The girl who stared on and on...

I looked again, through the corner of my hopeful eye. No. I wasn’t mistaken. She was indeed staring at me.

Wow. I might not be the ravishing hunk around, but yeah, I wasn’t the ugliest one around either. I remember, once there was this girl called Lily who said that I was cute. And then there was Riya; well, she did not exactly say anything. Then who was it? Whatever. Forget it. But this was different. She was too damn hot to pay me this kind of attention; or any kind of attention for that matter. She didn't even blink.

I looked over my shoulder, just to make sure. No. There was no one else in her line of sight. I jumped in my chair, without actually getting the elevation. I sighed, and flung a cheeky glance in her direction. She was still at it. I turned my monitor around a little bit and typed furiously.

While alphabets, not words, populated my MS Word page, my mind was craving to wander beyond the screen and around it. “Will she still be looking at me,” I wondered. As if in answer, a large plastic ball whizzed past my ear and bounced back off my soft board. Oh yes, a large chunk of the future of Indian cricket worked in my office. Apologies with the conviction of a politician’s promise followed. With a wry smile I threw the ball back.

Without even a glance in her direction, my nervous fingers attacked the keyboard. “Why didn’t you look at her you idiot,” cursed my heart. I felt stupid. The diehard romantic in me woke up. There was no way I was going to let this opportunity pass me by. I threw my hands up in the air, and leaned back, as if to stretch. She was gone! Aaaaaaaaaarrrgghh! My head dropped on the keyboard with a thud. A few random alphabets scattered across the monitor. For all I knew, if rearranged, they might have read ‘ASSHOLE’.

With tremendous effort, I slowly raised my head, turned in her direction. Whoa! There she was. My joy was beyond compare. She was lying, face down, on my table. It must have been that wretched ball. “Hooligans,” I thought. I slowly picked her up and put her straight with one hand. With the other, I pushed the drawing pin right through her hair. My pinup girl wasn’t going down again.