her, while she sat still. Their lips puckered up and her eyelids closed. What began with a few scattered pecks on her lips made way for them to be pressed up hard against his. She was almost smothered but didn’t seem to protest. In fact, she was complying with him, letting him have what he desired, revelling in that sensuous kiss of theirs. His left hand crawled up her neck, encircling the velvety cheek I knew so well, while the right one slithered south, down her waist, caressing every inch of her body, until he placed it along her hip to contain her soft bottom in it. Her eyes closed and muscles loosened up to relax. He then wrenched up her butt closer towards himself, compelling her to arch her back. She completely gave herself over to him, melting into his arms, as he tightened the grip of his palm almost into a clenched fist.
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