Episode VII

Long wait!

Post 14^th July, 2008

Anyway, let’s move forward.

Back to 14^th of July. The next step was the worst. To wait! Wait till she reads everything and then Adi was supposed to meet Tanvi to give her, what we called ‘details of the robotics project’. From the second I sent the token of my love, my mailbox was acting like Chatak, a mythical bird who waits for the first rain, as he drinks only the water from the first rains. Similar was my condition, I was waiting for a mail from a specific account.

And this time, my one of my closest friend, Mr. Google, could not help me as the date kept changing and yet no mail was received. 14^th gone, 15^th gone, 16^th left, 17^th departed and yet the arrival of an awaited reply was as predictable as the arrivals of Monsoons in India.

Why is she not replying? No. She will surely reply as soon as she reads my mail. But what if she chooses to not care about me at all? No, no chance. She’ll never do such a thing; her caring heart will not allow her to do that. Then what is the problem? Was she committed already? No way, just no way. Anish’s words echoed, “Dude, I’m warning you. You are running out of time. Don’t expect that she’ll be waiting for you forever.” I lost a beat of my heart.

And a night of October, 2007 flashed in front of my eyes, when I forced her to fill a ‘survey form’ for me, which was supposedly going to remain ‘private and confidential’. And It did remain private and confidential, as I promised, but with me. It was about the belief in love among youngsters. And I have to accept, it was not a professional level job at all. Anyway, I deliberately put some questions, answers to which were damn important to me. Let’s take a look…

· Do you believe in love?

Yes.

· Have you ever been in love?

Yes. (And that’s when I started sweating even though the mercury was indicating single degree temperature)

· Is there any specific reason for believing or not believing in love?

I believe because I can feel it. (Now, what does that mean? Practically what I felt while reading this sentence was, Tera patta to kat gaya.)

So, you see, my fears were not baseless.

But then thinking logically, she must not have read it yet, as she did reply to my messages as usual, like nothing has happened. I’ll never understand these girls. Do they have a sixth sense? Are girls’ brains programmed to maximize boys’ anxiety? Because Tanvi always used to check her mails regularly. But, when I needed her to do that, she did not. And for that they have been gifted with, what we call, sixth sense.

Have a nice day!

18^th July, 2008

Waiting for four long days, I couldn’t take it anymore. On 18^th, it was getting too hot to handle. I had to do something. And then, without wasting another moment I messaged Tanvi, ‘check your email. I’ve sent you some information about a project & Adi has the material related to that.’

Girls! Why do they need details all the time? ‘What project? Which one? When? Why?’ All those W’s again. Isn’t it much simpler to just check the mails than interrogating me? Somehow, I faced that rapidfire round and convinced her to check it out as that will be simpler. I thanked my luck again that moment of truth TV show did not arrive in India at that time. Else, I would have won zero bucks.

Again, the queasy game of waiting. I hate Einstein at times like these. Relativity theory… shows its existence exactly at those times when you don’t want it to work at all. And this was one of those times. The clock was testing and teasing my patience. The second hand of clock was as fast as the hour hand. Damn you clock & basically aren’t these colleges supposed to declare holidays on special occasions and national holidays? This one was as important as those, right? So, why is it still going on? Come on, come on you slow-mo clock. Move like the winning horse in the race course.

After a few hours, I looked at the clock again. It was well past Tanvi’s college time. But then why is my mailbox still empty? Did she not read it? Is she not as eager to read my mail as I am to read her mails? Did she forget? Did she not care about how eagerly I was waiting for her reply? Did she…

‘You’ve got 1 new message’, the pop up declared.

‘Come on Mihir, just open it. What are you waiting for?’, I told myself after staring at the mailbox for over 10 minutes now. Is this it? Slowly I moved forward and opened the mail –

hey... i dont know what to say... can assure u we will always be frnds..

give me some time..

and sorry.. cudnt take the "project" from adi today.. airtel is giving a lot of problems.. so dint find him in college today..

bye.. hav a nice day...

That’s it??? No details, no long girly mail? And what’s this? Some time? Girl, it’s already more than two years, you remember? Couldn’t take the project? Why, why not? I hate airtel from that day and we still have a rivalry. Dint find him in college? Just go to that canteen and you’ll surely appear in no more than fifteen minutes. And now, how the hell am I supposed to have a nice day?

Hmmm. ‘Calm down Mihir, calm down. What else did you expect? You can’t expect her answer in 15 minutes right? Calm down. Let her think and just hav a nice day…’

And then thinking logically, it was the answer that I was hoping for. And the assurance, that whatever happens, we will always be friends, though I wanted to be much more than just friends.

TO BE CONCLUDED . . .