After a week on Orkut, another week on Yahoo Messenger and a month on telephone, we met. I was at work when she called. She had come to Cottons to conduct a counselling session for the teaching staff. She had just delivered an hour long lecture on how learning disability was as natural as the ability to learn. By the time it was over, she was tired and hungry. We decided to meet for lunch.
Cottons was just around 200 metres from my workplace back then - a small and humble agency called OpusCDM. She wanted to eat at ‘Casa Piccola’. The ‘Rs. 50’ in my pocket said ‘Konark’. I had dined there the previous day and knew that the North Indian meals were Rs. 25 a plate. Blaming it on my laziness and my unwillingness to walk, I had my way.
I walked down the stairs of my office building in anticipation. There she was. An angel of a woman clad in an orange salwar-kameez. I almost stumbled and fell into those bottomless brown eyes. My heart skipped a beat. I told it sternly to take it easy.
She looked a little confused and uneasy. In an effort to cut through the awkwardness of the first meeting, I resorted to a tried and tested method. I made a joke about myself. “Is it the t-shirt,” I asked smilingly. Considering the grotesque ‘Metallica’ print on my t-shirt, I wouldn’t have been surprised had she agreed. She just kept looking at me. And as if she was shaken out of the trance, she said, “I wasn’t expecting you to be this big.” Politeness. I was pleasantly surprised. I took that as a compliment. Love was on its way. That silly little bastard.
Lunch was a quiet and tense affair. Love took a backseat as my love life see-sawed between ‘inclusive of taxes’ and ‘exclusive of taxes’. The bill turned out to be an empathising romantic. I sighed in satisfaction and proudly offered to pay the bill. Her smile read ‘gentleman’.
As we stepped out, so did my want to meet her again. “Your treat next time,” I mumbled nervously. She looked up, smiled that angelic smile and said, “Sure. But here only.” And I, fell hopelessly in love.
